Allow me to regale you with the Berger hypothesis on why Evangelical Protestantism is doing so well in much of the contemporary world: Because it is the most modern of any large religion on offer today. I am well aware of the fact that this contradicts the prevailing view of Evangelicals in academia and the media—so brilliantly expressed in President Obama’s priceless characterization of a demographic not voting for him in the 2008 election as economically challenged people “clinging to their guns and their God”. In other words, seen from the perspective of Harvard Yard these are the great unwashed out of step with modernity. But curiously this is also how diehard Evangelical fundamentalists see themselves—as defenders of the true faith against the intellectual and moral aberrations of modernity. They are both wrong.

Evangelicals believe that one cannot be born a Christian, one must be “born again” by a personal decision to accept Jesus. What can be more modern than this? This view of the Christian faith provides a unique combination of individualism with a strong community of fellow believers supporting the individual in his decision. It allows individuals to be both religious and modern. That is a pretty powerful package. Is my hypothesis just an expression of my own faith? Definitely not. I am not Pentecostal nor any other sort of Evangelical. But if (instead of being an incurable evangelisch Lutheran), I were Evangelical but also an objective sociologist, I would look at the empirical evidence and find the hypothesis plausible, and worthy of exploration. Am I sure of this interpretation? Of course not; science, including social science, does not lead to certainties, only probabilities. This is not the place to develop my hypothesis in greater detail. Let me just suggest that to be a Saxon Evangelical is not as much of a contradiction as it may seem, and that such an individual can find congenial places of worship from Sao Paulo, to Lagos, to Seoul (not to mention Dallas).