Irritating the secular: on Peter Berger and Charles Taylor’s theological projects

The literature that discusses the secularization paradigm is extensive. However, we still know little about revisionist accounts of secularization theory utilized as a proxy for theological projects. Through close reading, I zoom in on two prominent scholars of religious studies and beyond, Peter L. Berger and Charles Taylor, who represent stellar examples of the religiously grounded critique of the secularization paradigm. Berger and Taylor attempted to reconcile contemporary social theory and theology by injecting constitutive theological notions into their alternative constructions of the secular and religious to re-claim the relevance of Christianity in the present. My central proposition is that the gist of their empirical and normative rebuttal of secularization hinges not on sociological or genealogical explanations but on theologically anchored claims. The conceptual comparison of Berger and Taylor's revisionist works, well-established in the canon of religious studies, reveals parallel strategies and three mutually intertwined theological assertions set to fracture the secularization paradigm: two-tiered ontology, the notion of personhood, and reconceptualization of religion.