Late scholar Peter Berger admitted 'big mistake' as sociologist of religion
Peter Berger, a leading scholar in the sociology of religion, died in Brookline, Massachusetts, on June 27 at age 88 of heart failure.
He was professor emeritus of sociology, religion, and theology at Boston University. His books included The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967), A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969), The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (1979), and Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003).
In a 1998 article for the Christian Century, he admitted to having “made one big mistake” in his career. Like many other sociologists of religion in the 1960s, his error “was to believe that modernity necessarily leads to a decline in religion. . . . Most of the world today is as religious as it ever was and, in a good many locales, more religious than ever.”
