LISTSERV FILENAME: NICHOLLS BRADLEY
FTP FILENAME:       modernity-and-religion-review.txt
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_Modernity and Religion_, ed. by William Nicholls (Waterloo, Ontario:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1987).
 
{EDITED BOOK}
[TITLE] Modernity and Religion
[PUB LOCATION] Waterloo, Ontario
[PUBLISHER] Wilfrid Laurier University Press
[DATE] 1987
[ISBN] 0-88920-154-4
[EDITOR] Nicholls, William
 
 
_Modernity and Religion_ is a collection of papers from a
Consultation on Modernity and Religion which met at the University of
British Columbia in December of 1981.  William Nicholls, the editor
of the volume, also served as the chair for the consultation.  The
eleven papers presented in _Modernity and Religion_ have been divided
into three parts:  "Identifying Modernity," "Case Studies," and
"Modernity and Religion."  In addition to his own contribution,
Nicholls provides a helpful introduction to the volume wherein he
states that while the text cannot capture the valuable discussions
which occurred during the consultation, he is nevertheless confident
that the collection should be "of interest to anyone concerned with
the present and future of religion" (p. 2).  Even a decade after the
initial presentation of the papers, Nicholls's assessment remains
accurate.
 
Part I of the collection contains two papers which seek to provide
some perspective on what modernity is and, importantly, what it is
not.  In "Modernity and Religion:  A Problem of Perspective," John F.
Wilson stresses the latter and argues for some precision when
employing "modernity" so as to avoid a reification of the term.  The
author's concern is to bypass the prevailing tendency of setting
modernity in opposition to more traditional religious or spiritual
perspectives.  Wilson believes that if this dichotomy is avoided,
then the study of religion will focus on how it "appears to
differentiate under conditions of social and cultural change in the
modern era" (p. 13).  The fact that such change has occurred in other
historical eras reinforces, according to the author, the importance
of viewing modernity as a result of several factors rather than as a
spiritual condition competing with other spiritualities.  While
Wilson's caveat has merit (the work of Mary Douglas comes to mind),
it is not shared by the majority of the essays in the collection.
 
Robert S. Ellwood, Jr. devotes the first part of "Modern Religion as
Folk Religion" to a helpful summary of several attempts to define and
explain secularization.  While recognizing the need to avoid an
uncritical acceptance of the secularization thesis, Ellwood provides
a compelling case for the increasing inability of religion to affect
several important spheres of modern society and culture.  At the same
time, Ellwood is mindful of the continuing vitality of religious
practice in a situation of advancing secularization. Ellwood's
explanation of this apparent inconsistency is that "the structure and
institutions of religion are becoming, in Weberian language, less
rationalized and more charismatic, with such elements of
rationalization as remain devoted not to the routinization of
charisma but to its perpetuation as charismatic experience on the
periphery of an increasingly rationalized world" (p. 33).  In order
to illustrate his explanation, Ellwood borrows from Robert Redfield's
distinction between Great and Little Tradition and applies it to
modern religion.  Ellwood maintains that religious expression in much
of Christian Europe and North America is assuming characteristics
similar to folk religion.  Further, this folk or popular religion
shows every indication of continuing to flourish even as the Great
Tradition of institutional Christianity continues to decrease in
terms of its social and cultural significance in the modern world.
To be sure, modern religious expression also occurs in a marginalized
position -- however, this is not so much a situation of loss on its
part as it is the niche that it has carved out for itself.  While the
Great Tradition loses by attrition, the Little Tradition gains by
perseverance.
 
Part II of the volume contains four case studies focusing on the
theme of religion and modernity.  In "The Rise of Racism in the
Nineteenth Century: Symptom of Modernity," Alan T. Davies documents
the emergence of racism as an ideology in the works of several
writers.  Unlike Wilson, Davies understands modernity to be an
"ambiguous state of consciousness" and views racism as being
symptomatic of its "dark side" (p. 57).  Shotaro Iida's "700 Years
After Nichiren" is a somewhat confessional effort to draw upon Robert
Bellah's concept of religion's evolution in order to explain the
changes which have occurred in Nichiren Buddhism since the death of
its founder in 1281 C.E. "Modernity in Islamic Perspective" is Sheila
McDonough's contribution and draws from V. S. Naipaul's _Among the
Believers_ in order to illustrate the generally negative reception
that she believes modernity has had in Muslim nations.
 
Irving Hexham's contribution to the volume, "Modernity or Reaction in
South Africa:  The Case of Afrikaner Religion," is by far the most
developed piece in the case studies section.  Hexham argues against
those scholars who view some variety of Calvinism as the traditional
religion of Afrikaners. Instead, Hexham provides evidence to support
his thesis that Afrikaner traditional religion is much more indebted
to "European folk beliefs, Malay religion, and indigenous beliefs"
(p. 81) which have converged to form a decidedly anti-modern and
reactionary religious perspective.  Turning to the purported
dominance of Calvinism as it has been practiced in South Africa,
Hexham, like Ellwood, finds Redfield's work helpful in explaining the
decreasing importance of Calvinism.  As the Great Tradition,
Calvinism is losing status in the face of increasing secularization.
The Little Tradition of Afrikaner folk religion continues unchecked
by the same forces that are thwarting Calvinism.  Closing on a somber
note, Hexham suggests that a flourishing Afrikaner Little Tradition
will continue to be reactionary and have a chilling effect on
progressive change in South Africa.
 
