Religion as a Chain of Memory

Hervieu-Léger, Danièle

Biographies & Memoirs

Polity

This is a major new account of the nature of religion and its changing role in modern societies, by one of the most original French sociologists writing on religion today. In a stylish and accessible study, Hervieu-Léger addresses the problem of how to distinguish religion from other systems of meaning in modern Western society. 
The crucial point, she argues, is the chain of memory and tradition which makes the individual believer a member of the community. From this point of view, religion is the ideological, symbolic and social device by which individual and collective awareness of belonging to a lineage of believers is created and controlled. Modern societies, Hervieu-L&amp;eacute:ger argues, are not more rational than past societies, but rather suffer from a kind of collective amnesia. They are less and less capable of maintaining a living collective 'chain' of memory as a source of meaning. However, as major religious traditions decline, a range of surrogate memories appears, which also permit the contraction of collective identities. These 'small memories' are creating an upsurge of 'emotional communities' and the affirmation of ethno-religions within Europe and elsewhere. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of theology, religious studies and sociology.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

For most of the last twenty years, sociologists have studied the “decline” of religion in the modern world—a decline they saw as a defining feature of modernity, which promotes materialism over spirituality. The revival and political strength of varying religious traditions around the world, however, has forced sociologists to reconsider.This paradox has led Hervieu-Léger to undertake a sociological redefinition and reexamination of religion. For religion to endure in the modern world, she finds, it must have  deep roots in traditions and times in which it was not defined as irrelevant. This reasoning leads her to develop the concept of a “chain of memory”—a process by which individual believers become members of a community that links past, present, and future members. Thus, like cultural tradition, religion may be understood as a shared understanding with a collective memory that enables it to draw upon the deep well of its past for nourishment in the increasingly secular present.Hervieu-Legér also argues that the modern secular societies of the West have not, as is commonly assumed, outgrown or found secular substitutes for religious traditions; nor are they more “rational” than past societies. Rather, modern societies have become “amnesiacs,” no longer able to maintain the chain of memory that binds them to their religious pasts. Ironically, however, even as the modern world is destroying and losing touch with its traditional religious bases, it is also creating the need for a spiritual life and is thus opening up a space that only religion can fill.

Religion & Spirituality

Agnosticism

Rutgers University Press

For most of the last twenty years, sociologists have studied the “decline” of religion in the modern world—a decline they saw as a defining feature of modernity, which promotes materialism over spirituality. The revival and political strength of varying religious traditions around the world, however, has forced sociologists to reconsider.
This paradox has led Hervieu-Léger to undertake a sociological redefinition and reexamination of religion. For religion to endure in the modern world, she finds, it must have deep roots in traditions and times in which it was not defined as irrelevant. This reasoning leads her to develop the concept of a “chain of memory”—a process by which individual believers become members of a community that links past, present, and future members. Thus, like cultural tradition, religion may be understood as a shared understanding with a collective memory that enables it to draw upon the deep well of its past for nourishment in the increasingly secular present. Hervieu-Legér also argues that the modern secular societies of the West have not, as is commonly assumed, outgrown or found secular substitutes for religious traditions; nor are they more “rational” than past societies. Rather, modern societies have become “amnesiacs,” no longer able to maintain the chain of memory that binds them to their religious pasts. Ironically, however, even as the modern world is destroying and losing touch with its traditional religious bases, it is also creating the need for a spiritual life and is thus opening up a space that only religion can fill.

History

World

Le Pèlerin et le Converti: LA RELIGION EN MOUVEMENT

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Flammarion

Catholicisme, la fin d'un monde

Bayard

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