Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework

Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework Vyacheslav Karpov It has been more than a decade since Peter Berger1 famously introduced the concept of desecularization to denote a variety of manifestations of the worldwide resurgence of religion. He described desecularization as counter-secularization and offered an innovative view of the vitality of religion vis-à-vis global modernity. Studying the interplay of secularizing and counter-secularizing trends and forces, Berger wrote, is a most important task of the sociology of religion.2 Looking back at Berger’s energetic formulations, one could expect that they would inspire an explosive growth of studies focusing on counter-secularizing trends and attempting to uncover desecularization patterns across cultures and societies. This would have meant a massive shift of focus in research within the sociology of religion. The shift, however, has been slow to emerge. Recent studies of the resurgence of religion and its influence on societies worldwide3 have generated mounting evidence in support of VYACHESLAV KARPOV (BA, St. Petersburg State University [Russia]; PhD, Ohio State University) is a professor of sociology, Western Michigan University. He is the co-author of Orthodoxy, Islam and Religious Tolerance in Post-Atheist Russia (forthcoming). His articles have appeared in Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religion, State and Society, Social Forces, and other journals. Special interests include: comparative sociology of religion, social theory, and religious and political tolerance. The author is infinitely grateful to professors Chris Marsh and Elena Lisovskaya. This article would not have been written without their encouragement, support, and advice. 1. Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999). 2. Ibid., 7. 3. See, for example, Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Robert Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton: Princeton Journal of Church and State vol. 52 no. 2, pages 232 – 270; doi:10.1093/jcs/csq058 Advance Access publication July 21, 2010 # The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: 232 Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework Berger’s desecularization thesis. Yet, there has been remarkably little effort to conceptualize desecularization and heuristically apply this theoretical notion to comparative studies of religions’ resurgence around the world. Moreover, the very term “desecularization” has been used rarely and mostly without clarification of its meaning, as if the concept was self-explanatory.4 Existing literature shows no attempts to define desecularization analytically, which would include specifying its component processes, levels, actors, social forces, patterns, and trajectories. The absence of such a general conceptual framework impedes large-scale comparisons of desecularization’s known cases. This, in turn, prevents theoretical generalization and the development of a theory of desecularization. This contrasts sharply with existing prolific work dedicated to defining, conceptualizing, and theorizing secularization (understood as a general decline of religion’s societal influence). Debates and disagreements notwithstanding, secularization studies have developed into a relatively coherent field that enables theoretical generalization and hypotheses testing. Thus, the sociology of religion today still appears much better equipped to study the secularizing trends and forces than the desecularizing ones. Consequently, the important goal of systematically exploring the forces and trends’ interplay remains elusive. Why this has been so is a question that merits investigation, yet is too big for a journal article. I will limit its discussion to suggesting that the relative underdevelopment of desecularization theory reflects a certain “cultural lag.”5 The intellectual culture of University Press, 2000); Andrew Greeley, Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2003); Phillip W. Sutton and Stephen Vertigans, Resurgent Islam: A Sociological Approach (Malden: Polity, 2005); Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Christopher Marsh, Man, the State and God (Continuum, 2010 [forthcoming]); David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Thomas Banchoff, ed., Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 4. The only paper that offers an analytical definition of desecularization is Elena Lisovskaya and Vyacheslav Karpov, “Orthodoxy, Islam, and Desecularization of Russia’s State Schools,” Politics and Religion 3, no. 2 (2010), 276 – 302. 5. The concept was originally introduced to denote nonmaterial culture’s lagging reflection of changes in material environment (William F. Ogburn, “Cultural Lag as Theory,” Sociology and Social Research 41, no. 3 [1957]: 167 – 74). I apply it in a more general sense, meaning that the culturally shaped ideations 233 Journal of Church and State sociology has been slow to reflect drastic changes in the world’s religious scene. Debates still largely revolve around an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century agenda originally set to herald religion’s decline in the West. This applies to critics of the secularization thesis no less than to its proponents. After all, both still focus on if, where, and why religion and/or its societal role are in decline. It is still about proving Comte right or wrong. Meanwhile, the rise of Christianity in the “global South,” the worldwide Islamic resurgence, the revitalization of religion in Russia and China, and other cases of desecularization have become common knowledge. Yet, sociologists are immersed in rearguard theoretical skirmishes and are inadequately prepared for conceptualizing and theoretically explaining these new realities on the ground. Existing literature sheds light on the origins of the “cultural lag.” According to Stark, the sociological canon was largely shaped by classical atheist proponents of the idea of secularization.6 The canon’s lasting effect is reinforced by what Stark calls “ancestor worship,”7 i.e., “uncritical reception of the classics’ ideas.” Phillip Rieff put it more bluntly: “sociology as we know it began as a deathwork against Eu (...truncated)