Habermas Translation: Dialectic of Secularization (pt 3)

I’ve been slow to continue the Habermas translation of late for two reasons: I’m generally lazy, and I’ve been trying my best to finish a paper on Hegel (which is nearly done). For anyone who’s been waiting for the next installment, you have my apologies.

Before going to the text, however, I would like to enlist folks’ help: if anyone has any idea how to translate the German word, “regelungsbedürftig,” I would love to hear it, as it has me totally stumped. I’m also a little hesitant about how I’ve translated Einwanderungsgesellschaft. I’m sure these terms are part of the technical vocabulary of Political Science or Sociology, and so I’m less than confident in my attempts to capture them in English.

As usual, the original essay is here, my translation of Part 1 is here, and here is Part 2

Anyway, here goes the next subsection of Habermas’ essay:

The Post-Secular Society: Religious Communities in Secular Surroundings

[10] I cannot go into the details surrounding the Sociological conflicts over European secular community’s putative Sonderweg amid a global community’s religious mobilization. But given the globally collected comparative data, I have the impression that the apologists for the secularization thesis still have incredibly robust supporting evidence. The frailty of the theory of secularization consists of its early, undifferentiated conclusion, which betrayed an unfocused implementation of the concepts ‘Secularization’ and ‘Modernization.’ Nevertheless, the assertion that, in the course of their differentiation from the functional social system, Churches and religious communities have increasingly limited themselves to the core function [Kernfunktion] of pastoral praxis and must have abandoned their broad competences in other social spheres, remains true. Concomitantly, religious activity has withdrawn itself into individual forms. The Functional specialization of the systems of religion introduces an individualization of religious praxis.

[11] This said, however, José Casanova is right to point out that functional loss [maybe deficit: Funktionsverlust] and individualization need not entail a Religion’s loss of significance — in either public politics and the culture of a society, or in personal life and experience. Independently from their quantitative importance, religious communities can claim a ‘chair’ at the table of largely secularized societies. The characterization of a ‘Post-Secular Society’ applies to public consciousness in Europe today insofar as, for the time being, this latter “responds to the continuity of relgious communities in a perpetually self-secularizing environment.” (Jürgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, Frankfurt a. M. 2001, S. 13). The modified reading of the Secularization Thesis concerns less its substance and much more the prognoses of the future role of “Religion in General.” The new characterization of modern societies as ‘Post-Secular’ relates to a change in self-consciousness, which I attribute to three phenomena above all others.

[12] First, the media’s [medial] communicated perception of those worldwide conflicts, which are often presented as religious oppositions, alters public consciousness. It doesn’t even take the obtrusiveness of fundamentalist movements or the dread of religiously embellished terrorism to bring before the eyes of the majority of European citizens the relativity of their own secular state of awareness [Bewusstseinslage] on a global scale. That unsettles the secular conviction of the foreseeable disappearance of religion and rids the secular understanding of the world of any triumphalism. The awareness of living in a secular society is no longer connected to the certainty that the progressive cultural and social modernization will take place at the expense of the public and personal significance of religion.

[13] Second, Religion also gains in importance within the national public sphere. Although I am not primarily thinking of the effective promotional self-presentation [die medienwirksame Selbstdarstellung] of the Church, but rather of the fact that religious communities in the political life of secular societies increasingly assume the role of interpretative communities. They can be relevant, if they now make cogent or objectionable contributions to the themes of Public opinion and will-formation. Our global perspective on pluralistic communities prepares for such interventions a delicate sounding board, since they are always divided into political, regelungsbedürftigen conflicts of value. In the battle over the legalization of abortion or assisted suicide, on bio-ethical questions concerning reproductive medicine, on questions of animal rights and climate change — in these and similar questions, the argumentative stance is so unclear that no from the outset no path whatsoever can be agreed upon, or which party can invoke the right moral intuition.

[14] Incidently, through the demeanor and vitality of foreign religious communities, the local religious denominations also gain the same vibrancy and tenor. Nearby Muslims, if I may refer to an example that is as relevant to the Netherlands as it is to Germany, impose upon Christian citizens an encounter with a competing practice of faith. They also bring the secular citizens to a more distinct awareness of the phenomenon of a religion that makes its public appearance.

[15] The third stimulus for the change of a population’s consciosuness is, above all, professional and refugee immigration [Arbeits- und Flüchtlingsimmigration] from countries with traditionally shaped cultures. Since the 17th Century, Europe has had to learn deal with to with the religious Schisms and conflicts within the confines of its own culture and society. In the wake of immigration, however, the shrill dissonances between distinct religions coalesce with the challenges of a pluralism of forms of life, which is typical for societies with large immigrant populations [Einwanderungsgesellschaften]. It reaches out to the challenges of a pluralism of religious persuasions. In European societies, which still find themselves in the painful process of transformation into Post-Colonial immigration states [Einwanderungsgesellschaften], the question concerning the tolerant coexistence of distinct religious communities will intensify through the difficult problem of social integration of immigrant-cultures [Einwandererkulturen]. Given the conditions of a globalized job market, this intergration must also succeed in the face of the mortifying conditions of increasing social inequality. But that is another discussion entirely.