Ulrich Beck’s ‘Reflecting Faith’: Individualization, Religion and the Desecularization of Reflexive Modernity

Abstract

This article focuses on Ulrich Beck’s account of reflexive religiosity set out in his most recent work, A God of One’s Own: Religion’s Capacity for Peace and Potential for Violence. It traces the shift this represents in Beck’s thinking from an understanding of reflexive modernity as a project of radical secularization to one in which religion is a vital moral constituent. The article focuses on Beck’s description of a concurrent ‘individualization’ and ‘cosmopolitanization’ of religious belief which provides support for a cosmopolitan outlook necessary in an age of global risk. It argues that, whilst the religious deficit of the earlier account has been addressed and the acknowledgement of religious reflexivity is welcome, contemporary religious expression and experience cannot be so readily recruited to Beck’s cosmopolitan ethic.