Religion in a Deliberative Society: What Really Happened to Us in the "Era of Secularization"

Introduction

IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS Catholics have experienced dramatic changes in their Church. ¹ To make some sense of these changes, sociologists have often resorted to interpretations borrowed from traditional "secularization" theories. In contrast to that venerable tradition, I prefer to borrow from contemporary political sociology to argue that many of these changes can be viewed in retrospect as corollaries of a shift in the strategy of a Church intent on "optimalizing" its relationship with society at large and with its own members. Though my discourse will be mainly about the Catholic experience, many of my propositions may apply to other Christian denominations as well.

Before I begin to explore this daunting topic, fair warning should be given about the language of "sociologese" that shall be used here. This is, first, an uncommon and impoverished dialect of the English language. Next, even those acquainted with it may find its jargon rather outlandish when applied to religious phenomena. Last, more than unusual jargon is implied in this language: it also proposes a different perspective on the reality of religion. Sociologists do not talk about the same aspects of religion as theologians. They do not talk about religious experience but rather about the communication process and about the common culture that is inherited, transformed, and transmitted within a religious group.

This perspective invites a sociologist to compare a religious belief system to nonreligious "ideologies." This sociological approach may seem provocative. In common parlance, "ideology" refers to a deceitful belief system that has to be debunked by enlightened intellectuals. However, the sociological perspective has no such epistemological ambitions. Whether an ideology is true or false is of no concern to sociologists who are intent on discovering the ideologies hidden behind various symbol systems and their social origins and consequences. ² Some of them do not hesitate to study fairy tales as ideologies in disguise.

Of course, a religion is a special kind of ideology. All ideologies are meant to provide their adherents with meaning and motivation when they have to face social and cultural challenges. A religion, however, is an ideology that seeks "salvation" for the irreducible contingencies of the human condition. Religion seeks salvation by establishing the right relationship between the human being and the Ultimate Being and by constructing a "world" that is supportive of that right relationship between "Man" and "God." In a well-ordered world God is more present than in an unordered world. In Auschwitz, some felt God was "absent"; in the Holy Land, he is often seen as tangibly "present." All religions, therefore, develop a more or less detailed "ideological" agenda that aims at opening the world to the presence of God.

The Ideological Agenda of Religion

An ideological understanding of religion implies four basic assumptions. First, viewing religion as an ideology naturally sensitizes investigators to its image of the world more than to its images of God and man. This assumption calls for the empirical investigation of the historical endeavors and consequences of a religion (that is, for the study of its ideological agenda). In contrast, most spokespersons of that religion do not tend to focus on that ideological agenda. Indeed, sometimes they are hardly conscious of it. It is then the task of the sociologist to point out that a specific ordering and reordering of society will be the direct or indirect consequence of their images of God and man. Ideology and theology overlap to some extent, but they are not congruent.

Let me give an example: Augustine of Hippo is renowned mainly for the invention of the subjective autobiography. Did this invention leave a mark on Western societal history? It did. It fostered the cultivation of individual subjectivity with unintended but impressive societal effects. The idea of the unfathomable depth of the soul supported his...