Peter Berger's unfinished symphony

...Social science must show that the heretical views are laughable, lacking a sound rational foundation, based largely on myths and illusions...

...For one, it may be necessary to present the heretics as foolish or wicked...

...Yet the conflict between heresy and society's official self-definition, Berger argues, will not be resolved by rational argument...

...But once we honor these boundary lines,we may be able to create certain islands relatively free of technocratic impact and seek refreshment at these oases of more truly human existence...

...Despite this"good deal" of value neutrality, Berger insists that "the relationship between knowledge and its social base is a dialectical one, that is, knowledge is a social product and knowledge is a factor in social change...

...While Berger recognized the humanizing intention of the trends in society that seek to "demodernize," i.e., limit the impact of instrumental rationality on knowledge and social organization, he shows that these demodernizing trends have clearly defined boundaries...

...For Marx it was the economic system, that is to say the organization of production in a world of scarcity, that has the decisive influence on consciousness, and for this reason the ills of the modern age must be derived from the contradictions of capitalist production...

...Some- times the sciences even offer a wider theoretical picture of the universe which integrates the different provinces of meaning and even encompasses the institutional order...

...relativized the [social] order to such an extent that one may validly speak of de-alienating religion.'" Prophetic religion exercised a"debunking" task: it shook the foundations of the world...

...S OCIALISM IS is heretical world view in North America: it undermines the fundamental assumptions upon which so- ciety is based...

...Berger does not follow the Marxist view that we build the world, including ourselves and our own consciousness, through labor...

...The material arrangements of human life have a certain arbitrary character...

...Here reason is used to legitimate the world order...

...Peter Berger acknowledges that religion is not always world- maintaining...

...Berger proposes an elaborate theory according to which the human reality is socially constructed in a dialectical process that combines three distinct though interrelated moments...

...Since Berger does not clarify the relationship between his two distinct views of social science, the reader has no w,/y of resolving the puzzle...

...Berger realizes t.b.at his defense of Otto's notion of divine transcendence as theologi- cally normative appears at the moment as an attack on the left wing of the churches...

...There is the externalization of people's impulses, drives, in- tentions, and purposes...

...Still, they must choose to which of the two classical theories they assign the predominant place...

...TMs recognition, after all, determined Max Weber's approach to the sociology of religion...

...Religion is the sacred canopy of the socially constructed world...

...Or it must be shown that behind the heretical views stand self-serving interests or a morally questionable impatience with the existing order...

...He notices only "the majesty" of the transcendent God that relativizes the inherited order and says nothing of God's holiness and justice, which spell out a judgment on the social order, condemn the injustices inherent in it, and promise the rectification of the existing ills...

...According to Berger, this seems to be the kind of reasoning that is widely accepted among social scientists today...

...The more painful life becomes, the more threatened is the precarious social world and the greater the need for more efficacious systems of meaning that protect and maintain the given order...

...Such a choice, needless to say, has important political consequences...

...In biblical religion, we are told," the majesty of the transcendent God...

...and (3) the knowledge industry, carded on by intellectuals out of a resentment proper to their group, produced myths of alterna- tive societies, among them the socialist myth, which concen- trated on the negative elements of the American dream, ap- pealed to the restlessness produced by modernity, undermined the achievement orientation of western culture, and attacked the class system to which America is committed...

...Important in the present context is only this: while Berger recognizes that religion is both world-maintaining and world- shaking, he chooses the world-maintaining function as his essential definition...

...There is nothing we can do about them...

...What is the cognitive status of the position, "Some aliena- tion is anthropologically necessary...

...These theories are often provided by full-time legitimators...

...Judged by the dominant biblical understanding of divine transcendence, Otto's idea of the holy and Berger's sacred canopy are not transcendent at all...

...Now is the time to defend the sense of divine transcendence associated with authentic Christianity...

...Are Berger's sociological conclusions simply a profane canopy for modern capitalist society...

...Since a growing movement among Christians, with some impact on church policies, has begun to criticize corporate capitalism itself, the churches are in danger of moving away from where the majority of their people are...

