Publication
Imprint: New York : Anchor Books, 1969, c1967. Context: Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1967. Responsibility: Peter L. Berger. OCLC Number: 22736039. Physical: Text : 1 volume : vii, 229 pages ; 21 cm. Features: Includes index, notes.
Call number
SS / Berge
ISBN
0385073054 / 9780385073059
Original publication date
1967
Collections
CSS Library Notes
Description: Counter This important contribution to the sociology of religion provides an analysis that clarifies the often ironic interaction between religion and society. Berger is noted for his concise and lucid style.
-- from publisher
Table of Contents: pt. I Systematic elements
1. Religion and world-construction
2. Religion and world-maintenance
3. The Problem of theodicy
4. Religion and alienation
pt. II: Historical elements
5. The Process of secularization
6. Secularization and the problem of plausibility
7. Secularization and the problem of legitimation
Appendices
Appendix I: Sociological definitions of religion
Appendix II: Sociological and theological perspectives
FY1991
-- from publisher
Table of Contents: pt. I Systematic elements
1. Religion and world-construction
2. Religion and world-maintenance
3. The Problem of theodicy
4. Religion and alienation
pt. II: Historical elements
5. The Process of secularization
6. Secularization and the problem of plausibility
7. Secularization and the problem of legitimation
Appendices
Appendix I: Sociological definitions of religion
Appendix II: Sociological and theological perspectives
FY1991
Physical description
vii, 229 p.; 21 cm
Description
"The most important contribution to the sociology of religion since Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (Commonweal). Acclaimed scholar and sociologist Peter L. Berger carefully lays out an understanding of religion as a historical, societal mechanism in this classic work of social theory. Berger examines the roots of religious belief and its gradual dissolution in modern times, applying a general theoretical perspective to specific examples from religions throughout the ages. Building upon the author's previous work, The Social Construction of Reality, with Thomas Luckmann, this book makes Berger's case that human societies build a "sacred canopy" to protect, stabilize, and give meaning to their worldview.… (more)
Language
Original language
English
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User reviews
LibraryThing member kant1066
This book is an extension of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s earlier book, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge” written in 1966, in which the authors begin with basic sociological assumptions about mental representations and how human beings come
The Marxism comes from Berger’s understanding of human consciousness. He emphasizes the dialectical nature of individual man and his relationship to culture and society. According to him, we can only “world-build” (or “cosmize,” to use his argot) through a process of constant internalization and externalization of distinct mental representations. Berger defines religion as a sacred form of world-building, an “audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant” (p. 28). (Forget temporarily, as I had to, that to call religion a “sacred” form of world-building seems to very much beg the question.) He argues religion to be the oldest, most powerful legitimizing order which plays a central role in construing order and rationality in our lives, and therefore in maintaining reality because they are the only things that can provide sacred legitimation for this socially constructed reality. Thus religion makes permanent the temporary, transcendentalizes the immanent, sacralizes the profane, and ensures a nomological (that is, rational and law-based) rather than chaotic reality.
Evil, death, injustice, and suffering can threaten the nomological world that is shored up by religious legitimation. However, theodicies minimize the threat to “nomos” by bestowing meaning on these things and by making them understandable in a larger epistemological scheme. Berger claims that religion is ultimately alienating, as it enforces the idea that the socially constructed world is not a human product, but rather a permanent product of divine construction; religion is, in other words, a source of false consciousness that perpetuates the idea that human beings had nothing to do with creating their social world. He also claims that the world is gradually becoming more secular.
For exactly these reasons, secularization is paradoxically both de-alienating, while at the same time anomic and ridden with existential anxiety precisely because religion, according to Berger, has lost its legitimacy, having slowly been replaced in the industrial world with a materialistic-positivistic model for knowledge. In short, secularization allows people to realize that the world is their own, not that of a distant, supernatural God, and that our disconnection from this leaves us hanging, alone, in a world devoid of any meaning or order.
Berger claims to break down the book into two parts, the first being the theoretical portion and the second providing the concrete, historical, empirical facts that support the theory. However, I found almost no substantive distinction in the level of theory used in the two parts. Both are highly theoretical and abstract, which is not to say that the text is difficult if afforded a careful reading. But the entire book is maintained on such a level of abstraction that it would be difficult to take any “applied” ideas away from it. This might have something to do with the fact that Berger recanted the central thesis of “The Sacred Canopy” about twenty years ago in the face of evidence that directly suggested that the boundaries of secularization and modernization were not necessarily coterminal.
Also, for being published less than fifty years ago, the ideas here seem much, much older. Connecting the ideas of secularization, alienation, and social anomy – which seem to me to the fundamental concept here – go back to the nineteenth century, and Berger doesn’t seem to work in any new ideas. This book is interesting for its historical value and arguments (it is still seen on sociology reading lists nearly everywhere), but it doesn’t bring much “value added” to the contemporary sociology of knowledge or religion.
