For 柳比歇夫

美国波士顿大学的社会学大家Peter L Berger受邀出席上海论坛，发表题为 "宗教和当今世界" 的演讲。之前读过他的Four Faces of Global Culture 和Secularity: West and East。Berger教授重要的贡献之一是于上世纪九十年代驳斥自己早先的观点，论述了世俗化（secularization）和现代性（modernity）并非一对孪生姐妹。

In the course of my career as a sociologist of religion I made one big mistake and had one big insight (arguably not such a bad record). The big mistake which I shared with almost everyone who worked in this area in the 1950s and 1960s, was to believe that modernity necessarily leads to a decline in religion. The big insight was that pluralism undermines the taken-for-grantedness of beliefs and values. It took me some time to relate the insight to the mistake. And it has only been very recently that I understood the implications for the position of Protestantism in the contemporary world. (Berger, 1998) 

年近八十的Berger教授留了个光头，笑起来有点像我的挪威导师Gunnar。可惜现场的对话不怎么有趣，语言固然有点阻隔，但更多怕是缺少了对这个领域的理解以及对演讲者学术背景的了解。所以这对话有点对不起来。