It was, then, a stirring sight to see Habermas sit down with Cardinal Ratzinger in 2004 for a philosophical dialogue. It is hard not to miss a breath at the image of both men in conversation, one the arch-defender of reason and rationality, described by Habermasian scholar Thomas McCarthy as the “last great rationalist,” and the other, renowned as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and subsequently as Pope Benedict XVI), for his steadfast theological defense of Catholic tradition and moral teaching. At the same time, the twinning of the two Germans made for a fitting tableau: through their long careers, both have shown little interest in sociological realities and have remained intellectually aloof from lived experience.

It was, in any case, an interesting conversation. Among other points, Habermas noted that the Enlightenment project of modernization had gone somewhat awry, has become derailed. In particular, as he had previously elaborated, he noted that globalizing economic markets defy the control of consensual rational judgments, and he lamented not only the extent of global socioeconomic inequality but the mass political indifference toward it. This indifference is part of a longer depoliticization process resulting from modernization and increased affluence and consumerism, highlighted by Habermas decades earlier. For Habermas, the threat posed by current globalizing forces to potentially “degrade the capacity for democratic self-steering,” both within and across nations, makes the need for public communicative reasoning all the more necessary. He thus looks to discover new (i.e., underappreciated) political cultural resources for the democratic revitalization project. Hence, “a contrite modernity,” one characterized by several social pathologies that need fixing, may benefit, Habermas argued, from religious-derived norms and ethical intuitions. He conceded that these religious resources can help human society deal with “a miscarried life, social pathologies, the failures of individual life projects, and the deformation of misarranged existential relationships.”

Many sociologists have elaborated on the perils of globalization and the increased polarization between classes and regions as the profit logic of capitalist markets inexorably trumps normative considerations. Yet only Habermas looks to the religious domain rather than pushing for attentiveness to a rearticulated political ideology of, for example, global social democracy, as a way of reorienting societal thinking about modern socioeconomic pathologies. In his view, “The translation of the likeness of the human to the image of the divine into the equal and absolutely respected dignity of all human beings” offers a way of using religious values to reorient society’s values toward principles of economic and social justice. Clearly, Habermas’s new affirmation of the relevance that religious ideas and ethics have for contemporary political debate marks a major transformation in his thinking. I very much welcome this more inclusive view of religion as a potentially emancipatory political and cultural resource, a resource that can open up and enhance rather than retard public discourse, and energize the creation of more deliberative and more participative social institutions.

Habermas’s view of religion’s potential as a remedial cultural resource for contemporary societal ills is shared by many religious leaders. For example, more than one hundred diverse religious leaders meeting in Rome in June 2009 ahead of the G8 summit collectively affirmed the urgent need for political leaders to recognize the relevance that religious ideas and moral values have in shaping the social fabric. They strongly emphasized that economic and political decisions, devoid of awareness of their moral consequences, cannot serve the common good. These themes are further elaborated in Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) and are in line with a long tradition of Catholic social teaching originating in the late nineteenth century, through which Catholic leaders, drawing on natural law reasoning, have cautioned against industrial policies that marginalize workers and ignore the needs of the economically downtrodden.

Habermas’s new regard for religion, articulated across several venues since 2001, leads him to embrace the term “post-secular society” in order to demarcate the current moment. He is not the only one to use this language, and there has been a tremendous amount of hairsplitting over what exactly the term means and how it is related to the secular, secularization, secularism, secularistic, and post-secularism. The gain in popularity of post-secular terminology comes in the wake of the postmodern, the postcolonial, and the post-national. Many scholars would concur that there really is something qualitatively different about the post-1970s era, enough to warrant a new term that differentiates the modern era (roughly defined as the period encompassing 1770–1970) from the postmodern. As David Harvey has argued, “There has been a sea-change in cultural as well as in political-economic practices since around 1972. This sea-change is bound up with the emergence of new dominant ways in which we experience space and time” and has produced what he refers to as “the condition of postmodernity.” Similarly, the post-national captures the changing legal and political status of the nation-state in the context of the rise of transnational or supranational entities (e.g., the European Union), and the postcolonial offers a dynamic way of rethinking the cultural agency, transformative identities, and differentiated histories of previously colonized peoples.

