The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture

Kieran Flanagan (1996) The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture. London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin's.

• the author: British sociologist of religion, currently Reader in Sociology at Bristol University, practising Roman Catholic.
• the book: 'This study is a reflection on an amibition to write the imperative for enchantment in sociology into the interface between culture and theology ..... It examines the self understandings of culture between theology and sociology to show their mutual and precarious relationship to secularisation.' (ix)
  
• very critical of the liberal theological project (esp post-Vatican II) to make itself relevant to culture but at the same time becomes buried by the latter
• cf. Michael Northcott's criticism of the classical liberal project of correlation as a dead end which goes no where.
  

• poses a challenge (or at least a serious reminder) to my recent thinking on the overall direction / orientation of my thesis --- which, although not conceived along the line of 'classical' liberal theology and refutes its Tillichian 'method of correlation', is nonetheless an effort to interrogate Christian (public) theological expression with contemporary (popular) culture. (In a more 'fashionable' term, I am in some sense 'reversing the hermeutical flow'.)
  

'Since [Vatican II], theology has become dominated by cultural issues it cannot seem to transcend or to control. The humanisation of theology has not been matched by a sanctification of culture. If anything the reverse, for modernity has made theology irrelevant in the cultural marketplace. Secularisation, a disengagement from the sacred, governs everyday reality. In its relationship to modern culture, theology seems to have lost its grip. ... The 1980s was a uniquely grey period of theology. Despite dalliancies with ideologies, little of substance has emerged.' (9)

'If theologians are to cope with contemporary culture, they have to find not only a point of connection but also a grammar with which to read its contours.' (9-10)

'By endorsing the doubts of contemporary culture, liberal theologians pre-empted their capacity to confront what Lindbeck has termed the 'acids of modernity' and to seek definite forms of belief in communal enclaves that would be supportive for others rather than purely individual concerns with rights. The whole strategy conceived in Vatican II, to open to the world, was fatally misconceived, as it misunderstood the basis upon which belief was secured within modern culture. It has no sociological means of asking, let alone answering this question.' (11, my emphasis)

• intruging indeed: contra conventional notion of Vatican II being a revoultionary moment for the Roman Catholic Church to 'update' itself.
  

'Theological reflection seeks an experience of the Divine, an intimation of presence which that makes it something more than academic study ... Academic theology seems to have obscured the spiritual roots of its focus of study.' (55)

'In ['A Sociological View of the Secularization of Theology', in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 5 (1966)10], (Peter) Berger indicated that it does not occur to liberal theologians that those concepts to which they make appeal, embodied in secularisation, are themselves subject to processes of relativism. If the culture that forms the ground of belief for sociologists has become unsettled, a similar instability applies to liberal theologians who seek to open belief uncritically to what they perceive to be cultural imperatives.' (61)

'The cognitive validity which theologians granted to contemporary culture, that effected a pastoral process of modernisation, hence secularisation and dismantlement of sacerdotal bonds, that has had such fracturing effects three decades later, is untenable and has become more so in the context of postmodernity.' (61, my emphasis)

'What is a solution to theology is the beginning of a sociological problematic one all the more apparent in the culture of postmodernity. Openness disguises agnosticism, pluralism veils indifference, and the pursuit of individual rights conceals fragmentation.' (61)

'Because sociology is reflexive on matters of detail if often confronts theology blind to the implications of what it enacts. Liberal theologians confuse rhetoric with analysis of consequences. Often these relate to trivial matters with significant consequences, which to the sociologist seem to uncouple boundaries and to undermine forms of representation and identity.' (62)

'The need to modernise, to accord with contemporary social sentiment, but at the same time, to protect belief and doctrine from corrosive effects of the Enlightenment, left theology divided against itself. If it did not modernise, its messsage would pass ungrasped and unnoticed; but if it did modernise, there was the risk of abandoning or corrupting the tradition upon which belief was formulated and founded.' (69)