A Study Of Peter Berger's Religious Thought

P.L.Berger is a contemporary American religious sociologist.Born in Austria in1929,he moved to the United States and studied at Wagner College.After serving in the army for a period of time,Berger has been engaged in teaching activities,successively in the University of Rutkess,Boston University as a professor.Berger's interest in sociology began,but he later moved to the field of religious sociology,chaired by the American Religious Research Association.Since the 1980 s,Berger's interest in religious studies has turned to the development and modernization of the Third World.In the long history of ritual in religious sociology,Berger used his unique insights to draw a distinctive stroke in the field of religious sociology,and created a new atmosphere of religious world in people's hearts with his religious sociological thoughts.In his book The Holy Curtain published in the 1960 s and 1970 s,he systematically explained the nature,function and definition of religion and secularization of religion,and put forward new ideas.When discussing the rationalization function of religion and religious theology,Berger analyzed various types of theology,and summarized four different types of theology on the basis of Weber,namely,giving commitment from the perspective of the present world;giving commitment from the perspective of the other world;dualism;Capricorn doctrine.On the secularization of religion,it is from the reason to find the internal religious secularization,the secularization of religion that seed already exists in the internal religious,not limited to the external reasons.But after the publication of Berger's Holy Curtain,it was criticized by some scholars as an atheist.His views on religion in the book are considered to be a desperate attitude towards religion.Therefore,in response to these criticisms and further explanation of his religious theory,Berger published the book The Legend of Angels.In this book,Berger takes a different approach and puts forward a new viewpoint on proving the existence of God.But in the 1990 s,he suddenly backed away,overthrowing his previous theory and supporting the theory of non-secularization.It also analyses the errors and limitations of secularization theory in many ways,and explores the reasons of secularization from different angles.Scholars have different opinions on his defection,but I think the reasons for his defection deserve more discussion and attention.In different times,with the continuous development of society,the theory of thinkers is also updated with the times.Whatever his later contributions,Berger is worthy of respect only for his courage to accept new ideas and revise his thoughts with the times.This paper chooses Berger's three books "The Holy Curtain","The Legend of Angels" and "Religious Secularization" as the main reference materials,and tries to discuss the theoretical elements of his religion,its secularization theory and non-secularization theory.And try to find out the new meaning of his viewpoint in the discussion,including the positive influence of his thought to the modern and contemporary religious circles and religious sociology circles,as well as the limitations of his thought.This article is mainly divided into four parts: The first part is to sort out the theoretical elements of Berger's religion,including his interpretation of the essence,function and definition of religion.The second part compares his theoretical achievements with those of traditional religious philosophy,trying to find out his innovations.The third part is the focus of this article,mainly combing his religious secularization and non-secularization theory,and explores the reasons why he overthrew his theory and supported non-secularization in his later period.The fourth part is a summary of the first three parts,which gives an objective evaluation of Berger's contribution to religious sociology and the impact of his theory on contemporary researchers.