...On the one hand he insists that sociology is value-free and scorns the social theorists who regard sociology as part of the world-constructing process, and on the other he insists with equal force, in the context of his general theory, that social science fulfills a particular social function, one of legitimaCommonweal: 264 false consciousness and studied as a source of alienation, but Marxists look upon this alienation as a heavy burden placed upon humanity from which it is ultimately destined to be liberated...

...But if this is so, then in looking at the total picture of modernity, the "economic" paradigm must be given predominance, and in the analysis of industrialization one must always keep in mind the economic powers that are served by technological reason and bureaucratic administration...

...Even in his theological writings (as we shall see further on) Berger follows the bent of his definition of religion and severs God's transcendence from his holiness and justice...

...It has both theological and political dimensions...

...The economic map of the U.S...

...Over the last few years, Berger has involved himself in theological argumentation and some ecclesiastical politics...

...For Weber, on the other hand, following thinkers such as Tocqueville and Toennies, technological rationality and bureaucratic administration have the major impact on modern consciousness, and while economic factors must not be neglected, the impact of "technocracy" is so powerful, so overwhelming, that it has the same effects whether the economy is organized along capitalist or socialist lines...

...In this argument, then, it is Peter Berger who is imprisoned in modernity...

...H ERE, THEN IS THE puzzlement of Berger's sociology...

...within limits there is nothing necessary even in man's material needs...

...In Berger's view the youth move- ment in the sixties and the counter-cultures associated with it, following not Marx but Weber, recognized that technocracy was the source of man's-homelessness, bvt they became hys- terical over this, they asked for the impossible, and hence the movement was irrational and dangerous...

...However, in his Pyramids of Sacrifice Berger concludes his analysis of the economic situation of Brazil with an image that seems to point in the opposite direction...

...Nor does he follow Marx and Weber, who supposed that the social order is held together by a big stick, the domination of the powerful...

...Berger discusses various intellectual procedures used for this purpose by philosophers and social scientists...

...Is this just a matter of taste...

...Berger chooses the Weberian paradigm on the basis of his value-free, objective scientific approach...

...The definition of ideal types in sociology is not a value- neutral operation...

...Berger insists that we produce the world through the creation of meaning...

...What appears beyond doubt how- ever, though neglected by Otto, is that in the major trends of biblical religion divine transcendence is inextricably linked with holiness and justice...

...These boundaries can be demonstrated...

...The counter- culture was taken far too seriously even by policy-makers...

...Religion is not the only legitimating sym- bol system...

...While theology has no longer any public power, theology remains paradigmatic for various secular philosophi- cal and scientific conceptualizations of the cosmos...

...What is wrong, we are told, is that Christian theologians are willing to give the results of modern science normative value and attribute to the modern, scientific mentality, a definitive status to which they wish to adapt the inherited religion...

...Ultimately the conflict over alternative society definitions will be resolved by power...

...We shall call this Berger's dialectical view of social science...

...In his brilliant book The Homeless Mind, written with two other sociologists, his wife Brigitte Berger and his brother-in-law Hansfried Kellner, he repeatedly acknowledges the impact on consciousness of factors of economic production, but he leaves these factors curiously undeveloped...

...But how do we create ourselves...

...By offending and confusing their constituency, they are preparing their own undoing...

...The churches, he feels, are in danger of losing their nerve...

...Berger does not deny the impact of economic institutions on consciousness and the ways of modernity...

...He argues that a growing number of contemporary theologians, Protestant and Catholic, tend to regard the Christian religion as a this-worldly thing, concerned with the transformation of personal and social life, devoid of dimensions of otherness and deprived of all hope for a super- natural world...

...We have introduced these theological remarks because Berger occasionally leaves sociology to apply his scientific conclusions to properly theological reflections...

...hits "liberation theology at this time, even though tomorrow, who knows, i.t may be directed with equal force against a new upsurge of right-wing religion...

...Meaning is produced by a great variety of cultural projec- tions...

...Those who have "the bigger stick," Berger reasons, will be able to make their definitions stick...

...The scientific uni- verse," he writes, "is capable of attaining a good deal of autonomy as against its social base...

...The sacred is o~erness...

...He was active in the planning and the publication of the "Hartford Appeal," a list of errors that are said to pervade the theological climate in North American Christianity...

