The Many Altars of Modernity

Response by Fenggang Yang: Agency-Driven Secularization and Chinese Experiments in Multiple Modernities

In 1999, Peter Berger “very noisily” rescinded the secularization theory that he formulated in the 1960s. Since then, he has reiterated this retraction on many occasions, both in his writings and speeches and in speaking to sociologists of religion and to wider audiences of cultural and political elites in many countries. However, until now, some people in the intelligentsia, both in the East and the West, seem to hold a certain resentment about his rescindment and cling to the old paradigm thinking. For these people, Peter Berger’s new book, The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age, might look like ...