Tone deaf

Prominent secularization theorists like Peter L. Berger who, as recently as the 1960s, openly conceded religion's demise, are having to radically alter their forecasts. They have had to invent new concepts and categories to describe the phenomenon of religion's unexpected global resurgence. The philosopher Jurgen Habermas now felicitously refers to the advent of a "postsecular society" to characterize religiosity's remarkable staying power.

And Berger himself, who was once secularization theory's most vocal proponent, has expressed his change of heart in a book titled, The Desecularization of the World . . .The resurgence of political theology suggests that the promises of secular modernity have played themselves out and been found to be severely wanting.. . .The return of the sacred is in large measure a response to modernity's failings. However, religion's neo-Darwinian detractors seem unable to fathom the correlation. Moreover, they are peculiarly tone deaf, or "unmusical," when it comes to comprehending the very real attractions of belief and spirituality for a great many denizens of our hyperrationalized, disenchanted cosmos.

Excerpts from Richard Wolin’s summary of the state of recent scholarship on secularization, in The Chronicle of Higher Education.