Daniele Hervieu-Leger

In Search of Certainties: The Paradoxes of Religiosity in Societies of High Modernity

Daniele Hervieu-Leger - Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Hervieu@ehess.fr

This article deals with the paradoxes of religiosity in societies of high modernity. It outlines the two basic features of "religious modernity": first, the unpredictable diversity of individual compositions of belief which may include elements borrowed from a wide variety of symbolic resources; and second, the weakening of organized structure of the belief systems authenticated by religious institutions. This "religious modernity" leads to a number of new phenomena: the greater the individualization of belief, the greater its degree of homogenization; the greater the homogenization of belief, the greater the migration among believers; the more individual believers migrate, the more they need "community niches".

Keywords: religion and modernity, religion in Europe, religious identity, individualism, religious community.

The rational "disenchantment of the world" in modern societies did not mean the end of religions. It did not eliminate the need for faith. It was this statement, which now seems self-evident, that started a kind of theoretical revival in the sociology of religion thirty years ago. It was then that the foundations of PE were laid.-

For the original, see: Hervieu-Leger, D. (2006) " In Search of Certainties: The Paradoxes of Religiosity in Societies of High Modernity", The Hedgehog Review 8 (1 - 2): 59 - 68. Translation and Russian edition rights are provided by the Institute for Advanced Cultural Studies (University of Virginia, USA).

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a review of secularization processes, although this task is still far from being completed. However, one conclusion can already be clearly formulated: it is established that the strength of religious faith is directly proportional to the level of uncertainty that is caused by the speed of change in all spheres of public life. At the same time, we know that this same religious belief is now increasingly difficult to fit into the dogmatic framework of institutional religions. In societies in which individual autonomy has been adopted as a guiding principle, it is individuals who create for themselves, in an increasingly independent mode, small belief systems that fully correspond to their desires and experiences.1
I suggest that we review a number of elements of Western "religious modernity", deliberately choosing only European examples, which, as we know, are quite different from the American ones. The first circumstance that we clearly observe is the huge variety of individual religious combinations, the elements of which are drawn from completely different symbolic resources. Today, individuals "write" their religious narratives using concepts and symbols that have "fallen out" of certain stable systems of meanings associated with a particular centuries-old religious tradition. Regularly practicing Catholics integrated into parish communities, whether French, Belgian or Italian, declare their belief in reincarnation. Norwegian and Danish Lutherans, being members of their national churches, are also, in the spirit of the ideas of "spiritual ecology", adherents of "religion in harmony with nature", and they see the latter as an all-encompassing whole, where man is only a part, and there can be no question of any privileged position of man over other living organisms. and speech. Jews claim that the true meaning of their relationship to the Torah can be found in Buddhist meditation. Believers of different backgrounds are carriers of mixed religious identities, which determine all subsequent stages of their personal spiritual quest.
At the same time, the organized structure of belief systems established and maintained by old religious institutions is weakening: for example, surveys in France show that the vast majority of those who identify themselves are not self-identified.

1. Hereafter, the word "belief" means English belief. - Note. perev.

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with Catholicism, they no longer find a connection between the concept of "sin" and the idea of possible posthumous condemnation. The belief in paradise is still preserved, but it is already inferior to the belief in reincarnation. The concept of hell quickly disappears altogether. What is even more surprising is that the elementary foundations of Christology are very poorly known to most of those who nevertheless consider themselves Christians. There are endless examples of this dual tendency: on the one hand, the individualization and subjectivization of faith, and on the other, the deregulation of organized belief systems. Viewed from this angle, we can say that "religious modernity" is the individualized dispersal and simultaneously the disintegration of religious codes that supported shared certainties among religious communities.

Everyone has their own truth: the question of the authenticity of the "truth"

A direct consequence of this apparent individualism in the spiritual and religious sphere is that, from the point of view of the believers themselves, the institutions ' claims to witness the "true faith"are doubted. For example, in a nationwide survey of Catholics and Protestants in Switzerland, only two percent of respondents agreed with the following statement:: "All religions are worthy of respect, but only my religion has the truth"2. This weakening of religious orthodoxy has a huge impact on younger generations and is increasingly evident at an earlier age. A 1998 study in France found that only 6% of the total population and only 4% of people aged 18 to 29 believe that "their" religion is the only true one.3 These doubts about institutionalized religious orthodoxies are part of a broader process of undermining the dominant systems of truth (governing system of truths). The legitimation of faith passes from religious authorities-once the guarantors of true faith-to individuals themselves, who are now responsible for the authenticity of their spiritual meanings.

