The Precarious Vision of Peter Berger

The death of Peter Berger in Boston on June 27 prompts the usual bounty of obituaries and a plethora of deserved reminiscences and tributes. One of my own most vivid recollections of Berger concerns an event which David Martin, his British peer in the sociology of religion, recalled five years ago in “The Essence of an Accidental Sociologist: An Appreciation of Peter Berger” (see Resources below). In Martin's account of a conference held in 1969, he reproduces a throwaway line of Berger's, but one which I'll pick up again, both for what it tells about the late master and because I was an awed bystander and can confirm it.