The Fall and the Rise of Religion

The Fall and The Rise of Religion

The world is a place of constant change where it is hard to predict how the outcome of certain transformations would affect other factors. Many sociologists and theorists thought that modernity and rationality brought by the enlightenment movement in 18th century would leave no place for religion in people's lives. However, their secularist theories were proved wrong by the rise of sacralization which is verified by fundamentalist movements that stir up the world such as the Evangelical movement.

Peter Berger, who used to be a defender of the secularization theory, defines it "as a process in which religion diminishes in importance both in society and in the consciousness of individuals"(Berger, Secularization and De-Secularization ,291). It has been thought that the major reason for the fall of religion was the rise of modernity. However, looking at the heat that religion is bringing up in the world, such as the Evangelical movement and Islamic revival movement, Berger has come to believe that the world is as religious as it has been before only with some exceptions. He has concluded that secularity is not the norm of the world but the norm of a small minority which are the international intellectuals and Western Europe.

When Berger says international intellectuals, he aims to talk about people who receive "Western-style higher education, especially in the humanities and social sciences" (Berger, Secularization and De-Secularization, 293). This type of education leaves a secularizing effect on people who believe they represent the way of thinking of the outside world.

Berger also stresses on the importance that Europe is not the norm but the exception in terms of secularity. Religion may have lost its significance in Europe but it still has a big impact on the rest of the world. "There has been a dramatic decline in people's participation in church life, in the influence of religion in public life and the number of people choosing religious vocations."( Berger, Secularization and De-Secularization, 294). Even though Hervieu-Lйger thinks that the situation in Europe is a shift from the traditional church life to an individualized way of practicing religion, Berger still believes that Europe has been going through secularization since 19th century. As he compares Europe and America in order to find the reason behind the decline of religion in Europe, he concludes that the difference between the relationship of the church and the society in the past might explain it. In Europe there used to be "a close relation between church and state (in contrast to America), with the result that political opposition often contained an anti-clerical component."( Berger, Secularization and De-Secularization, 295).

The classical theorists Emile Durkeheim and Max Weber believed that secularization was an inexorable outcome of the modern world. Durkheim defined religion as "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them"(Aldridge, 63). He saw religion as a social phenomenon, as "acts of collective worship" (Aldridge 63), as a way to understand one's surroundings and as a means to strengthen the ties of society. However, as individuality increases in modern society, the bonds of the society weaken which results in the decline of religion. Moreover, Max Weber believed that "modernity is characterized by rationalization" (Aldridge, 66) which "means the spread of legal-rational systems of domination at the expense of both traditional and charismatic systems" (Aldridge, 66). He argued that as societies showed progress towards modernity, the rational and scientific ideas would destroy the authority of religion. He believed that "the disenchantment of the world", the loss of the sacred and the magical, would make secularization inevitable. To sum up, both Durkheim and Weber's arguments aim to send the message that as societies modernize individuals will rely on rational explanations rather than religious ones which will lead to the decline of religion.

Despite the secularization theory and the arguments of classical theorists, the emergence of secularization as a result of modernity is far from reality. However, globalization, which is the expansion and the intensification of cultural, economic and political flows around the globe, causes the resurgence of religion. Globalization includes de-territorialization and reterritorialization ("breaking down and reconstitution of spatial scales") (Vasquez, 51), glocalization (transformation of the global to fit the local), and hybridity ("what Garcia Canclini calls tiempos mixtos") (Vasquez, 58). These are outcomes of globalization that effect religion, not independent of each other but sometimes happening all at once.

De-territorialization is the dislocation of people from their homes. When people change their surroundings, they find themselves in new environments, a new cultures and new faces. "Religion is a key cultural component in the construction of both new spatio-temporal arrangements and emerging cognitive maps through which individuals and institutions try to locate themselves in the new landscapes generated by globalization" (Vazquez, 52). Religion acts as "cognitive maps" (Vazquez, 52) to guide people through their adaptation to the new organizations of space and time. Especially, migrants use religion in this sense when they are forced to move to different countries and are in need to reterritorialize themselves.

In the book Globalizing the Sacred by Manuel Vazquez and Marie Marquardt, two different examples are shown in order to fully explain the role of religion as "resources for 'route learning' and 'wayfinding', offering migrants moral and ritual landmarks to situate themselves amid dislocation" (Vazquez, 54). One of them is the El Salvadoran youth gangs in the US in search of identity and the other one, which will be examined closely, is the role of churches in immigrants lives in the US.

The suburb of Doraville is a popular place for new immigrants coming from abroad and especially from South American countries. In chapter 6 of Globalizing the Sacred, Vazquez and Marquardt present two churches that "provide immigrants with both the spaces and the materials to create miniature border zones 'hybrid sites and spaces on the global landscape'" (Vazquez, 145). The immigrants in and around Doraville are faced with problems such as discrimination and exclusion from the public that does not take them "into consideration