The following is an excerpt from the lecture given by Dr. Peter Berger on November 12, sponsored by the Buxton Initiative.

The occasion for this invitation is a book that I have just published- it came out a couple of years ago.  The title is In Praise of Doubt and the subtitle is, “How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic.”

It’s coauthored with a friend of mine, Arthur Zegerfeld, a sociologist in the Netherlands. I don’t think I’ll spend time now talking about how this book came about.  One of the staff said you would want personal stories and if you really want to know personal stories from me, I can tell you afterwards, including my long stint at Montana state prison and other interesting events from my life.

So let me, for the short time we have right now, I will talk about the main argument of the book and then we can take it in any direction we may dispute.

In the way, the book is an extended commentary on a single sentence, which I only came across the full text after the book was written.  So it’s not in the book.  The sentence is spoken by Oliver Cromwell in one of his addresses to Parliament.  I don’t know the exact occasion of why he said this, but something Parliament did annoyed him very much.

And here is what he said: “My brethren, I beseech you by the bowels of Christ, methink that you may be mistaken.”  I understand “the bowels of Christ” in 18th century English simply meant in the name of Christ.

But I love that sentence.  “I beseech you by the bowels of Christ methink that you may be mistaken…”  He was suggesting they should have some doubts about whatever their position was. I don’t know how far Cromwell himself lived by that maxim – I don’t think he was much into doubts, but I know he had some troubles of conscience before he had the kings head cut off.

But that’s irrelevant.

Um, what is the book essentially about? Well, its partly sociological analysis and then we move from sociology to more normative questions that have to do with religion, morality, and politics.  But simply analytically, what we argue is that for reasons that are not mysterious at all, but which can be empirically investigated, in modern societies, even modernizing societies, there is a conflict between two extreme attitudes which could be – I’ll define them in a moment the way we use them– between relativist and fundamentalist.

And we argue that those two attitudes are two sides of the same coin.  The coin is what we call pluralization and it’s endemic to modernity.

What pluralization means is that people in the contemporary world, almost anywhere in the world now, not just so called developed societies are face with the situation in which they are surrounded by a plurality of different values, beliefs, worldviews.  Now that has always existed in certain places.  For example, the world in which Christianity first came in the first and second centuries – that was a pluralistic society.

Alexandria probably had as many different places of worship as Sixteenth Street in Washington.  I never quite understood this, if you take the path from the White House going north, after a couple of blocks, every block has some kind of religious edifice.  I don’t know how this came about, probably a zoning issue.

But what I found intriguing is that these people must talk to each other. I’m sure they talk about parking, so the Bahai center, wants to, I’m imagining, wants to use the parking spaces of the Serbian orthodox church. But do they talk about anything except parking?

Maybe the clergy don’t, but the kids probably do.  I could tell you wonderful stories about interreligious dialogue between 6-year-old little girls.

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Well, I could go into some detail about how this, what the mechanism is, for this relativization occurs.  Because as people talk to each other, they influence each other.  Under modern conditions it becomes increasing difficult to take one’s beliefs and values for granted.  If everyone around you has the same worldview, that worldview is going to be one that’s taken for granted.  Except by unusual people like Socrates who question everything around them.

But most people – human beings are social beings.  If everyone around you thinks the world is flat, your going to take for granted that the world is flat.  Unless you’re a Socrates. And there aren’t many of those.

Now another way of putting this is, to say beliefs and values become relativized, is to say that certainty becomes more difficult to achieve. And to live in the modern world means its hard to live without certainty. Which has enormous implications. Certainly for religion. But its not just a religious issue, it’s a moral issue and it’s a political issue.

Now relativism and fundamentalism – we will define them in a moment the way we define them, obviously there are different definitions around – are two responses to the situation, which try to solve the unease which people feel with uncertainty.   Relativism in a way goes the whole way and says, well yes, we can’t know what truth is. We can’t know what norms are.  There is no truth and if there is, it’s inaccessible.  And to have any kind of convictions is basically absurd. Now there are whole bodies of theories have been built around this intuition

So-called postmodern theories are perhaps the most sophisticated way of articulating this point of view.  There is no truth, there are only narratives.  And, the worst thing you can be is not to be tolerant of other people’s narratives.

Its very important and I could go back to 6-year-old little girls.

This is not just a matter of philosophers, who teach and write books, it happens on the street. It happens with millions of people as they interact with each other.  There are some very nice empirical studies in the United States and in Western Europe where the only norm left is tolerance.  Tolerance of anything and anybody.

Let me tell you a little fantasy I have.  We have talk shows, about interreligious dialogue all over the place.  And I’m all for it, don’t misunderstand me.  But usually there are no fundamental moral disagreements between the people engaged in this dialogue.  They may differ on philosophy, religion, etc.

