Several decades ago, sociologists were writing about how modernization was accompanied by the rise of secularism. Today, so-called “secularization theory” has been abandoned, including by its former advocates such as Peter Berger. I came across a trenchant quote from him that defines the new issues. From Eboo Patel in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The 1960s-era academics who advanced secularization theory confessed their errors long ago. As the sociologist Peter Berger told The Economist in 2007, “We made a category mistake. We thought the relationship was between modernization and secularization. In fact it was between modernization and pluralism.”
It isn’t that religion has faded. It’s just that there are so many religions now! Not only so many denominations of Christianity to choose from, but we also now associate with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and more, each of which also has its multiple varieties. Not only that, there are also so many ideologies and belief systems of every kind, including multiple varieties of atheism! And multiple political philosophies. And multiple childraising philosophies. And on and on.
And, for the ultimate pluralism, more and more people have a religion of one, a set of ultimate beliefs that is solely their own and is held by no one else.
This does not necessarily mean relativism. Those within each belief system tend to be quite convinced about it. Though some people are trying to bring all of these different beliefs into an ersatz unity, but that is little more than an attempt to deny the pluralism.
There have, of course, always been different religions and other beliefs. The difference is that people were seldom in contact with those who believed differently. People lived in their communities, which generally had some kind of cultural and moral consensus. But those kinds of homogeneous communities are rare these days.
People can still hold strongly to their beliefs. Otherwise, there could not be so many of them. But there is a cultural and maybe psychological tension in having to relate to people with different beliefs. One way people cope, I suppose, is to just not mention religion and other important ideas, perhaps creating the illusion of secularism at the expense of shallow discourse.
(This pluralism, by the way, is also what Charles Taylor means by our secular condition. See How [Not] to Be Secular.)
So what difference should “pluralism,” as opposed to “secularism,” mean in our church work, evangelism, apologetics, spiritual care, etc.?
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