2. Campiche, R.J. et al. (eds.) (1992) Croire en Suisse (s). Lausanne et Guneve: L'Age d'Homme.

3. Lambert, Y. (1994) "Un paysage religieux en profonde evolution", in Riffault, H. (ed.) Les valeurs des Francais, pp. 123 - 162. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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Now the value of spiritual search - both in the eyes of the individual and in the eyes of those with whom he enters into dialogue and testifies-lies in his sincerity and personal conviction. Attempts to reconcile these personal beliefs with truths cemented by religious authorities are now clearly secondary.

This trend is confirmed by W. K. Roof's research on the religiosity of the baby-boomers generation in the United States4. Religious authorities themselves contribute to this trend by placing more emphasis on the depth of personal spiritual experience than on the strict orthodoxy of faith declarations. This tendency to rely more and more on personal and no other truth in spiritual and religious matters is not unique to the "floating" spiritual seekers, whose search is now almost completely unrelated to belonging to a particular community. This trend is rapidly unfolding within religious institutions themselves, which greatly undermines the hierarchical structures on which the authoritative possession of truth rests. Of course, it can be argued and demonstrated by historical examples that the reduction of individual beliefs to a common denominator has never existed in a pure and perfect form. But the novelty of the current situation is that purely spiritual arguments (in the name of faith as such!) they are now being used to reject institutional ways of defining religious truthauthenticating religious truth, which for centuries have provided both support for the unquestionable universal authenticity of major religions and the basis for special self-determination of individual denominations.

An ever-expanding symbol market

Does this proliferation of individual do-it-yourself religions mean that we have entered a new era of spiritual fragmentation and radical changes in terms of shared certainties? Apparently, everything is much more complicated. Right,

4. Roof, W. С. (1993) A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. N.Y.: Harper & Collins; также: Roof, W.С. (1999) Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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that modern belief systems are made up of available resources available in a wide market of symbols. However, the extreme spread of small narratives due to individualization cannot be considered a completely chaotic fragmentation. Individuals are free to construct their own "religious solutions", but the availability of the symbolic resources used actually has some limitations. The first such restriction is the cultural environment; the second is the access of a particular individual to certain resources. The new use of certain elements taken from different sources is determined to a certain extent by the way a given social environment interprets the traditions available in the "market". For example, French Buddhism, which is now being "invented" with great success, consists largely of a series of cliches that link Buddhism - in complete isolation from historical Buddhism - with its alleged moral flexibility and tolerance of other religions - qualities that appeal to the modern individual. It is obvious that this kind of newly invented Buddhism is most widespread in those segments of the French population that are most committed to this new individualistic culture. We should also not forget that in this game of designing your own personal religions, different skills and abilities of people are shown. A forty-year-old businessman who graduated from a prestigious university, lives in the center of Berlin and spends a third of his life on business trips, is unlikely to" master " his personal belief system in the same way as a thirty-year-old cleaner who recently arrived from the Caribbean. The social logic of spiritual do-it-yourself composition cannot be understood without taking into account both the social conditions of access to symbolic resources of a given individual and the cultural conditions within which these resources are used. It is true that the easing of institutional controls promotes individual diversity of beliefs. But we should not lose sight of the fact that such a spread is not exempt from the operation of a certain cultural mechanism, the role of which is still extremely important.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the very" fund "of symbolic resources from which individuals draw elements to create their own" little religions " is not a very large part of the world.-

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vychayno has grown in all societies of high modernity (high modernity). This is due to many reasons, including the increase in the overall level of cultural awareness due to the development of the education system and the communication system; professional and geographical mobility, leading to increasing contacts with various cultural worlds, etc. I would like to point out two points, the combination of which sheds light on the growing eclecticism of modern individual "religious production".

The first point is the weakening of the family structures of religious succession, which previously from an early age gave a person the right to possess some symbolic baggage that he inherited from previous generations and was supposed to pass on to descendants. One of the characteristic features of the modern religious scene is that religious identity is no longer inherited, or at least it is happening less and less often. This gap in continuity is the result of a number of factors that were part of the secularization process. The pace of social and economic change, geographical and labor migrations, and some cultural transformations have shattered the structures of plausibility within which inherited religious identities were formed. The prescriptive power of religious meanings transmitted within the family has been undermined by the competition of faiths and other normative systems that has been established in a pluralistic society. More recently, the imperative of "transmitting faith" itself has begun to provoke an increasingly harsh backlash, making individual choice a crucial factor in religious life. In our societies, it is becoming more and more natural to believe that each individual should choose for himself/herself, according to his / her own taste, a certain tradition with which he / she will identify himself / herself; the intervention of parents in this process, although considered partially justified, now plays no more than a supporting role.

