Peter L. Berger
1999 The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview. In Peter L. Berger (ed.): The Desecularization of the world: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Washington en Michigan: The Ethics and Public Policy Center en Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. pp 1-18

p2
* Fundamentalism isn't strange, the idea that it is strange, is.

Mistakes of Secularization Theory.
* "My point is that the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false."
* first ascribing to the secularization (sec.) theory
* The key idea comes from Enlightenment: Modernization necessarily leads to a decline of religion in society and in individuals. (p3:)= wrong.
p3
*because:
- modernisation: sec. + counter-sec. movements
- sec. on soc. level not necessarily linked with sec. on individual level
- rel. inst. can play soc. + pol. roles even without having a lot of people believing/ practising that religion.
* two strategies towards mod. + sec.:
- rejection
making people reject, two strategies:
- religious revolution (take over the whole soc. + make rel. obligatory)
- religious subcultures (p4)
- adaption
p4
adapting rel. comm. hardly survive, non-adapting rel. comm. flourish.

The Catholic Church vs. Modernity.
* illustration of the difficulties of various strategies.
- 1870: rejection
p5
- +/_ 1970: notion of aggiornamento: adaption
- nowadays: course between rejection and adaptation

p6
The Global Religious Scene
* international: non-adapting rel. movements thrive in opposition to adapting rel. movements.
--> show couter-sec. at least as important as sec.
* in media called fundamentalism --> suggestive and distorting
p7
* features:
- great rel. passion
- defiance of what others have defined as Zeitgeist
- return to trad. sources of rel authority
reaction against sec. (so does it exist?)
* "Modernity, for fully understandable reasons, undermines all the old certainties; uncertainty is a condition that many people find very hard to bear; therefore, any movement (...) that promises to provide or to renew certainty has a ready market."

Differences Among Thriving Movements.
* For analyses of soc. + pol. impact of rel. upsurges look at features, but also at differences.
* examples:
- Islamic upsurge
p8
- Evangelical upsurge
- differences between and within the movements
- differences between geographical regions
- differences between and within individuals
p9
- differences between upsurge (within or outside own community)

Exceptions to the Desecularization Thesis.
* 2 exceptions to the proposition of massive religiousness of the world:
- Europe (west of the former Iron Curtain): sec. exists on the level of expressed beliefs and on the level of church-related behaviour.
p10
--> but also strong survivals of religion, better (?): shift in institutional location of rel.
- international elite subculture composed of people with Western-type higher education
--> small, though very influential group

p11
Resurgent Religion: Origins and Prospects.
* questions:
- "What are the origins of the worldwide resurgence of religion?"
posible answers:
- Modernity tends to undermine the old certainties. Rel. movements tend to thrive on giving (new) certainties.
- Sec. view of reality has its location in an very influential elite culture
p12
rel. upsurges are continuous phenomena.
- "What is the likely future course of this rel. resurgence?"
- future won't be any less rel. than today.
p13
- "Do the resurgent rel. differ in their critique of the secular order?"
- Yes, depending on their particular belief systems + relation to modernity.
- same: agreement on shallowness of a culture without any transcendent points of reference.

p14
Religious Resurgence and World Affairs.
* questions concerning relation of rel. resurgence to non-rel. issues:
- international pol.:
- Samuel Huntington: international affairs affected by clash of civilizations, rather than ideological conflicts.
p15
* To asses the role of rel. in internat. pol., it would be useful to distinguish between pol. movements that are inspired by rel. and those that use rel. as a convenient legitimation for pol. agenda's based on quite non-rel. interests.
- war and peace:
- rel. more often invokes war than peace within and between nations.
p16
- ec. dev.:
- Max Weber: 'The protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'
--> some values foster dev. more than others. but their functionality also depends on the period of ec. dev.
p17
- human rights and soc. justice:
- differend rel. articulated views about the nature of human rights and soc. justice.

kritiek: waarom spreken van desecularisatie als je het niet eens bent met secularisatie?