Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism (review)

The A-list scholars who convened in April 2005 for a Georgetown University conference on “the new religious pluralism and democracy” had no shortage of relevant events to reference. Among the most cited were France’s ban on Muslim headscarves, Turkey’s request for full membership in the European Union, and the brutal murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Moreover, London bombings that July followed by French rioting that October dramatically underscored the conference scholars’ desire to rightly understand these issues as they converted their lectures into this book’s chapters.

Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism begins with a helpful introduction that summarizes key issues and explains the book’s organization into two parts. The first part describes this new religious pluralism in seven chapters, while the second part contains seven responses to this pluralism. There is no concluding chapter, regrettably, and chapter quality varies. Some contributors wrote original material to address the book’s theme; others drew from prior research to write chapters summarizing their views; still others used their chapters to publish research of limited relevance. Six of the chapters present lucid and engaging contributions to the understanding of religious pluralism and democratic nations, and these deserve a wide reading. Another three chapters offer in-depth analyses that should interest specialists, and all chapters include a substantial bibliography.

Peter L. Berger gets things off to a rollicking start, by announcing that the secularization theory he did more to popularize than anyone else has been “empirically falsified,” and laying out a series of claims about religious pluralism and democracy (20). These include: that the “contemporary world, far from being secularized, is characterized by a veritable explosion of passionate religion” with just two exceptions – western/central Europe and “a thin but influential class of ‘progressive’ intellectuals in most countries;” that global pluralism converts “all religious groups” into “voluntary associations, even if they have to be dragged into this social form kicking and screaming;” and that those religious groups which embrace voluntary status will thrive (21,24). Those religions that reject voluntary status must create totalitarian regimes that rule at the cost of “total economic stagnation,” which eventually doom them (26).

Broad and loose arguments are, of course, Berger’s stock-in-trade. As such they whet the appetite for more nuanced essays, such as José Casanova’s. He compares immigration and religious pluralism in the United States and European Union (EU), carefully illuminating cultural and organizational factors that explain the different trajectories taken by the EU and the US. Casanova illustrates, for example, how Western European nations are “deeply secular societies shaped by the hegemonic knowledge regime of secularism,” yet at the same time there are “large numbers of Europeans, even in the most secular countries, [who] still identify as Christian, pointing to an implicit, diffused, and submerged Christian cultural identity,” all of which complicates acceptance of religious pluralism (62). By contrast, the high religiosity of the US prompts many immigrants to become “even more religious” than they were in their home countries, and employ religion “as an adaptive response to the new world.” (65)

Grace Davie’s essay also deserves a wide reading. She begins with a brief discussion of the importance of defining pluralism carefully, followed by a rightful locating of this issue within the research on new religious movements. Davie then moves to a concise but insightful comparison of religious pluralism in Britain, France and the Netherlands. Davie is particularly adept in demonstrating the consequences of Western Europe’s historic familiarity with Christianity and Judaism, which led many to expect all religions to readily privatize, when in fact world religions differ widely and many are quite unwilling to accept a public/private dichotomy. That same point is driven home in Danièle Hervieu-Léger essay, which focuses exclusively on France and its Islamic immigrant community, and which makes savvy insiders out of those previously ignorant of this politically-charged and internationally significant relationship.

Rounding out the top six chapters are Diana...