Volume 1, Issue 3, June 1994

ADVANCING SECULARISM CHALLENGES RELIGION

Back in 1968, Peter L. Berger, professor of sociology in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York, addressed a gathering and predicted that, by the 21st century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a world-wide secular culture.

The pressure to give up religion will become intense, he said, because "we are all social beings and like to live in peace - including cognitive peace - with our fellows."

"I think people will become so bored with what religious groups have to offer that they will look elsewhere", he said.

He stressed that if his analysis was correct, religion would not decline because it was false or irrelevant, but simply because of social and psychological forces that were stronger. He said: "I think that, if you understand what these forces are, and also have an engagement with religious ideas, this can be liberating. You can begin to understand that the decline of religion has nothing to do with its truth or falsity."

In an aside in his speech, Berger said the ecumenical movement was "simply price-fixing" among similar religious packagers competing for a shrinking market. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Communism each offer only one of many religious commodities in the market place today, he said. "Since the churches increasingly have to take consumer preferences into account in marketing their wares," he added, "in a secularized world this means the churches are secularizing themselves from within in order to attract consumers."

"Protestantism is furthest advanced," he said. "It has reached the strange state of self-liquidation."

Now, 26 years later we see the fulfilling of his forecast.

Search Articles by Keyword

 


Back to Issue Summary || Issue Index || Home

"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.