...This unusual terminology demands explanation...

...In this process they may well engage in conversation with Otto's scholarly work...

...In the following I wish to indicate as briefly as possible how Berger gives this concept of the sacred normative value in Christian theology and derives from it guidelines for ecclesiastical policies...

...He has done this as a Chi'istian believer, as a theologian...

...Heretics are deviates in society who propagate dangerous ideas...

...Berger does not think that social stability is imposed by the ruling class blackmailing the dependent classes, threatening that if they do not cooperate they shall not eat...

...We are stuck with them...

...What counts is that all forms of human self-organization be mean- ingful...

...In the Christian religion, theologians have argued, the doctrine that in Jesus Christ GOd is present to men and that the Holy Spirit transforms the face of the earth means that men need not leave history to encounter the transcendent GOd...

...He insists that his sociological analysis is value-free and objective...

...There is no transcendence...

...His major attention and his ingenious analytical power are extended to the impact of technocracy...

...We are stuck with the word as it is...

...Berger lists philosophy and science among the major "conceptual machineries of universe-maintenance...

...The sacred stands out, it puts ordinary life into question, it reveals another world, a hidden world beyond the visible one to which we belong...

...Berger demonstrates that the dehumanization which threatens modern man and makes him homeless in this world is produced by industrialization and its intellectual and organizational demands...

...Scientific reason demands that we recognize demodernizing trends in society as having clearly defined boundaries...

...does not show a Sweden superimposed on an Indonesia: it would be wrong to assign predominance to economic factors and class 9 May 1980:267 conflict in the analysis of the homelessness of modern man...

...To defend itself society deals harshly with them, it uses political power to curtail their influence and it relies on its theoreticians to produce new conceptual machin- ery of universe maintenance to immunize the people against the heresy...

...Yet we note that in admitting the critical tradition in biblical religion, Berger leaves unmentioned the ancient theme of justice...

...Especially in modern times when the sway of religion has been broken and people tend to define themselves without reference to the sacred, society is in need of secular systems of world explanations...

...Still, in his own analysis Berger follows the Weberian paradigm and concentrates on the alienating effect of technoc- racy...

...From the biblical perspective, ecstasies and elevations have nothing to do with divine transcendence unless they mediate salvation from sin and entry into new life...

...In the Bible the sacred reveals itself as redemptive...

...Or is such a choice associated with value-laden consequences...

...2) the growing perfection of indust- rial technology made the labor market incapable of absorbing the young people graduating from schools and colleges...

...They leave the world as it is, they do not judge social injustice nor promise that things will be set right...

...In one of his articles, in a section entitled "Imprisoned in Modernity," Berger argues that the most useful guide in the understanding of the sacred is Rudolf Otto...

...God's majesty makes men tremble not only because the divine wholly transcends human propor- tions but because GOd judges the sinful world, and God's Commonweal: 266 holiness is attractive not only because it offers consolation but because it promises to turn right-side-up a world that has been placed up-side-down by sin...

...In these paragraphs, Berger stresses a functional view of social science that leaves little room for the truth question, for Commonweal: 268...

...it has also been world-shaking...

...Sym- Ix)Is can also remove meaning from an existing world, under- mine it and eventually destroy it...

...Soci- ety is just people acting together: and if tomorrow people decided not to carry on their joint projects the social reality would fall back into chaos...

...The symbols that give meaning to human life have the power to create the world and maintain it in existence...

...Peter Berger here assigns a special role to the sciences, especially to the social sciences: they provide explicit theories by which the institutionalized sectors of human life are legiti- mated in terms of a differentiated body of knowledge...

...Since the social world remains liable to return to chaos, people seek ever more reliable norms for stabilizing order...

...Man is a meaning-creating animal...

...He dislikes the youth movement: he tries to show that it contained no important message addres- sed to society as a whole...

...Let us look for a moment at his major scholarly achievement, the analysis of modernity and its effect on consciousness...

...The function which religion exercised at one time is today often taken over by secular meaning systems, among which the sciences hold a special place...

...there is the objectification of people's self-expressions, interrelations, and common actions in in- stitutions, the most basic of which is language itself...

