In the past twenty years secularization has indeed become a ‘controversial thesis’[umstrittene These], its once-axiomatic status shaken by a series of strident critiques. Briefly put: drastic declines in religious belief, practice and/or influence are apparent only in (parts of) Europe; the rest of the modern – and modernized– world, meanwhile, is awash with religion. Furthermore, it is argued, a closer look at unchurched Europe suggests that even here, despite Eastern violence and Western neglect, God's vital signs remain defiantly robust. Influenced and informed by these developments in the sociology of religion, the contributions to Säkularisierung (most of which began life as part of a Winter 2002/3 lecture series at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin) thus offer ‘balance and perspectives’[Bilanz und Perspektiven] from the fields of theology, philosophy, and religious and cultural studies.
The purpose of the volume, as stated in the editors' introduction, is not to argue for or against the secularization thesis, but rather to better understand ‘certain societal developments which have, whether rightly or wrongly, been described as secularization’. To do this effectively, ‘the authors have quite consciously placed themselves in a position in which it is no longer possible to view the European – specifically the Western European – development simply as the normal case for modernization’ (p. 9). This approach, in line with Eisenstadt's notion of multiple modernities (championed in British sociology by Grace Davie), comes especially to the fore in the latter half of the collection, resulting in several of its most interesting essays. Prior to these are three more theoretical studies, firmly situating secularization's development and reception within the history of ideas.
Johannes Zachhuber surveys the history of the secularization paradigm, from its ‘classic form’ in the work of Weber and Durkheim, via challenges made to it in the middle decades of the twentieth century (e.g., is “church-going” legitimately identified with “religion”, such that a decline in one signals the demise of the other? Was there ever “a golden age of faith”?), up until the ‘crisis of the secularization paradigm’ in the past decade or so, before offering some ‘practical conclusions’ for philosophy, theology and the churches. Hermann Lübbe, in a paper tellingly subtitled ‘towards the enlightenment of the Enlightenment’, critiques the alleged connection between modernization and secularization, making much of the idea of ‘pluralization’[Pluralisierung]. Richard Schröder, taking as his inspiration post-9/11 pleas for the secularization of the Islamic world, comments that ‘In order to test the fitness of this advice, we need to know what “secularization”is’ (p. 61). He then proceeds, in engaging and clearly-written German, to trace the origins of the Latin term saecularisitio, and to chart its subsequent diverse meanings and applications. Schröder finally, and persuasively, argues both that ‘secularization is [fundamentally] a category of European self-interpretation’, and that ‘The idea that we could, should, or must initiate a secularization process in the Islamic world, is […] a new variety of colonialism, albeit a colonialism which is not at all realizable’ (p. 72).
Broadly speaking, the remaining essays are ‘case studies’, each examining the applicability – or not– of secularization to a specific national and/or religious culture: reunified Germany (Wilhelm Gräb), the USA (Rolf Schieder), post-communist Russia (Heinz Ohme), the secular Jewish-American ‘Independent Order of B'nai B'rith’ (Cornelia Wilhelm), Buddhism (Ulrich Dehn), religious “sleepers” in Western societies (Christina von Braun), and Islam (Peter Heine). To comment briefly on just two of these: Gräb's optimism at German Christianity's alleged liberation from ‘churchliness’[Kirchlichkeit], and its diffusion ‘in multiple implicit ways into secular society’ (p. 84), relies far too heavily on a dubiously plastic meaning of “the religious”, incorporating such things as ‘the cult of brand names as [a form of] icon veneration,’ and the ‘secular liturgies’ enacted at football stadia (p. 86); Ohme's study of the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church since perestroika, on the other hand, is a masterfully nuanced study of an ambiguous phenomenon, making strong use of hard sociological data. Surprisingly, it is the only essay really to do so.
Generally this is a valuable new volume, offering a wealth of illuminating perspectives, both abstract and applied, on what its editors rightly describe as being ‘Perhaps the most influential theory […] trying to describe the connection between religion and modernization’ (p. 8). Taken as a whole, however, the collection is marred by the absence of any real defence of secularization (such as, in Britain, has been achieved by Steve Bruce). If nothing else, greater balance, and an empirical counterweight to some of the contributor's more speculative claims, would have been achieved by its inclusion. That one criticism aside, Säkularisierung remains an impressively wide-ranging work, and a worthy new addition to secularization's burgeoning secondary literature.
