The accomplished sociologist of religion Peter Berger has a new book entitled The Many Altars of Modernity, and a related blog post, in which he argues that secularization does not offer the best description of current trends in global religious observance and affiliation. According to Berger, secularization is primarily a creature of the West and has achieved varying levels of purchase even there (think Sweden vs. Texas). Rather, he argues, the more viable theory is pluralization, the reality that faith cannot be taken for granted but is merely one conscious choice among many.
There is an underlying assumption here, shared by religious conservatives and their progressive antagonists (they just differ on what to do about it), and indeed (still) widespread both in academic and popular assessments of the contemporary world: that modernity means a decline of religion and its concomitant morality. Without dissecting this concept any further, this is what is meant by the concept of secularization; for our purposes here we can mean by secularism the idea that secularization is not just a fact, but one to be applauded and promoted. But is it a basic fact of our age? It is certainly a fact; but is it the fact by which our age is to be defined? I think it is not. It is not equally dispersed globally–strongly so in Europe, not at all in Nepal, somewhere in between in Texas. However, what is much more universally dispersed is a fact mentioned by John Paul II in his address to the Latin American bishops: that “faith is no longer taken for granted”. Rather, faith must be based on an individual decision.
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