...Measured by this concept of the sacred, it appears that many contemporary Christians have lost interest in divine transcendence, they seem to be wholly absorbed in man's historical existence...

...it refers to something some people may not like, but which is nonetheless an anthropological necessity...

...To explore the meaning of the sacred and to define what is aff'n-med by divine iranscendence, Christian theologians do not turn to Rudolf Otto: they study the various biblical tradi- tions and en~a~e in the systematic, hermeneutical task of appropriating the meaning of the bibli'cai message for today's world...

...According to Berger, the predominant mood of Western intellectuals favors the Marxian analysis of modernity and hence encourages leftwing political trends, while he himself is a defender of the Weberian analysis of modernity...

...We call this Berger's objective view of sociology...

...In an interesting section of The'Social Construc- tion of Reality Berger tells us how theoreticians, whether they are theologians, philosophers or social scientists, deal with heresies...

...In Brazil, Berger argues, class interest reveals itself as the motor force of human misery...

...Why do people go on constructing the social world...

...They seek a nomos to protect the world from chaos...

...By defining religion as sacred c a n o p y ~ ~ Berger suggests that critical religion is a rare phenomenon and in fact an anomaly, and since paradigms are heuristic devices, his definition makes critical religion almost invisible...

...For Berger the stability of the precarious social world is very largely produced by legitimating cultural systems, by sets of symbols and ideas passed on in society that give meaning to the social process and persuade people that the present ordering of life corresponds to how things are and ought to be and hence has a certain inner necessity...

...For Berger "alienation" is not a pejorative word, it is not value-laden...

...The human reality is, therefore, socially constructed...

...The human project itself inasmuch as it is a struggle for justice and an entry into love and community is the locus of divine self-communication...

...This does not mean that the social sciences are worthless propaganda or totally biased theorizing aimed at defending the existing order despite its dehumanizing trends...

...Why does he attack the theologians for whom the gospel is the proclamation of God's gracious entry into man's making of man and hence has to do with the remaking of this world...

...The economic map of Brazil, Berger argues, can be described as a Sweden superim- posed on an Indonesia...

...The fast shall be last and the last f'wst...

...T HERE ARE TWO classical ways of analyzing the ills of modernity, one typified by Karl Marx, the other by Max Weber...

...He himself seems to think it is...

...As indicated before, the unresolved interrelation between Berger's two views of social science, the objective and the dialectical, casts a shadow over his entire work...

...and there is theinteriorization of the social world, whereby these institu- tions are in turn retrojected into consciousness and become part of people's own self-understanding, a process sometimes referred to as socialization...

...Sociologists on the whole reject superficial theories of monocausality, i.e., they recognize a variety of material and ideal factors in the creation of'modern consciousness...

...Berger comes back to this theme again and again...

...For the moment, then, Berger's entry into a theological debate aims at discrediting the Christian left...

...Still, in this context Berger admits that "each perspective, with whatever ap- pendages of theories or even of Weltanschauungen, will be related to the concrete social interests of the group that holds it...

...Through joint action we create the objec- tive social world, and by doing so we create ourselves...

...Following Rudolf Otto, he argues that the over-againstness of the sacred, testified to all religious tradition, refers to what is meant by divine transcendence...

...AT THE SAME TIME--and here is the puzzlement--Berger assigns science, and in particular social science, a special function in the "world-building" and "world-maintaining" process...

...Why, we must ask, is Berger so eager to defend Otto's view of the sacred against the drift of much of contemporary Christian theology...

...All of his books deal in one way or another with this central theme...

...But be- cause the relation between the two views, the objective and the dialectical, remains unreflected, Berger does not supply the readers with criteria that enable them to test whether his conclusions are simply a rational effort at legitimation or demonstrable, publicly valid knowledge...

...Berger proposes it as part of his value-free sociological theory, but since it strengthens the reification of the present order, the reader is bound to ask whether this assertion is not part of the conceptual machinery of universe maintenance...

...This section is ingenious and entertaining,and pre- cisely because it is so delightful (like so much of Berger's writing) the reader wonders to what extent it should be taken seriously...

