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The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age Hardcover – August 19, 2014

by Peter L. Berger (Author)

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This book is the summation of many decades of work by Peter L. Berger. It outlines a new paradigm for understanding religion and pluralism in an age of multiple modernities. Along the way, Berger addresses a wide range of issues spanning individual faith, inter religious societies, and the political order. The book also includes responses from three eminent scholars of religion: Nancy Ammerman,Detlef Pollack, and Fenggang Yang.

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About the Author

Peter L. Berger, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

Hardcover: 147 pages
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton; Digital original edition (August 19, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1614517509
ISBN-13: 978-1614517504
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #427,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #280 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Atheism
- #597 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology
- #729 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Science & Religion

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William S Jamison

Great insights as usual

June 27, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

As usual great insights, though to some extent this is because they are the usual insights - if you have read In Praise of Doubt for example, it seems there is many repeats. But it is great Berger and clearly the drooling stage of his career is not yet evident!

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October 17, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Everything Berger writes is always great.

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Wayne Lusvardi

Secularization as Seen by a "Nervous" Christian Sociologist

November 14, 2014

Format: Hardcover

In his new book sociologist Peter Berger’s recants half of his original single factor theory that societal modernization inevitably leads to secularization. Berger writes we don’t live in an age of unbelief but of doubt that often leads to extremes of moral relativism and fundamentalism of both secular and religious varieties. However, Berger believes most people live in the “pragmatic middle” between fanaticism and nihilism.

To Berger it “doesn’t make sense to talk about pluralism if people don’t talk to each other”. Wherever they do this talking pluralism “cognitively contaminates” their worldview.

Reversing the modernist notion that religion is a form false consciousness Berger says: “what is needed is a theory of secular false consciousness (‘why you are an a___hole’) and of cognitive privilege (‘why I am not’)”. He says some of the secular attempts at such theories are “quite funny”.

Berger describes those non-pragmatic secularists as: “deracinated, individuated, sophisticated, BUT very nervous” and ipso facto threatened by religious persons. Secularists seem to want pluralism less than those who are religious and are surrounded by secularism everywhere.

To Berger, “fundamentalism Balkanizes a society” but “relativism undermines the moral consensus without which no society can survive”. Although Berger doesn’t say this, it may be surmised from his book that in a modern pluralistic society religious institutions are often more secular and secular institutions more religious like.

Sociologist Detlef Pollack (Germany) writes that Berger’s theory is “unconvincing” because secularization still “undermines” religious belief and thus isn’t much different than conventional secularization theory. Contra Berger, Pollack says:

1) “in a widely secularized society many do not make a religious choice at all;
2) Berger’s “Compatibility Theory”of the co-existence of religious and secular discourse is like a married couple who refuse to talk politics because they have different political party allegiancs; and 3) in modern countries religious beliefs are “vague, diffuse and indetermined” rather than falling into the “fundamentalist” or “relativist” camps.

But Pollack’s criticisms seem to support rather than refute Berger’s theory. Contra Pollack, one may not need religion but one can choose it especially at times of life when an “other reality” invades one’s everyday reality, such as love or death. Married couples that are politically incompatible may nonetheless complement each other. Berger says that most people live in the pragmatic middle of the vagueness of civil religion.

Purdue sociologist Fenggang Yang says Berger’s new pluralization theory was already in place 20 years ago in the work of sociologist R. Stephen Warner who wrote that religion in the U.S. is “an open market system” (“Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the U.S.” – 1993). However, over 50 years ago Berger wrote a prescient article “A Market Model for the Analysis of Ecumenicity” in the journal of Social Research (1963, Vol. 30, Issue 2). Berger has been the lead proponent that religious pluralism and institutional market-like competition augments and mediates modernization and secularization long before 1993.

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Proctor S. Burress, Jr.

English Has 80,00 Plus Words, Ancients Struggled With 5,000: How Is IT We Are So Certain?

April 6, 2015

Format: Hardcover

Will someone one please comment as to why in Berger's works or reviews of such there is no mention of the quest for
"certitude" in religion and religious commentary.

Jack Mendohlson wrote of such many decades ago. Why is this seeking of certitude in a contingent world not seen as
essential and explanatory of something in characterizing religious views? Why do we ignore 'certitude' in offering ponderous
explanations of modernism and post modernism?

Yes, yes there is an abundance of discussion of relativism. But how can so many of the illuminati offer their condemnations...mostly...
of 'relativism' in the modern world without contrasting the 'certitude' we inherit from the ancient world? Is it easier to make a living by teaching and preaching about the one and not the other?

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