Alfred L. Morse Auditorium may have originally been a synagogue, but Tuesday night it represented a smorgasbord of global religions as Boston University professor emeritus Peter Berger discussed the religious revitalization movements in all major traditions.
Berger, who is also BU’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs director, spoke to an audience of more than 70 attendees about the global state of religion in the modern world during the 2008 State of Religion Report. For the most part, however, he concentrated on the growth of Evangelical Protestantism and a major resurgence in Islam.
‘It’s a big mistake to equate Islamic resurgence with violence,’ he said. ‘Millions of people throughout the Islamic world find meaning in religion. The radical elements are a relatively small part.’
When the 79-year-old Berger, a Lutheran, first started his career as a sociologist, he predicted that an increase in modernization would lead to a natural decline in religion. By the late 1960s, his point of view had changed as the modern world went in the exact opposite direction.
‘It’s more interesting when you find out you’re wrong, because it opens up new avenues of research,’ he said. ‘Modernization can be described as a basic change from faith to choice. Increasingly, people can choose how they’re going to be or where they want to live.’
His lecture also touched on the current state of religion in the United States, a nation he said has become increasingly pluralistic due to freedom of choice and modernization.
‘Americans are becoming consumers of religion,’ Berger said.
He said the future will depend on the ongoing struggle between religious individuals and the intellectuals who increasingly reject religion. Major Supreme Court decisions in the past ‘-‘- like the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion and the ruling of prayer in public schools as unconstitutional ‘-‘- have moved the country in a more secular direction, but Berger said this might eventually cause conflict because the United States is a democratic country.
‘The cultural elite has become secular, and influences the media, academia and politics,’ he said. ‘There will be the struggle between the religious people and cultural elite.’
College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Jhett Kirschbaum said he disagreed with Berger’s views about how there is less social pressure to conform to a religion in the United States.
‘I have a unique perspective on religion, because I come from the Midwest, where there is the kind of uprising he is talking about,’ he said. ‘In the Midwest, often desecularization leads to less freedom of choice, because people aren’t exposed to anything except fundamentalist religion.”
Berger closed the night by telling audience members to form their own opinion of the state of religion today based on how much they value human freedom, which leads to religious choice.
‘I happen to think human freedom is a very positive value, which is why I don’t bemoan the situation.’
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