...Berger tries to explain the youth move- ment largely with reference to three social factors: (1) the new child-rearing methods adopted by middle-class parents in the fifties made young people overly sensitive to the inevitable toughness of social life...

...It will not be settled on the intellectual level, however important the conceptual legitimations may be...

...Impelled by the meaning-creating drive connatural to the human species, the scholar constructs his science as a kind of subworld of rationality, which achieves "a good deal" of value-free knowledge demonstrable in the community of scholars...

...Berger reproaches the Christian churches for giving credence to the critical voices of the sixties and integrating some of their concerns into their theology and practice...

...Paradigms have research-guiding power, they create sensitivity to certain data and insensitivities to others, they install themselves in the conclusions of sociologi- cal research and thus influence the perception of the social reality, they ultimately favor some policies over others...

...In this context Berger defines ~e principal function of religion: religion links the nomos of society to the sacred and hence, more than any other symbol system, protects the exist- ing society...

...Berger refers especially to the Hebrew prophets and the preaching of Jesus and the early church...

...The principal functitn of social science, Berger has explained to us, is to legitimate the existing order, to provide persuasive rational arguments that we are stuck with the world as it is, that there is a certain inner necessity for things to be the way they are...

...He fears that the present concern of the churches with social justice and the critique of society touches only a small minority of Christians...

...Life must make sense...

...But here the puzzlement emerges again...

...This is the conclusion of social-scientific analysis...

...Why do we get up in the morning and move into the same routines day after day...

...He admits that the Hartford Appeal...

...In keeping with this definition, he accepts the concept of the sacred as otherness, something totaliter aliter compared to the ordinary, profane conditions of human life...

...Secondly, Berger argues that in dealing with heresy social scientists must find more ingenious legitimations for the present order by integrating into them some of the insights of the heretics, possibly in a slightly more modified form, as long as this does not invalidate the official self-definition of society..In this manner, Berger argues, theoreticians make the official symbolic universe less vulnerable to the heretical views...

...they do not deserve to be taken seriously...

...The "Hartford Appeal" laments that a loss of the sense of transcendence is undermin- ing the churches at this time, Berger returns to this warning in several of his publications...

...The government-sponsored capitalism of Brazil has produced for about 20 percent of the population a higly developed economy and a correspondingly high stand- ard of living, while the rest of the population, the great majority of the people, have been pushed back into greater destitution and are being decimated by untimely mortality...

...The strange irony of this argument is that Peter Berger allows a purely scientific view of the sacred to become normative in theological think- ing...

...The definition of religion is not a matter of taste, nor is it an issue that can be settled by scientific arguments involving formal reason alone...

...The left-wing intellectuals choose the Marxian paradigm out of bias...

...B ERGER'S DEFINITION of religion follows him beyond the confines of sociology into his properly theological reflec- tions...

...Berger confidently affirms that a scientist can "attain a good deal of detachment from his or her biographical and social interests...

...The idea that a socialist organization of production could make an industrialized society more human and more humane is a myth and.a dangerous illusion...

...We must regain an appreciation of the sacred...

...The protest movements of the sixties did not bring to light the social injustices made invisible by the dominant culture nor the depersonalizing power of modern industrial capitalism...

...In Brazil and other Third World countries, Berger reasons, socialism may well be a rational choice...

...Here at least, in Brazil, the economic contradiction is so enormous that it is the principal cause of dehumanization associated with the growing technocratic system...

...the definition of religion in the social sciences is part of the world-constituting process and hence is a substan- tive issue...

...As a Christian believer Berger is concerned with the well-being of the churches...

...The doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity make Christianity a religion of the earth...

...Berger is not a Parsonian who believes in the inherent stability of the social system...

...While one must agree with Berger that the Sweden/ Indonesia paradigm is not useful for an understanding of economic life in the U.S., the question that cannot be avoided, however, is whether the whole word, the global society, is not divided into a Sweden over against an Indonesia, i.e., the highly developed, industrial sectors over against the underdeveloped world...

...But this is not true, he argues, in the United States and other developed nations...

...We come here to the uniquely Bergerian view that society, the entire social reality, is essen- tially unstable, precarious, ever threatened to fall apart...

...For these theologians, Berger argues, Christian faith has to do with man's historical project...