Intellectual History and the Return of Religion

Ideas matter. From the most sublime philosophical principle to the lowliest mentalité, ideas shape our experience of the world as meaningful. In the words of the philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, "[e]very action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts."¹ No matter how unsophisticated, everyone thinks. Religion is especially relevant in this context. Though recent data from the Pew Research Center suggest that many people possess a startling lack of concrete knowledge about their own creeds, the survey underscores the important fact that religion is an arena where people have ideas that matter.² However partial, however scripted, however seemingly irrational, these ideas affect how people live, whatever one may think about their validity. Let me be clear. By appealing to "religion" in the generic, my goal is not to elide the many and various practices that are implied by that term, nor is it to discount the tremendous disagreement over what counts as "religion." On the contrary, I think that we can only hope to understand this complex landscape if we learn to listen as carefully as we can to what people themselves say about the full range of their religious beliefs and practices.

There are many ways to interpret the lack of religious knowledge revealed by the Pew survey.³ What is especially striking, however, is that it is accompanied today by what seems to be a new lack of knowledge about religion on the part of academics. As Hent de Vries puts it in the introduction to Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, "the relationship between the theological and the political is no longer obvious, let alone direct." Instead, "we are left with blanks and dots . . . which we continue to attribute to 'religion,' as if we knew what that means."⁴ And de Vries is not alone. Throughout the humanities and the social sciences one of the most surprising trends of the last decade or so is the erosion of support for the so-called "secularization thesis," which in its strong form posits the steady decline of religion as a consequence of modernization, and in its weaker form posits the privatization of religion, or at least its depoliticization as an effective player in the public sphere. Though it would be an exaggeration to say that the critique of secularization has entered the mainstream, there has nevertheless been a discernible waning of the once supreme confidence that secularization is a simple fact of modern history. A useful way of marking this new trend is Peter Berger's high-profile withdrawal of support for the secularization thesis in favor of what he calls "desecularization."⁵ Though he is a sociologist and not a historian, Berger's The Sacred Canopy has been a standard-bearer of the secularization thesis for many scholars outside of sociology. His willingness to advertise publicly that he was wrong about secularization is not only a model of academic integrity, but also brings into focus the tense relationship between religious knowledge and knowledge of religion. Berger pulls no punches in claiming that the reason secular academics have for so long been convinced that religion was in decline is precisely because they are secular and academics; they are thus predisposed to taking a dim view of religion as an idol of the unthinking masses and seeing science and education as the main instruments of enlightenment. According to Berger, the apparent resurgence of religion around the world puts things in a different perspective. Not only do the great variety of diffuse practices called "religion" possess remarkable staying power, which needs to be understood more precisely, but academics also need to rethink their prejudices if they are going to be successful in developing new approaches to studying religion. And Berger is not alone: everywhere, researchers are calling for a reassessment of the meaning and role of religion in society.

The nativist Philadelphia Bible Riot of 1844, which erupted after Bishop Francis Kenrick persuaded school officials to use both the King James and Latin Vulgate bibles. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division...