It is not compellingly evident that the term “post-secular” is newly warranted. After all, sociologists still have a hard time conceptualizing and especially measuring secularization, something that is surely related to the secular. By extension, it is challenging to assess whether or not secularization has in fact occurred given that there is so much differentiated evidence for and against its sociological reality; even the most secular societies, such as the United Kingdom, still have, for example, public rituals affirming the symbolic and cultural influence of religion on government. If we are unsure about the secular, it may be intellectually premature to talk about the post-secular (although it is certainly a stimulating way to change the conversation).

Yet it makes sense for Habermas—as Habermas, and with his Habermasian worldview—to construe a post-secular society. His understanding of progressive societal evolution and his deep intellectual commitment to the triumph of reasoned argumentation—to communicative action rather than strategic action—suggest that he has long construed the West as essentially secular since the Enlightenment. But now that, as he states, the Enlightenment project has been partially derailed and reason subsumed by strategic market interests and political indifference, it is appropriate for him to rethink the secular. Hence, in my reading of Habermas, the post-secular provides him with a useful analytical device for acknowledging not so much the persistence of religion as the partial failure (derailing) of the Enlightenment, a failure that by default brings religion back and into the secular. The post-secular denotes that the secular, like the Enlightenment, fell short of its originally intended destination. It is not that secularization has not occurred; it is just that there are some complications that the persistence of religion has thrown on its tracks. Overall, Habermas is clear that, despite his recognition of religion’s continuing relevance, “the data collected globally still provide surprisingly robust support for the defenders of the secularization thesis.”

There is some ambiguity in Habermas’s use of post-secular language. He argues that the term “post-secular society” applies only to those affluent societies “where people’s religious ties have steadily or rather quite dramatically lapsed” since the mid-twentieth century. In this designation, he includes European countries and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Yet Habermas also argues (in the same passage) that even in Europe, “sociological indicators…of [the] religious behavior and convictions of the local populations” have not changed so dramatically as to “justify labeling these societies post-secular” despite their trends toward deinstitutionalized religion. The confusion with Habermas’s definition emerges because while he talks about “post-secular society,” it seems he really intends to talk about a post-secular Zeitgeist, “a change in consciousness.” Thus, he subsequently clarifies, “Today, public consciousness in Europe can be described in terms of a post-secular society to the extent that at present it still has to adjust itself to the continued existence of religious communities in an increasingly secularized environment.” Driving this post-secular consciousness, Habermas argues, is the resurgence of religion in Europe, evidenced by the increased participation of churches in public policy debates in some “secular societies” and the increased visibility of religion in local immigrant communities (principally Muslim) as well as religion’s increased global presence, especially manifested through various fundamentalist movements. In short, for Habermas, the term “post-secular” can be applied to secularized societies in which “religion maintains a public influence and relevance, while the secularistic certainty that religion will disappear worldwide in the course of modernization is losing ground.”

Because the “post-secular” recognizes the public relevance of religion and of religious ideas in informing civic discourse, I would argue that it is applicable to the United States, notwithstanding differences in U.S. secularism compared to that of Europe or Canada. Although religion has maintained a relatively steady and exceptionally strong hold for Americans, churchgoing Americans typically show a highly autonomous (virtually secular) attitude toward religious obligations and church teachings and, like their affluent peers in Europe and Canada, for example, presume to live in a secular society. Thus, while their religious ties have not necessarily lapsed, they make their own choices about how and when to be religious; their religious beliefs and practices are determined largely by their own authority (acting as modern, self-oriented individuals) than by the coercive power of an external religious authority. Moreover, the United States is secular in that it is a constitutional republic with a strict separation of church and state, and public consciousness of this separation dominates legal opinion and legislative and policy debates notwithstanding the visibility of religion in politics and public culture. In my view, the term “post-secular” is more theoretically robust if we can use it to help us understand the more general relevance of religion as a public cultural resource in all modern democratic societies regardless of their varying degrees or levels of secularism and secularization.

As this discussion moves forward, I would like to raise a couple of points. Although the sociology of religion is in a relatively good state, it still seems that there is continuing intellectual insecurity and uncertainty among sociologists who study religion. I find it interesting, for example, that in discussing the historical dominance of positive socio-evaluative findings in sociological studies of religion, Smilde and May note that we are now likely in a new social context, where “the publication of negative socio-evaluative findings is a reasonable and acceptable professional undertaking.” Bender et al. similarly welcome the tendency of new studies to balance “positive portraits of religion as agency with more nuanced analyses of religion as a source of social power that simultaneously enables and dis-empowers.” I don’t want to over-interpret these statements. I think, however, that they raise larger and more complex questions about the nature of sociological inquiry in general as a scientific enterprise and reflect a lingering ambivalence among sociologists (including, maybe even especially, sociologists who study religion) toward the scientific validity of the study of religion.

