Review: [Untitled]
Reviewed Work(s):
The Sacred Canopy. by Peter L. Berger
Elizabeth K. Nottingham
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 1. (Jul., 1968), pp. 102-103.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28196807%2974%3A1%3C102%3ATSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M
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Wed Sep 5 12:39:21 2007
THE AMERICAN JOUIRNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Such indeed is the theme of Willems' book
as well. Although he subscribes to the thesis
that the growth of Protestantism in South
America must be seen in the context of industrialization, internal migration, urbanization,
and secularization, he largely neglects to relate
the development of the Protestant churches to
other types of social movements which can be
seen as providing alternative responses to the
same conditions. While he discusses the political attitudes and actions of the various- rotestant groups and examines factors underlying
the variation among them, he does not illuminate the problem of the circumstances of
choice and the consequences of joining a Pentecostal sect as against a radical union. The
book is divided into three parts, the first of
which considers the degrees and ways that
Protestantism is compatible with traditional
Brazilian and Chilean value orientations and
organizations. A strong argument is made for
the historical presence of various characteristics in both societies that were and are congruent with Protestant social forms and vilues.
Willems points out, for instance, that even
during the last century in Brazil there was a
class of small rural landowners and a lumpenproletariat, neither of whom were fully integrated into the plantation system for the patronage network. I n a later section, he attempts
to demonstrate that, besides developing in
cities, Protestant sects have grown only in
those rural areas which were never, for historical or climatic reasons, dominated by haciendas
or which are now frontiers with mixtures of
extremely heterogeneous elements. H e does not
consider, though, the mesh or lack of it between Protestant epistemological assumptions
and categories and those traditional in Brazil
and Chile in as much detail as I would like.
Chile is utilized as a means of controlling for
factors perhaps unique to Brazil and of generating hypotheses related to Protestantism in
Latin America as a whole, but we are told in
the conclusion that Chile is also unique and
very different from other Spanish-American societies.
I n the second section, Willems discusses a
wide variety of relationships between Protestant movements and the changes in many sectors of these societies to substantiate his theme
that Protestantism, particularly in its evangelical or Pentecostal form, is "adaptive" to the
emerging modem social order. Here he makes
a number of interesting points the impact of
which is somewhat vitiated by the lack of
quantitative material and analyses, a pervasive
flaw throughout the book that Willems recognizes. I t is regrettable that more extensive data
on the relation of social class to membership
in different Protestant groups through time and
in different areas could not have been obtained.
There is very little information on how recent
political events in both countries have affected
their Protestant minorities. I n this section as
in others, a variety of subjects is handled generally and rather superficially. While there is an
extensive treatment of the historical churches'
connection with secondary education, the patterns of socialization within Protestant families receive almost no attention. The third
section of the book deals with the different
histories and characteristics of various Protestant denominations. Willems' analysis of the
reasons behind these diverse adaptations to
similar social environments is very intriguing,
especially for his conclusion that organizational
schisms and proliferation of sects seem to be
more effective than ideological disputes as a
means of expressing rejection of the traditional
society and even of some aspects of the emerging one. As a whole, however, the book lacks
a theoretical framework which could relate all
the divergent empirical bits and conceptual
pieces concerning discrete aspects of LatinAmerican Protestantism to the functions of
religious pluralism within a context of structural differentiation and secularization.
Duke University
The Sacred Canopy. By PETER L. BERGER.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1967.
Pp. 171. $4.95.
The Sacred Canopy is termed by its author,
Peter L. Berger, an "exercise" in the sociological theory of religion written from the
vantage point of an expanded conception of
the sociology of knowledge. The latter has
been set forth by Berger in A Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise i n the Sociology o f Knowledge (New York, 1966, p. v),
which he wrote with Thomas Luckmann.
Berger sees human beings as "world-builders" whose man-made worlds are precarious
BOOK REVIEWS
in the face of the brevity of human lives and
the erosion of time-hence, a need for legitimation in order to insure the internalization
of societal norms and so give some durability
and "facticity" to these objects of human
creation.
Religion is seen as one important means of
legitimation-an
especially effective one, because religion has the unique capacity to take
man-made structures out of historical time
and to impute to them an aura of the eternal
by locating them within a sacred frame of
reference. Since all legitimation serves to
maintain "reality" and repel the forces of
chaos and anomie, a prime function of religion is thus "world-maintenance." Berger sees
the fundamental recipe for religious legitimation as the transformation of human products
into supra or non-human "facticities." Such
legitimations continue to be effective as long
as a "community of plausibility" persists. This
plausibility is inevitably threatened by the
secularization process, which the latter author
discusses at some length in terms somewhat
reminiscent of Harvey Cox. H e sees the "current crisis in theology" as grounded in a "crisis
of plausibility" which in its turn is grounded
in changing social structures rather than in
theorizing. The current problem in religious
institutions is thus how to keep going in a
milieu that no longer takes for granted their
definitions of reality.
Peter Berger has been a sociological colleague of theologians and has sat at the feet of
philosophically inclined sociologists. The Sacred Canopy, in consequence, shows traces of
Berger's theological and philosophical past. On
the whole, it may be said that these influences
have enabled Berger to write a book which
may "speak to the condition" of the theologically minded more directly than do many such
books written by sociologists.
T o a sociologist, however, the book contains little that is new. This reviewer, maybe
a bit obtusely, can see little difference between
his expanded concept of the sociology of
knowledge and general cultural theory. Furthermore, Berger uses his theoretical lens to
illuminate well-trodden paths. Nevertheless,
he does succeed in casting an interesting new
light upon these paths. H e writes, moreover, in
a challenging way, skilfully injecting theological materials drawn from both Eastern and
Western religions to reinforce his points. H e
also displays an understanding of the issues
that concern practicing religionists, while a t
the same time he tells them frankly where the
going for them is likely to be rough. This book
should find a ready market in seminaries and
rabbinical schools.
Queens College
A Sociology of English Religion. By DAVID
MARTIN.New York: Basic Books, 1967. Pp.
158. $5.00.
There is much information packed into Dr.
Martin's short book. True to the British survey tradition associated with Charles Booth
(see pp. 29-33), Martin grounds his study in
demographic fact-finding surveys concerning
the incidence and distribution of religious
membership, belief, and practice in the United
Kingdom. For Americans who often know
more of distant "anthropological" religions
than those of people more closely akin to
them, this treatment has considerable value.
I n England, as in America, the number of
those who merely identify themselves with a
religious body far outstrips those who maintain institutional practice. Some two-thirds of
Englishmen identify with the Church of England, 10 per cent with the Free Churches, and
another 10 per cent are Roman Catholics. The
approximately 10 per cent still unaccounted
for comprise about 5 per cent who claim to
have no religious label, 1 per cent who are
Jewish, with another 4 per cent belonging to
various sects and "foreign" religions (p. 36).
These statistics, based on a composite of survey materials, are subject to many of the wellknown difficulties of interpretation.
Judged on the basis of institutional religious
observance, the English are considerably less
"religious" than Americans. Says the publisher's blurb on Dr. Martin's book: "If God is
dead anywhere, He would most surely seem
to be dead in England, where the majority of
the population is notoriously indifferent to
churchgoing." Dr. Martin, himself a Christian
"believer," sees this indifference as indifference to institutional religion rather than to religion per se. According to a mass observation
study in the London area, over a quarter of
the "doubters, agnostics and atheists pray on