Further, in addition to the weakening of symbolic supports that previously guaranteed the early integration of individuals into a given religious tradition (a process that is usually described as the decline or disappearance of "religious culture" among younger generations), the range of all possible symbols available outside of special access codes has expanded phenomenally. Abundance of religious Sai-

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The Internet market is a perfect illustration of this new "bazaar of meanings", through which individuals move and acquire whatever they want. Along with this explosion of virtual religion, religious stories are widely covered on television, in films, and in leading newspapers, thereby providing an incredible amount of information, no matter how superficial this information may be. Two-thirds of French teenagers have never been to Mass or Sunday school; but they have no doubt seen films like "Little Buddha, ""Seven Days in Tibet," or "The Witness"; they have gained some insight into Jewish holidays or Ramadan, the New Age, and "spiritual life". ecology"; their first knowledge of the gospels is most likely drawn from a successful popular musical. Thus, they discovered for themselves, albeit in a simplified and not very reliable form, a large number of cultural, religious and spiritual worlds that were completely inaccessible to their grandparents. In Europe, it is often said about the dangers, and even about the impending cultural catastrophe, which can cause such a chaotic "dispersion" of superficial cultural references everywhere. The fact remains that the individual builds up his spiritual and religious microcosm from a kaleidoscope of elements scattered everywhere, almost always torn out of the symbolic syntax that would allow them to be adequately "read". Well, we should just proceed from this fact, and not vainly regret those bygone times when religious and ideological socialization at an early age contributed to the creation of compact, stable identities, clearly distinguishable from each other and socially identifiable.

The greater the individualization of beliefs, the greater their homogeneity

Does this fragmentation of personal religious structures mean that it is no longer possible to find common views in our societies? Or, to put it another way, does all this mean that religious faith no longer plays any role in creating any common value systems? These questions are not easy to answer. Abandoning the institutional establishment of "true" religious beliefs and expanding the range of meanings and symbols available to individuals does not mean only the fragmentation of small religious systems. Simultaneously, in a paradoxical way,

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the same liberalization of the symbol market leads to the opposite process-the standardization of these small narratives, a standardization that makes possible, due to cultural globalization, their worldwide network distribution. This trend towards standardization is an absolutely obvious consequence of the very mechanisms of the current symbolic economy, which is increasingly consonant with the general laws of the market.

The fact is that the economic logic of standardizing mass-consumption products, as well as liberalizing the competition system, has established itself in all areas of production, from ordinary goods to artistic products. The same logic applies to symbolic production. Although it is true that the explanation of religious phenomena by means of economic categories sometimes seems a very dubious procedure, it seems to me quite permissible to use them in this case, however, without direct analogy (in a non-analogous manner). The standardization of symbol production, as in any other sphere, is a direct consequence of liberalization, which, in turn, was caused by the elimination of the institutional monopoly on truth.

Examples of such standardization of symbol production can be found in Charismatic Catholicism or Evangelical Protestantism (especially Pentecostal), where "minimum creeds" are becoming increasingly common, which can be summed up as "God loves you, Jesus will save you, and you can be healed." A theological justification for such a "credo" is not required, and its practical effectiveness must be confirmed by experience by each individual believer. This " doctrinal reduction "is accompanied by an increase in emotional religiosity within these movements, which openly seeks to neglect" intelligence " in favor of emotional experience in the presence of the Holy Spirit. This theological minimalism, which reduces the relationship with the transcendent to a simple emotional and personal affinity with the divine, makes it possible to effectively adapt the content of the sermon to the aspirations of modern individualism for personal self-realization. However, this "religiosity reduced to affect" is by no means, as is often claimed, a recent invention of the so-called "postmodernism". On the contrary, it is the culmination of a longthe modern process, in which people began to think of themselves as beings endowed with an inner life, and their own

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presence in the world is no longer in the context of some order of things or divine will, but rather as a search for happiness and well-being. Charles Taylor, describing a broad panorama of this process, begins it with St. Augustine, continues it with Descartes, and brings it to the present day.5 From the point of view of spiritual history, the main stage of this process, after the Reformation and the radical establishment of religious individualism, was the great spiritual movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the invention of the "friendly God".

By the way, it should be noted that this emotional internationalization of the divine coincided with the" relegation "of the deistic" Great Watchmaker " to a distant heaven, where He refrains from interfering in any way with human history. But this spiritual dynamic took on an entirely new development with the advent of what Jean Baudrillard called "psychological modernity,"6 with the advent of modern self-care. Faith becomes the main active force of individual self-realization, and this is the central motif of modern religiosity. Frequent mention of the consonance of individual spiritual projects (based on the principle: "we all talk about the same thing and strive for the same thing") it allows us to assume the presence of a common "core of religiosity". However, the content of this "core" becomes thinner and loses its meaning as it becomes clear that it is the personal goals that each individual strives for that become more and more significant.