American sociologists embrace, to varying degrees, the scientific status of sociology, and our professional training, associations (e.g., ASA, SSSR), and allegiances (with NSF, NIMH, NIJ, etc.) reinforce commitment to a scientific methodology. Yet, within this framework, the prevalence of positive socio-evaluative findings in sociological studies of religion is seen as suggestive of a pro-religion bias in the research program, rather than a “true” finding.  Does any other sociological sub-field produce meta-narratives about their area’s findings, or engage in the crisis-assessment conversations that sociologists of religion seem compelled to have? I wonder whether, for instance, stratification sociologists worry that too many (all?) of their studies of inequality demonstrate a positive relationship between a family’s socioeconomic status and its children’s educational attainment and socioeconomic status; or whether some exhort their peers to embark on studies showing more nuanced consequences of socioeconomic disadvantage?  By the same token, I wonder whether sociologists of culture, for example, might ever think that their sub-field is too provincial (i.e., US-centric), or overly focused on cultural agency at the expense of unearthing disempowerment?

It was also interesting to read Smilde and May’s discussion of the impact of increased funding on religion research, and particularly to see that the strongest relation between funding and positive socio-evaluative findings is with the public sector rather than private sources. Smilde and May suggest that the receptivity of public institutions and administrators to research documenting religion’s positive role “complicates the view that government institutions and bureaucrats are the main motors of secularization.” I understand their point, but it could also be argued that by (rightly) funding meritorious studies investigating religion’s impact on social processes, the state and other institutions (public and private) are treating religion like any other social phenomenon—i.e., a normal social fact, worthy of rigorous scientific investigation, rather than some epiphenomenal entity that defies understanding—and in so doing are perhaps contributing to the demystification of both religion and society. In any case, would we be surprised to discover that federal and other public agencies are receptive to studies showing a positive role for school achievement or healthful behavior? Probably not. Again it seems that sociological studies of religion—their findings and funding and institutional contexts—evoke different expectations and responses among sociologists than do studies in other sub-fields. This is the continuing thorn in the side of any effort to develop a strong intellectual and research program in the sociology of religion.

On balance, it may be a good thing that the sociology of religion is (and is forced to be) more reflexive than other sub-fields about its problems and its promise. Any insights that emerge from our deliberations may help transform sociology more generally, compelling sociologists to confront their discipline’s relative provincialism and the content and sources of its generally unexamined normative assumptions. I hope that as we continue these conversations we do not lose sight, however, of historical consciousness. There are good reasons today to study religion’s relevance in geopolitical processes, but there are also good reasons why congregations, for example, have been and continue to be so extensively studied; for many Americans, congregations are still the primary spaces in which they engage in religious practices, and independent of religion, they are also significant sites of local community and civic action.

I also hope that we can keep in mind Alvin Gouldner’s admonition that a reflexive sociology should not lull us into “an illusion of self-confrontation that serves to disguise a new form of self-celebration.” He wrote during a very different intellectual and political era, a time when Functionalism was the primary framework anchoring American sociology and geopolitical issues were simplified by Cold War alliances. Our era is very different; we entertain several competing and fragmentary theories of society, and multi-directional transnational processes impose on even the most local of consciousnesses. Following Gouldner’s advice, we can welcome new developments in the sociology of religion, but as we go forward we must also remain open to scrutinizing the emerging strong program and its assumptions and research topics with the same cold eye we readily cast on its predecessors. Given that knowledge rarely proceeds in a linear manner, we would do well to pay attention to transnational issues and other edgy questions, but also to keep at hand the insights already gleaned from “old” debates about secularization and religious economies, without necessarily adopting any of these frameworks wholesale.

Johns, Jasper (b. 1930) © VAGA, NY

Flags. 1968. Lithograph, printed in color, irreg composition: 34 5/8 x 25 7/8″; irreg sheet: 34 5/8 x 25 7/8″. Gift of the Celeste and Armand Bartos Foundation. (291.1968)

Location: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.

