ABSTRACT
Identify formation in a pluralized society is much less stable than the same process in a simpler social system. The more pluralized society is shot through with countless potentially conflicting loyalties, prospects, and ways of succeeding and failing. When pluralism brings us an abundance of religious choices, religion's cohesive force may be badly weakened. In good part, this may be due to the fact that any one set of religious definitions of reality is now subject to challenge by one or more others, and the differences are known to the public at large. In recognition that technology-intensive modernization is not without substantial and pervasively painful consequences, Berger frequently invokes Durkheim's well-known concept, anomie. Berger takes the contrast between the two areas to mean that, on balance, modernity is not a necessary and sufficient condition for secularization. The rate of secularization in the United States is further diminished among churches that are relatively conservative, adhering to time-honored beliefs and practices.