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to know the world and form impressions of it. “The Sacred Canopy,” while heavily informed by the ideas in “The Social Construction of Reality,” was written only by Berger himself. The book is a thoroughly Marxist critique of religion with a dash of Freud thrown in for good measure. The Marxism comes from Berger’s understanding of human consciousness. He emphasizes the dialectical nature of individual man and his relationship to culture and society. According to him, we can only “world-build” (or “cosmize,” to use his argot) through a process of constant internalization and externalization of distinct mental representations. Berger defines religion as a sacred form of world-building, an “audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as humanly significant” (p. 28). (Forget temporarily, as I had to, that to call religion a “sacred” form of world-building seems to very much beg the question.) He argues religion to be the oldest, most powerful legitimizing order which plays a central role in construing order and rationality in our lives, and therefore in maintaining reality because they are the only things that can provide sacred legitimation for this socially constructed reality. Thus religion makes permanent the temporary, transcendentalizes the immanent, sacralizes the profane, and ensures a nomological (that is, rational and law-based) rather than chaotic reality.
Evil, death, injustice, and suffering can threaten the nomological world that is shored up by religious legitimation. However, theodicies minimize the threat to “nomos” by bestowing meaning on these things and by making them understandable in a larger epistemological scheme. Berger claims that religion is ultimately alienating, as it enforces the idea that the socially constructed world is not a human product, but rather a permanent product of divine construction; religion is, in other words, a source of false consciousness that perpetuates the idea that human beings had nothing to do with creating their social world. He also claims that the world is gradually becoming more secular.
For exactly these reasons, secularization is paradoxically both de-alienating, while at the same time anomic and ridden with existential anxiety precisely because religion, according to Berger, has lost its legitimacy, having slowly been replaced in the industrial world with a materialistic-positivistic model for knowledge. In short, secularization allows people to realize that the world is their own, not that of a distant, supernatural God, and that our disconnection from this leaves us hanging, alone, in a world devoid of any meaning or order.
Berger claims to break down the book into two parts, the first being the theoretical portion and the second providing the concrete, historical, empirical facts that support the theory. However, I found almost no substantive distinction in the level of theory used in the two parts. Both are highly theoretical and abstract, which is not to say that the text is difficult if afforded a careful reading. But the entire book is maintained on such a level of abstraction that it would be difficult to take any “applied” ideas away from it. This might have something to do with the fact that Berger recanted the central thesis of “The Sacred Canopy” about twenty years ago in the face of evidence that directly suggested that the boundaries of secularization and modernization were not necessarily coterminal.
Also, for being published less than fifty years ago, the ideas here seem much, much older. Connecting the ideas of secularization, alienation, and social anomy – which seem to me to the fundamental concept here – go back to the nineteenth century, and Berger doesn’t seem to work in any new ideas. This book is interesting for its historical value and arguments (it is still seen on sociology reading lists nearly everywhere), but it doesn’t bring much “value added” to the contemporary sociology of knowledge or religion.
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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
Here is an older book I should have read a couple of decades ago (when it was not new), in order to apply its insights in my academic work. First published in 1967, Berger's The Sacred Canopy is subtitled "elements of a sociological theory of religion." Despite his insistence on sociology as an
Berger hardly touches the term "belief," but makes extensive use of the closely related concept of "plausibility," advancing the creation and maintenance of "plausibility structures" as inherent operations undertaken by society in the religious mode. There are useful distinctions between the methods used to maintain plausibility in religions that dominate entire cultures and the different strategies that are necessarily adopted by "cognitive minorities" He also highlights theodicy, taken in a sense generalized beyond the usual theological problem to any religious explanation of the anomic phenomena of death, suffering, and evil.
The later parts of the book are preoccupied with the phenomena of secularization and their relationship to parallel and dialectically related developments in economic and scientific development. Throughout the book, Berger uses examples from a wide diversity of religions, but in these sections he pays special and deserved attention to Christianity generally, and Protestantism in particular. "If the drama of the modern era is the decline of religion, then Protestantism can aptly be described as its dress rehearsal" (157).
Perhaps the high point of the whole volume for me was "Appendix II: Sociological and Theological Perspectives," in which Berger points out some methodological distinctions, withdraws and revises positions made in a previous book (The Precarious Vision, 1961), and proposes possibilities for constructive dialogue between sociology and theology. He is clear that such possibilities may not be realized, because of the demands for "openness" that they make on both sides.
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empirical discipline, the book is not oriented to primary studies of the sociological features of contemporary religious operation. Most of the book is trained on very large-scale phenomena over long periods, using lenses inherited and adapted from theorists such as Weber, Durkheim, and Mead. Berger hardly touches the term "belief," but makes extensive use of the closely related concept of "plausibility," advancing the creation and maintenance of "plausibility structures" as inherent operations undertaken by society in the religious mode. There are useful distinctions between the methods used to maintain plausibility in religions that dominate entire cultures and the different strategies that are necessarily adopted by "cognitive minorities" He also highlights theodicy, taken in a sense generalized beyond the usual theological problem to any religious explanation of the anomic phenomena of death, suffering, and evil.
The later parts of the book are preoccupied with the phenomena of secularization and their relationship to parallel and dialectically related developments in economic and scientific development. Throughout the book, Berger uses examples from a wide diversity of religions, but in these sections he pays special and deserved attention to Christianity generally, and Protestantism in particular. "If the drama of the modern era is the decline of religion, then Protestantism can aptly be described as its dress rehearsal" (157).
Perhaps the high point of the whole volume for me was "Appendix II: Sociological and Theological Perspectives," in which Berger points out some methodological distinctions, withdraws and revises positions made in a previous book (The Precarious Vision, 1961), and proposes possibilities for constructive dialogue between sociology and theology. He is clear that such possibilities may not be realized, because of the demands for "openness" that they make on both sides.
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