Was Weber wrong?

Malise Ruthven

  • The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World by Gilles Kepel
    Polity, 200 pp, £39.50, December 1993, ISBN 0 7456 0999 6
  • Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran by Martin Riesebrodt
    California, 272 pp, £30.00, September 1993, ISBN 0 520 07463 7

In the Sixties it was widely assumed that politics were becoming divided from religion and that as societies became more industrialised religious belief and practice would be restricted to private thoughts and actions. The processes of modern industrialism, which Max Weber had seen as being characterised by depersonalised relationships and increasing bureaucratisation, were leading, if not to the final ‘death of God’, at least to the ‘disenchantment of the world’. The numinous forces that had underpinned the medieval cosmos would be psychologised, subjectivised and demythologised.

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