Photo Credit: Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY (ART193346)

President Barack Obama’s May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame deftly demonstrated the president’s unique ability to elevate civil discourse and to eloquently incorporate a deep religious sensibility into the nation’s most divisive contemporary public debate. Many observers have rightly commented on Obama’s important emphasis that the abortion issue requires “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” What is equally impressive is the religious repertoire that Obama used in articulating his vision of how that so-hard-to-come-by common-ground might be achieved. I am not thinking of Obama’s references to the “imperfections of man” and to “original sin,” or to the invocation of “God’s creation”—though these religious references are important. More striking was how Obama, a non-Catholic, showed his ability to think and to talk like a Catholic. He empathically did this by vividly using in his address very particular experiences as grounds legitimating the validity of universal claims. During his speech, Obama exemplified the translation that necessarily occurs in everyday lived experience between universal principles of morality and the particularistic ways in which those principles get worked out on the ground by (imperfect) human beings. This he accomplished not by abstract talk about lofty principles but by the stories he told, two in particular.

Obama was clearly attentive to the cultural and geographical significance of the site of his speech and, fortunately for him, was able to use the words and actions of Father Ted Hesburgh, that most iconic of Notre Dame figures (and the university’s president-emeritus), to demonstrate his own thesis that common ground is achievable if and once we recognize that despite the intrusive divisions that set individuals at odds with one another, we all share a common humanity. Thus, as Obama recounted, if Ted Hesburgh could first bring together people of sharply divided opinions on race (members of the Civil Rights Commission) and then get them to talk—and fish—with one another, with the result that they formed the foundation for what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, change on other divisive issues, though a steep challenge, is also possible. Obama’s story about Fr. Hesburgh and his fellow civil rights commissioners was a vivid reminder that once we find we have some particular everyday thing in common with others who otherwise seem strange and even threatening, that particular commonality opens the possibility that the divisions that characterize our lives might be bridged, however unevenly, so that a universal good is achieved.

President Obama also drew on the late Cardinal Bernardin, another iconic figure in the Catholic Church. Cardinal Bernardin is most well know for articulating what he called a consistent ethic of life, meaning that life needs to be protected and supported from the moment of conception through to the moment of death and at all moments along the way. Bernardin’s intent in articulating a consistent ethic was driven by his attempt to forge a meaningful common ground among Catholics in the face of their polarization over abortion. Subsequently, this ethic has been frequently invoked by politicians and activists who argue that abortion is just one among several moral issues for Catholics; consistency on the sanctity of life requires opposition not just to abortion but also to the death penalty, and strong support for social and economic policies that help alleviate poverty, homelessness, discrimination, etc.  One might well have expected President Obama to mention Bernardin in his address, in part to justify his own strong social justice leanings (policies which University of Notre Dame administrators have approvingly highlighted while expressing disagreement with his abortion views).

But what was especially intriguing about Obama’s speech was that he did not mention the phrase “consistent ethic.” Instead, in a masterful gesture, he told a moving story about his own personal encounter with Bernardin and of Bernardin’s exemplification of both the ethic and the common ground that he sought to foster. That story, from Obama’s time as a community organizer working closely with Catholic and other churches in Chicago, allowed Obama, once again, to demonstrate that universal moral principles get translated in particularistic local actions. It also allowed Obama to pay sincere tribute to Bernardin (and the Catholic Church at-large) while also finding support for his own call for a civil approach to abortion and other divisive issues. Obama noted that Bernardin was “unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty, AIDS, and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together, always trying to find common ground.”

Thus at Notre Dame, Obama demonstrated the practical sense that he has long been credited with and also unveiled a new religious sensibility, one that has heretofore been silenced by the moral complexity of issues (as on stem cell research, for example). Obama has put religion back in civil religion, and has achieved this not by simply invoking religious words in public setting (“God bless America”), but by deploying a narrative style that both fits with, and gives lived experience, to the theological argument that universal moral principles are a society’s foundation and anchor. Obama’s speech is unlikely to change the passions and fundamental moral divisions that exist around abortion. Nonetheless, his demonstrated appreciation of how universal moral claims get worked out in particular contexts can serve to remind us that interpretive diversity does not undermine but is part and parcel of the universality of human community. People can accept but disagree with each other’s differences while working together to achieve their discoverable, shared goals.