And I have a fantasy that the Aztec religion has not completely disappeared from the world as it has.  And you may know, you may be familiar with this – all the Mesoamerican cultures -  Mexico, Central America – had a very fundamental belief that the gods required human sacrifice.  And the most ardent practitioners of this belief were the Aztecs, who at one point in their capital, which is now Mexico City, I understand there was one festival where ten thousand people were slaughtered on the pyramid to feed the gods.

Now imagine if one of those Aztec Priests was still around, and being interviewed on American television. And the television interviewer says, “I understand that you people believe that every month, one hundred people have to be thrown into the volcano to feed the gods.  I don’t want to be judgmental.  I just want to understand you, so our viewers can view this.”  So this guy goes one about why it’s necessary. And the interviewer keeps saying to him, “I don’t want to be judgmental.  I respect you, but our viewers may have some questions now.”

I don’t think that’s a very healthy attitude.  And there are some things one should not be tolerant of.

And if the Aztec priest, if he were still around, would say, oh, freedom of religion – never mind freedom of religion, you’re not gonna throw people into the volcano, period, and I will stop you as best I can.  And I will be judgmental.

Now the other side of this is fundamentalism, which is another way of dealing with relativization, in other words, an attempt, and I define, we will define fundamentalism, as an attempt to restore or perhaps invent a fresh certainty.

And every fundamentalist movement – and by the way there are not just religious movements, there are secular fundamentalist movements – every fundamentalist movement has a promise to its recruits, which says something like this; you have always looked for certainty. We will give it to you.  You will know who you are, how you should live, what the world is.  And you will not have any doubts about it.

Unlike my imaginary television interviewer, what the fundamentalists preach of – whatever Fundamentalist ideology – has to say is, don’t you dare question our practice of throwing people into the volcano.

Shut up. And if you don’t, you will be in the next batch.  There are no doubts about this, this is what the gods have told us, and this is what must be done.

Now quite apart from philosophical issues that this raises, sociologically speaking in terms of society, I would say both of these attitudes are fundamentally bad.

Because both, each in its own way, undermines the basic consensus without which a human society cannot live.

If there are no norms about which one can be convinced, well, anything goes.  If you believe in human sacrifice, how interesting. I am not going to judge you. We’ll agree to disagree.  Impossible if that became the basic attitude in society.

Fundamentalism, of course, in a society, if that spreads society becomes divided into warring camps, in the extreme case, this leads to violence, but even if it doesn’t lead to violence communication becomes impossible, especially in democracy.  Democracy lives on compromise. Sometimes it’s dirty compromises, but it’s compromise of some sort. And when you have absolute certainty, compromise becomes impossible again. The moral consensus of society collapses.

I could go into this in enormous detail. In fact, this can be a semester course, and if you want to stay around here until the spring, I’ll be happy to give plenty of lectures.

But  without going into any of these details, let me simply say that the practical consequences of this kind of analysis is that it’s very important that people find the middle ground between relativism and fundamentalism in which there are convictions.  Religious convictions.

Moral convictions. Political convictions.

But they are not completely certain, they are not absolute.  We think that we may be mistaken. And we argue that from that point of view, doubt is a very important value. It is important politically but it is also important philosophically

And I think that in this ocean of religions in which we move today in modern societies, it is very healthy to come on cases where people really have convictions, not necessarily as fanatics.

I will conclude with a story that I like very much about such a case.

Some of you may know the wonderful three-volume history of the British Empire by James Morris. James Morris – by the way, this is irrelevant, but I can’t resist mentioning it – he had a sex change operation.  He now writes under the name of Jan Morris, and I hate to tell you, but what he wrote as James is better.  And I have a terrible suspicion that they cut off more than he intended.

[audience laughter]

But that’s uh, neither here nor there.

Anyway, in one of the stories it’s a wonderful three volume…the story he tells is great and very relevant to what we are talking about. This must have been around the 2nd half of the middle of the 19th century, a fellow by the name of General Napier conquered the Sindh for Britain.  Sindh is now part of Pakistan. And he set up British rule.

And he did that what British did wherever they went. They left indigenous culture pretty much alone as long as British rule wasn’t challenged.  But there were certain things they would never tolerate.

What they didn’t tolerate in Sindh was Sati, the burning of widows.

And one of the first decrees that General Napier issued as head of the government there, was that anyone who commits sati will be treated as a murderer. And he had a delegation of Brahmim priests who came to see him, and said, “You cannot abolish Sati.”  He said, “Yes I can. I have and I can.”

They said, “No, you cannot do this. It’s an ancient tradition of our people.”  And Napier replied, “We also have ancient traditions. When men burn a woman alive, we hang them.” Let us all follow our ancient traditions.

Now I am an ardent opponent of capital punishment.  I don’t want to hang anybody. So I am not interested in the hanging part of it.  But that robust conviction that there are certain things which cannot be tolerated, and if I have the power, which Napier had, to stop them, I will.

And burning of widows should be one of those convictions.  That doesn’t make you a fanatic at all.