This is the key point of standardizing the production of spiritual goods, as well as the process of marginal differentiation that accompanies it. While all products offered on the consumer market fall under a small number of standard types, the individual consumer of these products must find among them the answer to individual expectations, and preserve their absolute uniqueness. This dialectic of standardizing symbolic products and at the same time over-personalizing the forms in which they are presented to believers ' choice is one of the most important features of new spiritual trends both inside and outside the church.-

5. Taylor, Ch. (1989) Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

6. Baudrillard, J. (1980) "Modernite", in Encyclopedia Universalis. Vol.11. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis.

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local churches. This dual trend of standardization and personalization, which can be easily detected in all spheres of consumption, can be conceptualized in the religious sphere as privatized access to symbolic goods-a principle that is increasingly replacing the previous collective or semi-collective principles corresponding to the institutional and family transmission of religious identities.

The greater the uniformity of beliefs, the greater the religious "migrations"

The homogenization of beliefs is clearly contributing to the" migration " of believers, who are building their spiritual paths with less regard for the boundaries of denominations and communities. All of this brings the spiritual realm into contact with the realms of therapy, psychology, or even "personal and professional performance management." There is a "pilgrim" type of religiosity - conscious, individual and mobile; weakly or completely independent of norms; easily modified; external to the routine of an individual's daily life. Here it should be emphasized that such" spiritual routes " are characterized by a quality of fluidity, due to the standardization of the offer, which allows seekers to find again and again different forms of religiosity that are close to modern individual needs - first of all, the individual right to realize their own subjectivity.

There are two other factors that encourage believers to move beyond their core communities and religious traditions.

The first factor is the religious renewal caused by the "migrations" themselves, which in turn further enhances the homogenization effect. Believers are constantly on the move, borrowing elements from various and accessible resources, weaving them into the fabric of their own beliefs along the way. But at the same time, it is quite possible to imagine how these individual products are grouped together using the mechanism of mutual recognition (mutual authentication) that occurs during network interactions: individuals turn to this mechanism in search of decisive confirmation of their own creativity of meanings. Formed con-

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glomerations lead to the emergence of a new synthesis of beliefs, which, based on various source resources, build bridges between different religious worlds. These bridges are essentially thematic or practical forms of meaning transfer from one religious sphere to another, and such a transition further contributes to the mobility of the believer. As a result, we find the appearance of certain "converters" that, due to their polysemy, allow us to connect chains of meanings that go back to different religious traditions. In this context, a striking example is reincarnation, loosely interpreted, not in the Buddhist way, as a new chance for a successful life, bypassing the dead ends and failures of the current life. Another extremely important thematic "converter" is the idea of healing, which establishes a transition between traditional religious systems (where healing is linked to the idea of salvation, which it both heralds and brings closer) and modern accents on the centrality of the body in the process of Self-construction. There are also "practical converters" that make it easier to move from one experiential context to another, from one symbolic system to another: thus, the dissemination of meditation techniques with references to different religious traditions is an interesting example for analyzing the phenomenon of religious migrations.

The second factor contributing to the migration of believers is the development of communications that form global networks of exchanges, through which believers receive confirmation and mutual recognition of their own, individual synthetic belief systems. This is confirmed, as already mentioned, by the rapid growth of religious pages and lively forums on spiritual topics on the Internet. The study of the consequences of this phenomenon is just beginning - not only in the sense of standardizing the means of expression set by the Network itself (communication style, non-ticket conventions, etc.), but also in the sense of abstracting and virtualizing, in fact, the disembodation effect that occurs during such communications. Such abstraction further enhances the uniformity of forms of religious expression, since it makes the relationship of dialogue radically less significant, which, according to the key principles of religious modernity, requires mutual recognition of beliefs.

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The greater the number of migrations among believers, the greater the need for community niches. Paradoxes of joining a community

The most surprising paradox of this whole situation is this: the more beliefs circulate, the less they are able to create tangible membership and, consequently, the greater the need for communities that can develop into intensive forms of religious socialization. The incredible circulation of beliefs, particularly through various media outlets, undermines the link between belief and belonging - almost to the point of breaking this link. The individual choice of certain beliefs is increasingly separated from the process of socialization, the involvement of individuals - even to a limited extent - in any tangible groups. Communication within any group of people who consider themselves to be like-minded spiritual people is maintained only thanks to a minimal set of common elements that have a global circulation. You can think of the extraordinary popularity of Paolo Coelho's books, translated into all languages and sold millions of copies; or the media success of the Dalai Lama's works. Under these conditions, the global circulation of" supports " for faith - both extremely fragmented and standardized at the same time, and in increasingly loose and even virtual networks - leads to the disappearance of those forms of inter-individual exchange that are necessary for the confirmation of beliefs, for their at least minimal stabilization.

