Crisis of the Secularism Paradigm

Abstract

This essay seeks to understand the relationship between modernity, secularization, and religion. By engaging such thinkers as José Casanova, Peter Berger, Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas, the essay proposes that the post-Enlightenment project of secularization which would replace religion by science and secular rationality has proven elusive. Instead, there has been a resurgence of religion in different parts of the world, in particular Islam. Secularization itself is a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the absence of religion. Peter Berger summed up the persistence of religion across time and space, and in different cultures, as “desecularization.” The outstanding question concerns the proper role for religion, and whether it may return to the public square as complementary rather than antithetical to Enlightenment values in science, culture, and democratic, pluralistic polities?