YEAH, BUT THEN WHAT?

Rethinking Secularization: Godless Europe?: Questioning Europe's devout past and secular present. (Philip Jenkins, May/June 2003, Books & Culture)

[E]urope seems prima facie to offer a classic model of the secularization thesis, the idea that religion inevitably declines as post-industrial society matures. Somewhere along the line, extensive remodeling seems to have removed the Sacred Canopy that had given Christian Europe its raison d'?tre. So familiar, in fact, is the notion of secular Europe that it is refreshing, and a little startling, to find a book that tries to battle the received wisdom. Not surprisingly, the would-be heretic is Andrew Greeley, an enormously accomplished sociologist who relishes nothing more than an academic controversy. (Incidentally, while challenging academic orthodoxies is a valuable task, does he have to be so wearyingly combative on every single issue with which he disagrees with other scholars?)

Greeley makes a number of excellent points that deserve careful consideration. One is historical. He argues that the secularization thesis wrongly assumes a decline in religiosity from some past Age of Faith, which in fact never existed. The more we examine the beliefs of ordinary Europeans in bygone times, Greeley maintains, the less evidence we see of monolithic orthodoxy or even of the near-universal notional adherence to Christianity posited by many scholars.

Turning to modern times, he is equally dismissive of the core claims of secularization. Using survey evidence, he argues that Europeans still affirm a surprising level of continuing belief in religious and supernatural doctrines, overwhelmingly in the case of the existence of God, but also with large numbers accepting life after death and miracles. Even in Britain and the former West Germany, 40 percent of respondents claim to believe in miracles. Greeley also argues, very fairly, that Europe is anything but homogenous, and that it is unwise to extrapolate from secular Britain or the Netherlands. The smaller countries often demonstrate higher levels of religious commitment, though sometimes in bizarre or wildly heterodox forms, and occult and New Age doctrines are especially strong in the former Soviet Bloc. (Oddly, in stressing the diversity of European countries and societies, he says virtually nothing about the overseas immigrants, the Asians, Africans, and Afro-Caribbeans who are reinvigorating Christian churches in so many regions).

Clearly, I am doing no more than sketching the arguments of a complex and idea-rich book, but even this brief summary raises many questions. With any luck, Greeley's work will generate a major debate about the evidence for European (and, by implication, American) religious belief and practice. Having said this, though, I want to suggest several critical areas in which his argument is questionable.

Let us begin with the history, the debunking of the Age of Faith: "The golden age of religion never existed." Everything in this debate depends on terminology, and especially the use of words like "religion." Using a number of standard social histories of medieval and modern Europe, Greeley questions whether "save in some times and some places, religious practice was ever all that intense." I would argue that the studies he cites prove the exact opposite. They demonstrate a massive commitment to religious belief and practice, defined as interest in a supernatural reality that could be accessed by ritual conduct, although these accounts raise real doubts about how much of this was carried on under the auspices of orthodox Christianity, or with the consent of established church authorities. But does Greeley want to talk about religious practice or orthodox observance? If he says that the religious life of early modern Europe was not uniformly Catholic or Protestant, fine, but that is not the conclusion he actually draws. If we define religion in broad terms, then we certainly see a massive decline in religion with the advance of industry and modern medicine, and the growth of cities: in other words, a process of secularization.

And there are other issues.

We're big believers in the value of taking a radically opposed view of the accepted wisdom. It's a very useful means of analysis, even when it brings you back to the cliches eventually, because it's at least made them justify themselves. But Mr. Greeley reminds one here of Michael Bellesiles, who argued quite plausibly (though it turned out quite fraudulently) that guns were not as prevalent in early America as people thought they were and, therefore, America's gun culture proceeded from shaky grounds. Yeah? So what? We still have a gun culture, no matter its sources.

Similarly, even if we grant Mr. Greeley's arguments--that folks weren't as faithful as they thought they were then nor are folks as faithless as they think they are now--what are we left with? No one can seriously argue that there has not been a decline in religiosity in Europe, can they? If the decline is less steep than we may think, it must still be significant. More than that, the culture-wide belief that there was an Age of Faith and there is now an Age of Secularism has to have nearly the same influence as if the thesis were true. If we all believe that faith matters, do we not act in accord with that belief? If we all think that faith is looked down upon, do we not change our behavior? we might discover tomorrow that there are
twenty-five hours in a day, but will that mean that we haven't been acting as if there were twenty-four? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2003 12:40 AM