The whole paradox of religious modernity lies in the fact that the extreme fluidity of beliefs, which indicates the liberation of individuals from the custody of institutionally established meanings, rarely allows you to get the minimum certainty necessary to create a personal identity-because individual autonomy in all spheres requires such certainty. These individuals claim the right to manage their own spiritual pursuits and clearly prefer the authenticity of personal experience over any form of conformity to certain imposed truths that religious institutions claim to be the guardians of. But despite all this, people do not lose the need for dialogue with others and testimony to others about their experiences. Therefore, with the help of existing connections, people are still the same as before.-

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mu strive to have "shared certainties", which, however, do not contradict the individualization of beliefs, and even on the contrary. To understand that the trend towards individualization is not in any way inconsistent with the search for a community in which a person can claim their personal results, we must remember that the need for subjectivization cannot be met only through the personalized consumption of increasingly standard symbolic products. A more fundamental goal of subjectivization is to give meaning to individual experiences. Therefore, it requires the construction of a narrative-an operation that is inseparable from the" ability to speak", without which, in turn, the creation of a subjective identity is impossible. A subject without this ability to "speak" does not exist. And this ability implies a comparison with another, without which neither language nor recognition is possible.

However, it is the act of recognition through interaction and dialogue that makes possible both the consolidation of individually produced meanings and their representation in society. In other words, there is no other way to convey spiritual experience, except in a situation where an individual meets another who is able to confirm: "What makes sense for you also makes sense for me." If such a statement is made in a religious mode, it requires some means of confirmation and recognition, with the help of which the subjective and objective connection of the individual with a certain religious pedigree is built. Referring to such a pedigree in the past and setting a course for the future, in fact, is, in the aggregate, the structural axis of any "religious identity". Even if, in the modern context of faith fluidity, the paths of religious identification are often unpredictable and variable, they nevertheless take the form of constructing an imaginary system that positions individuals within a particular symbolic genealogy. It is this construction that ensures the integration of successive, fragmentary individual experiences into a meaningful duration.

And yet, what is happening today? To some extent, we can say that the decline or even weakening of the great institutionalized truths is a loss, a problem for individuals. After all, if truths are no longer offered "from the outside", if the burden of one's own search for certainty is placed on the individual himself,

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then he or she is forced to bear all the psychological and social costs of such a search, must have sufficient access to symbolic and cultural resources, to those discussion networks within which he or she can testify about his or her search and more firmly justify it in the process of contacts with others. If these means are not available, then efforts to justify and recognize beliefs take other forms, much more structured: then there is an entry into religious communities in which you can find a single ready-made code of meanings, with a solid collective justification for it. Paradoxically, the call for the re-creation of such a community, held together by a common idea, may appear at the very turning point of tangible socio-religious ties. In such cases, there may be a need for a "base-platform of certainty" within the compressed space of a small community; within such a group, individuals are united by an intense sense of commitment to some common truth, which can be guaranteed by the authority of a charismatic leader and /or a sense of unity of"kindred spirits". In such extreme cases, the need for firm certainty within the community can lead to the" closure " of the group, the accumulation of "bunker values" and "shelter identity" in it, which becomes as less permeable to the outside world as possible.

Individualization, which dissolves inherited cultural identities, thus leads (like the other side of the coin!) to the formation, activation, and even invention of small community identities - compact, robust, and reward-oriented. This paradox correlates with the modern spread of "cults" and also leads to the strengthening of traditionalist and fundamentalist tendencies in large religions. This ambiguous component of religious modernity is not only an interesting subject for sociologists to ponder, but also a key political problem for society as a whole, and a challenge for democracy.

Translated from English by Alexander Aghajanyan

Bibliography/References

Baudrillard, J. (1980) "Modernite", in Encyclopedia Universalis. Vol.11. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis.

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Campiche, R. J. et al. (eds.) (1992) Croire en Suisse (s). Lausanne et Guneve: L'Age d'Homme.

Lambert, Y. (1994) "Un paysage religieux en profonde evolution", in Riffault, H. (ed.) Les valeurs des Francais. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Roof, W. C. (1993) A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. N.Y.: HarperCollins.

Roof, W. С. (1999) Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Taylor, Ch. (1989) Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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