Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age: Secularization or New Religious Forms?

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 1999 by Yves Lambert

Instead of approaching the question of secularization directly, I will begin with a general model of analysis of the relations between religion and modernity. This model is based on a comparative analysis of oral religions, religions of antiquity, religions of salvation, and the transformations linked to modernity. In itself, secularization is not the object of this work, but if we proceed correctly, it should allow us to evaluate the scope of secularization without entering into the debates and emotions to which this thesis has given rise in the past thirty years. A large portion of the article will thus be devoted to an analysis of the relation between religion and modernity. It characterizes modernity as a new axial period, reviews the global analyses of the religious consequences of modernity, presents a model of analysis and several religious forms typical of modernity, and provides empirical illustrations. We shall then examine the conclusions which can be drawn from this analysis as far as secularization is concerned and compare them to the data obtained from the 1981 and 1990 World Value Surveys (WVSs), and the 1991 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) survey dedicated to religion.

Obviously, our conclusion depends, in part on the ways in which we define modernity, religion, and secularization. Without wishing to enter into the debate on these questions, I will explain my definitions with the aim of clarifying my approach and indicating the limits of my analysis. For religion, I understand it in the most common sense of a group, organization, or institution considering itself as such. This excludes "secular religions" but does not prevent us from finding a religious dimension present in such ideologies. More precisely, I will consider "religious" any practice or belief which refers to a superempirical reality, i.e., a reality radically exceeding the objective limits of nature and man, provided that there is a symbolic relationship between man and this reality; "objective" is used in the sense of the scientific process which characterizes the point of view of the social sciences. This definition allows us to deal with "parallel beliefs" which are currently increasing in importance (telepathy, astrology, fortune telling, spiritism, cosmic consciousness, energies, near death experiences, and so on). They refer to a superempirical reality, and they will be considered as religious if they include a symbolic relationship with man, which is the case of spiritism but not of astrology, which will be considered as parareligious. For secularization, Peter Berger's (1967) definition seems to be the most relevant to our purpose, and I will operationalize it by distinguishing two thresholds of secularization: (1) an autonomization in relation to religious authority while religious symbols remain salient and (2) an abandonment of religious symbols.

MODERNITY AS A NEW AXIAL PERIOD

Several historians and philosophers have stressed the key role that certain periods in history have played in developing techniques, political structures, or worldviews which were to dominate the foreground of the next centuries or millennia before being, in turn, questioned, then replaced, or altered and inserted into new systems. "Man seems to have started again from scratch four times," Karl Jaspers wrote (1954: 37-38): with the Neolithic age, with the earliest civilizations, with the emergence of the great empires, and with modernity. Each of these axial turns produced a general reshaping of the "symbolic field," to use Pierre Bourdieu's term, and a great religious commotion which led to disappearances, redefinitions, and emergences. Each period finally led to new religious configurations, respectively: oral agrarian religions, religions of antiquity, religions of salvation (universalist religions), modern changes. Of the religions of antiquity, only Judaism and Hinduism survived the preceding axial age, abeit greatly changed and keeping typically pre-universalist traits (at least up to modernity): a large number of prohibitions, important domestic rites, transmission by descent. We may assume that modernity also stands as a major challenge to established religions as well as a potential source of religious innovation, especially if it is about to be radicalized and generalized, as Giddens argues (1991). In addition, the hypothesis of modernity as a new axial turn leads us to consider very long-term effects; this enables us to perform comparative research, and proposes an interpretation accounting not only for religious decline, but also for revivals, mutations, and inventions.

The concept of "axial age" has been used to refer to one historical period: the emergence of universalism, philosophy, great religions, early science (see, e.g., Jaspers 1954; Bellah 1976: 20-50; Eisenstadt 1986; Hick 1989: 21-35). This is especially true of the sixth to fifth centuries BCE, which were a key stage in this process (Deutero-Isaiah, the era of Pericles, Upanishads, Jain, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tze), of which Christianity and Islam are offsprings. This age is considered as "axial" because we continue to be its heirs, particularly through the great religions. However there is no reason that we cannot also consider the Neolithic age, the earliest civilizations, the great empires, and modernity as such axial ages, since they too mark a general reshaping of collective thought. Therefore, our definition of "axial age" (or axial period) shall include these four ages. At its beginning, an axial age is a kind of cinematic fade; it is marked by critical moments of crisis and shifts of thought which lead to a reshaping of the symbolic field which creates a new period of stability. These critical phases vary in duration from, for example, a thousand years for universalism (from the sixth century BCE to the emergence of Islam) to several millennia for the Neolithic age (from its first emergence to its eventual global expansion and triumph).