The final section of the volume contains five pieces which draw on
various theoretical approaches to address the issue of modernity and
religion. In "Utopias and Counter-Utopias," Moshe Amon sketches a
progressive erosion of the symbol system which sustained traditional
human values before the Renaissance.  According to Amon, the past
five centuries have contributed to the current situation of modernity
which is essentially incapable of supporting meaning.  Amon despairs
of any possibility of reclaiming the humanistic values of the
premodern era and ends his essay with a citation from a very
pessimistic H. G. Wells.
 
K. Dad Prithipaul's contribution, "Modernity and Religious Studies,"
is an assessment of academic religious studies which traces the
supposed impoverishment of the discipline to its prevailing Western
orientation. Prithipaul follows Weber's lead in tracing the process
of secularization to its roots in the Hebrew scriptures and observes
that "it is the Judaeo-Christian tradition which has brought about
the secularization of consciousness, the disenchantment of the world,
and methodical conduct and bureaucratic objectivity" (p. 137).  The
author then argues that the Eastern perspective is fundamentally at
odds with that of the West.  Categories of nature, history,
anthropology, immanence, and error are articulated in essentially
disparate manners in the two perspectives and Prithipaul does not
believe they can be reconciled.  Prithipaul is careful not to reify
modernity and does not believe the situation is one of an allegedly
corrupt spirituality.  What has happened, according to the author, is
that modernity has left us "without the things of the spirit" (p.
150).  Modernity is not so much a malignancy as it is an absence of
truth.
 
"Can Modernity Accommodate Transcendence?" is the question raised by
Huston Smith in his contribution to the volume.  Following Peter
Berger, Smith understands modernity as "the non-sacred canopy that
pervades the consciousness of contemporary society" (p. 158).  Smith,
unlike Wilson, views modernity as a "reality" and proceeds to develop
a case for a negative response to the question his paper raises.
Specifically, Smith argues that there are four categories that modern
scientific thought, which is endemic to modernity, cannot comprehend:
intrinsic and normative values; purposes; meanings; and, qualities.
While scientific thought cannot entertain these categories, Smith
maintains that human experience refuses to ignore them and therein
lies the rub.
 
In a sense, William Nicholls's contribution takes up where Smith's
ends. "Immanent Transcendence:  Spirituality in a Scientific and
Critical Age" addresses the possibility of cultivating a spiritual
dimension within the inescapable constraints of the reality of
modernity.  In an ambitious move, Nicholls points to the search for
spirituality as existential evidence that there is a spiritual
essence in human beings.  Once this initial affirmation is
articulated, it is then possible, Nicholls argues, to entertain the
possibility of an "immanent transcendence" as the key for formulating
a spirituality that can operate within the strictures imposed by
modernity. Nicholls draws upon concepts such as autonomy and
cultural-relativity -- both attributes of modernity -- in order to
illustrate how these might provide a path for the development of
immanent transcendence.  According to Nicholls, the contingency of
our existence may provide an existential situation similar to that of
the idea of the "dark night" of Christian mysticism which encourages
an openness to a distinctly modern spirituality.  "Although we are
perhaps no longer open to the older experience of exterior
transcendence, built upon the mythological idea of God as king
sitting exalted on the throne of the universe, we may become aware of
being responsible for our own truth and authenticity through our
inner capacity for discrimination and self-transcendence" (p. 183).
Nicholls is not overly sanguine about the possibility of establishing
"immanent transcendence" within the constraints of modernity.
However, he remains qualifiedly hopeful about the possibility and
concludes with a call for the discipline of religious studies to
acknowledge that humans are "inalienable spiritual beings, and that
unless this dimension of their being is nurtured, humanity will die
and all their cultures with it" (p. 186).
 
"Caution! Moralists at Work" is Tom Sinclair-Faulkner's summary of
the various exchanges that occurred during the consultation.
Sinclair-Faulkner sketches the conversations that emerged in response
to the contributions by Smith and Nicholls and underscores the
pragmatic turn that several of the papers had in common:  "While the
participants generally agreed that the acids of modernity are eating
away at traditional habits, . . . They knew that some of those
traditional habits were not so effective as nostalgia might imply,
and that traditions that had been etched by modernity might still be
found useful by modern persons" (p. 191).  I found
Sinclair-Faulkner's comments instructive and a fitting conclusion to
this volume.
 
As is probably the case with most conferences, some of the
contributions are more substantive than others.  I have tried to
reflect this in my summary of the articles.  One quibble I have with
the collection is that it made it to press with a few instances where
several words appear to have been omitted from the text (e.g. pp. 46,
47, and 148).  In another error, someone's dates are listed as
"1981-1944" (p. 103) and the endnote numbers are out of sequence in
the same article (cf. pp. 96 and 110).  These errors are unfortunate
because they distract the reader from the substance of the essays in
which they occur.
 
In general, the collection is worth consulting for anyone interested
in the topic.  The placement of Wilson's article as the first in the
collection is provocative because many of the other contributors view
modernity exactly as Wilson argues they should not.  Whether
modernity is properly understood as a "spiritual" medium in
contention with religion is an issue which is not resolved in this
collection.  The debate is approached from several perspectives in
_Modernity and Religion_ and those perspectives should serve to
stimulate additional reflection for those who read the collection.
 
Reviewed by:
 
Michael T. Bradley, Jr.
Graduate Student
Department of Religion
Columbia University
mtb3@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu
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COPYRIGHT: (C) 1992 by Michael T. Bradley, Jr.
 
Single copies of this document, may be made for internal purposes,
personal use, or study by an individual, an individual library, or an
educational or research institution.  This document or its contents
may not be otherwise reproduced or republished in excerpt or
entirety, in print or electronic form, without permission from the
author.
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