MODERN RELIGION

The holder of the Max Weber chair of German and European studies at New York University, Detlef Pollack, spoke at NYU’s Deutsches Haus on “Religion in Modern Society: Some Theoretical Considerations.” A professor from the New School University, Jose Casanova, offered his views on the subject as well.

More and more social scientists believe modernity and religion are compatible, Mr. Pollack began. Scholars have been taking issue with the “secularization thesis,” which posits that the more developed a country becomes, the less religious it will be.

Still, church attendance has declined dramatically, Mr. Pollack said. For example, in 1980, 45% of Spanish citizens attended services regularly. Now only about 20% do. Formal participation is not the only measure of spirituality, but in general, fewer people in the world say that they believe in God. America has tended to be the exception.

Mr. Pollack said that four processes have led to religion’s growing unpopularity: functional differentiation, rationalization, individualization, and cultural pluralism, whereby people stop taking ideas on faith for granted.

Social horizons have widened, he said. Religion traditionally addresses problems of contingency – illness, feelings of fear, or helplessness – and narrows horizons to make the contingency bearable.

Mr. Casanova said that he took Mr. Pollack’s data seriously, but questioned what exactly the data explain. Mr. Casanova said he doesn’t doubt the phenomenon of Western Europe’s secularization – since the late 1950s, Christian structures have struggled to remain relevant there. Non-European countries are more of a question mark, he said.

Theories must be grounded in multiple historical realities, Mr. Casanova argued. “Functional differentiation,” he said, is too simple a concept to apply across the world. He gave several examples of different forms of church-state separation in England, France, and elsewhere.

Mr. Casanova agreed with Mr. Pollack’s view on individualization: Islam has experienced a “fragmentation of authority” and “weakening power of traditional clergy.” But at the global level, he said, it gets “muddy.”

Mr. Pollack defended his theory by saying its goal was to reduce complexity. Sociologists, he said, seek commonalities, for example, what holds the concept of modernization together across borders. Without such theories, “We only focus on descriptions instead of explanation,” he said.

Mr. Pollack went on to say that most sociologists believe that the emergence of modernity was a revolutionary change. He asked Mr. Casanova if he agreed. The latter responded with a question of his own: What is the distinction between modernity and premodernity? It is hardly clear-cut, Mr. Casanova said. Does one set the dichotomy at 1492 and the age of exploration, at the Protestant Reformation, or at the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century? Developmental theory can work when it remains what Max Weber called “ideal types.” But when one begins to think that history follows a “teleological process” (heading toward a goal), trouble arises, Mr. Casanova said.

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POEM, IN FACT

This weekend at New School University, a professor from Maryland’s Loyola College, Elliot King, chaired a joint meeting of the American Journalism Historians Association and the history division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The final session addressed the question of whether or not there is “core knowledge” with respect to journalism history. A professor from the University of Albany, Nancy Roberts, said teaching should focus on “larger processes” as well as “names, dates, and places.”

During a question-and-answer period, a professor from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Sam Riley, addressed the insufficiency of teaching facts alone. He recited a poem on the matter:

A fact without a theory
Is a ship without a sail
It’s a boat without a rudder
A kite without a tail.
Yes, a fact without a theory
Is a tragic final act.
The only thing worse in the universe
Is a theory without a fact.

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NEXT WAVE

New York University’s graduate magazine journalism program director, Robert Boynton, moderated a panel at Barnes & Noble Union Square on his book “The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft” (Vintage).

Panelist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc said, “It does, in fact, matter what kind of approach you have as a journalist.” She learned this first-hand when interviewed for her book “Random Family” (Scribner). She encountered at least four kinds of journalists: those with preconceived notions about a story who sought quotes for pieces already half-written; those who talked so much that she hardly got a word in edgewise; those who had not read her book but faked it, and those with sincere interest with whom she had great conversations.