Editorial: Is Religion Back?
2010-09-01

For more than a decade, sociologists of religion and analysts of cultural developments have proclaimed a renaissance of religion. In a volume with the title The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by the Austrian-American sociologist Peter L. Berger, the belief is challenged that the modern world is becoming increasingly secular. On the contrary, Berger and his colleagues claim, modernity also provokes a reaction that often strengthens religion. Berger states: “My point is that the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. The world today...is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.”1 This might seem more newsworthy in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand than in the United States where the influence of religion supposedly has never waned. Thus the claim of the return of religion wants to identify a global trend. The secularization of Western Europe, with its roots in the philosophy of the Enlightenment and in the French revolution, appears to be a locally and temporally limited episode. Once thought to be the role-model for the future development of modern societies, it is now regarded as the exception rather than the norm. This comes as a surprise, because the secularist's hypothesis of a linkage between the rise of modernity and the fall of religion rests on plausible assumptions, of which I name three: Modernity has promoted what Max Weber identified as the disenchantment of the world through science, resulting in causal explanations of the totality of reality in terms of natural laws based on empirical data. Such a world-view cannot be easily reconciled with traditional religious beliefs. These are the tensions that the popular books of the so-called new atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris refer to when they write for a large audience in search of a non-religious but scientific world-view. With the modern pluralist and secular state the link between churches and the civil community was dissolved and societies were functionally differentiated into independent sub-systems such as law, public welfare, education, economics and others. Within this process religion was stripped of its communal significance and became a matter of private opinion. As long as it did not negatively interfere with the other public sub-systems it was tolerated. Or as one of the fathers of the American constitution put it: “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”2 But thus religion also lost its public influence and relevance for society. The option of a life devoid of institutional religion nowadays is a viable option. An individual in a Western society can be born, live and die ignoring religion. The modern welfare state with its high level of social security and a reduction of risks of life seems to lead to a decline in institutions that promise to deal with the contingencies of life, be it on a spiritual or on a charitable level. The significant decline of religious practice in Scandinavian countries who have a high level of social security and state welfare, as well as the higher level of religious affiliation in the U.S. where charitable faith-bound institutions offer help in an often risky society, seem to point in the same direction. Apparently, the prediction based on these assumptions that religion will vanish in the due course of modernity has failed to be realized. Religion is back on the public agenda, it is back in the media, and it is spreading in many parts of the world, including post-communist China. According to the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas we see post-secular societies developing that are secular and pluralist at their core, but are aware of persistent religious needs in various forms. Thus they also must recognize a survival of some indispensible public significance of religion when it comes to education, counseling, even public praying in cases of nationwide mourning (cf. the celebrations after 9/11). There seem to be no real secular equivalents for what institutional religion can offer. From a point of view of Lutheran theology, however, this development seems to me ambivalent. As a matter of fact, traditional confessional churches in Western Europe are not profiting from the return of religion. On the contrary, the number of members leaving the established churches in Europe is still increasing. Rather, I see three trends which must concern the traditional churches. To some extent the flourishing of certain forms of religion is a protest against modernity. Peter Berger also points to the fact that the forms of religion that are persisting are not those that best managed to adapt to modernity, but “by and large, religious communities have survived and even flourished to the degree that they have not tried to adapt themselves to the alleged requirements of a secularized world. To put it simply, experiments with secularized religion have generally failed; religious movements with beliefs and practices dripping with reactionary supernaturalism...have widely succeeded.”3 That applies not only to fundamentalism worldwide and across religions, but also to the renaissance of Eastern European orthodox churches in post-communist countries that see themselves as a bulwark against certain forms of liberal modernity, e.g. by rejecting the ordination of women and showing strong reservations towards scientific theology. Still others of those leaving established churches try not to give up religious practice as such but develop their own individual forms of religion, often in the form of a bricolage out of elements of very different traditions, which follows fashionable trends and regard religion as a hobby or a private recreational activity. The growing interest in religion might to some extent be an effect of the functional independence of religion in connection with its irrelevance for other functional systems within modern societies. Religion now can be designed according to specific needs, both social and individual, and according to specific individual tastes with no immediate consequences for the individual's functionality in other contexts of society. Even a religion of godlessness is possible. Once religion is deprived of its political, juridical and social role, it also can be converted into a kind of psycho-sanitary technique (or an anthropo-technical exercise, as the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk puts it). Not only is religion back on the agenda, but atheism as well. A trans-national culture of an openly anti-religious community with strong links to scientific world-views is emerging. It is promoted by prolific authors, supported by a large number of scientists, public figures and sponsors, and it relies on a broader public for appreciation. It does not promote atheism as an ideology, but as atheism out of habit that shapes everyday life. It is championed as a viable way of life and demands public recognition, or even claims non-religiosity as the defining culture (Leitkultur) of Western societies. And it is indeed especially widespread among scientists, and seems to resonate not only with a scientific world-view, but also with the rationale of economics. And while those rejoicing in the alleged renaissance or persistence of religion insinuate that atheists are morally dubious characters, the new atheists can refer to humanist ethics with high standards and rather see religious people as fallen prey to a God-delusion. My point is: instead of religion disappearing in modernity we see the spectrum of religious and non-religious conducts of life expanding at the cost of established confessional Christianity. How, then, should Lutheran churches and theology react? First of all they should see and analyze the ambivalence of the return of religion on the public agenda. Then, they should engage with each of the three trends of a post-secular society, i.e. with fundamentalism, with feel-good religion, and with scientific criticism in a critical and constructive dialogue. I see the role of the churches and of academic theology acting as interpreters, mediators and hermeneutics of truth, a truth that church and theology do not own as a possession but that inspires them to explore its meaning and significance for life. The criterion for this hermeneutics of truth is Jesus Christ as a symbol of the ambivalences of human existence, which are overcome in healing and renewal. This truth has both a realistic and a prophetic aspect. For this task it is not enough to identify a hidden religious sub-text in modernity, nor is it sufficient to point to the benefits of being religious or to claim the inevitability of God as a theoretical concept within science. Ideological criticism as well as religious criticism must be included. We should pay attention to the spiritual quests and longing of people, but do so without putting form over content. It is not enough to develop more attractive forms of spirituality, and it is nonsense to compete with feel-good religions by offering even cozier forms of ritual. On the other hand theology should dare to ascertain engaging convictions and to provide meaningful orientation, but it must not compete against fundamentalist forms of religion for an even more narrow and more black and white view of reality. Theology has to make clear that it does not compete with science for the better description of empirical reality, and that faith seeking understanding is an open hermeneutical task. But in doing so it should present itself as a natural and competent partner of any kind of meaningful search for truth and should ally with any human activity seeking better understandings of reality, of human beings, and social and cultural developments, including science. And it has to protest whenever this quest is suppressed by ‘scientific’ ideologies or fundamental religions, or when it is silenced by consumerist surrogates. Such formation of a critical and at the same time constructive theology seems to me to be the contemporary form of the traditional concept of theologia viatorum, a theology of those who are on their way through time and history towards eternity. I see it as promising in a globalized world, both in the secular as well as in the theological meaning of promise. Its contribution to forming our post-secular societies might lie in its competence to engage both secular and religious mentalities in complementary learning processes that will also allow for contemporary and relevant expressions of the Christian gospel.