A sociological look at religion in the 20th century, the process of secularization and its affects on religion, as well as it's philosophical and theological implications of it. The title of the second chapter sums up this book: "Relativizing the Relativizers." In other words, if Marx and Freuerbach turned Hegel on his head, here's an effort to do the same in turn to them. In other words, it deals with the issue of whether religion is a human projection. "Yes," says Berger, "But that doesn't necessarily invalidate it," he continues.

This is not some "God-is-dead" theological exercise, nor is it liberal, secular theology a la Harvey Cox's The Secular City. It does provide sociology's point of view on religion from a sociologist who is himself a believer. It takes seriously the threat posed to traditional dogma that sociology so forcefully poses, concedes its weaknesses, and yet doesn't conceded the fallacy and futility of religious belief.

All this leads up to a pluralistic view of religion: fundamentalists and literalists beware.

Surprisingly, the best part of the book is when Berger switches hats and becomes a bit of a philosopher of religion. While he doesn't call them "proofs," he does provide in the second half of the book "signals" that the divine exists.

This is one of my favorite books, and it has withstood the test of multiple reads through the years.