"In the course of my career as a sociologist of religion I made one big mistake and had one big insight (arguably not such a bad record). The big mistake, which I shared with almost everyone who worked in this area in the 1950s and '60s, was to believe that modernity necessarily leads to a decline in religion. The big insight was that pluralism undermines the taken-for-grantedness of beliefs and values. It took me some time to relate the insight to the mistake. And it has only been very recently that I understood the implications for the position of Protestantism in the contemporary world.

Modernity, as has become increasingly clear, is not necessarily linked to secularization. It is so in a few areas of the world, notably in Western Europe, and in some internationally visible groups, notably the humanisticly educated intelligentsia. Most of the world today is as religious as it ever was and, in a good many locales, more religious than ever. The reasons for the above-mentioned exceptions are intriguing, but cannot concern us here.

Pluralism, for our purposes, can simply be defined as the coexistence and social interaction of people with very different beliefs, values and lifestyles. This state of affairs is indeed generally associated with modernity, but it does not necessarily lead to secularization, as is most clearly shown by America, a "lead society" (to use Talcott Parson's term) both for modernity and for pluralism. Rather, the effects of pluralism are more subtle, but nonetheless of great importance: pluralism influences not so much what people believe as how they believe.

Throughout most of history human beings have lived in situations in which there was general consensus on the nature of reality and on the norms by which one should lead one's life. This consensus was almost everywhere grounded in religion and it was taken for granted. The pluralistic situation necessarily changes this, for reasons that are not at all mysterious. They have to do with the basic fact that we are social beings and that our view of reality is shaped by socialization, first in childhood and later in the relationships of adult life. Where socialization processes are uniform, this view of reality is held with a high degree of taken-for-granted certainty. Pluralism ensures that socialization processes are not uniform and, consequently, that the view of reality is much less firmly held.

Put differently, certainty is now much harder to come by. People may still hold the same beliefs and values that were held by their predecessors in more uniform situations, but they will hold them in a different manner: what before was given through the accident of birth now becomes a matter of choice. Pluralism brings on an era of many choices and, by the same token, an era of uncertainty.

Historically, of course, Protestantism was itself an important factor in bringing about this situation, and not only in America. It was the Protestant Reformation that undermined once and for all the unity of Western Christendom. Its principle of individual conscience carried within it from the beginning the potential for an ever-expanding variety of Christian groupings. This development was not at all intended by the Reformers, but history is always the arena of unintended consequences.

As to America, the combination of its immigrant population and its regime of religious liberty necessarily made it into the most pluralistic society in the modern world. Eventually every religious tradition, however reluctantly, was profoundly affected by the simple fact that it no longer controlled a captive population of adherents, that the latter now had the choice of staying on or going somewhere else. Protestantism, especially American Protestantism, had to come to terms with this situation first. It is still faced with its very great challenge.

There are individuals who thrive on a situation, in which nothing can be taken for granted, in which they are faced with a multitude of choices. Perhaps they could be called the virtuosi of pluralism. But for most people the situation makes for a great deal of unease. This response may derive from profound aspects of human nature. There is what John Dewey has called "the quest for certainty" - Certainty at least when it comes to the most important questions of life. The clash between the built-in uncertainty of the pluralistic situation and the urge for at least a measure of certainty helps explain a rather curious phenomenon in contemporary culture - the alternation of relativism and absolutist claims to truth.

To say that nothing can be taken for granted any longer means that all claims to truth are relativized. In the extreme case this leads to a kind of nihilism which asserts that not only can one not be certain of anything but that the very idea of truth is illusory. A number of so-called postmodernist theories have legitimated this idea, but it can also be found among people who have never heard of currently fashionable French philosophers. In this view, everyone has the right to his own opinion and the only remaining virtue is an all-embracing tolerance. At first such relativism is experienced as a great liberation, especially for individuals coming out of some narrow provincial milieu.

After a while, though, the liberation itself is experienced as burden, precisely because of the aforementioned yearning for certainty. At that point the allegedly liberated individuals become susceptible to any offer of renewed certainty. This susceptibility leads to a potential for conversion to any doctrine that comes along with an absolute claim to truth. The convert now embraces a pose of unshakable certainty. Not to put too fine a point to it, he becomes a fanatic.

This movement has often been observed among converts to this or that "fundamentalist" sect, whose doctrine may be religious but could just as well be secular. The recipe on offer by all such group is always the same: Come and join us and we will give you the certainty for which you yearn. Then the nihilist becomes a fanatic. However, the tightly knit community into which the convert has been initiated may once more be felt to be constraining, as much or more so than the old provincial or traditional milieu. Then a new alleged liberation may occur, and so one moves back again into the relativizing dynamic of the pluralistic situation.

The dialectic between relativism and the competing claims to absolute truth is ongoing. In every nihilist there is a fanatic screaming to get out, and conversely every fanatic is a potential nihilist.

Most people of course, are neither fanatics nor nihilists, for them the dialectic plays itself out in less extreme form. But they too are caught in the dilemma of reconciling their nostalgia for certainty with a social reality in which such certainty is very hard to come by.

There are people of course, who claim to have certain knowledge when it comes to their religious affirmations. If one assumes that God exists, one must inevitably concede the possibility that he has disclosed himself to some human's experience more directly than others. Most of us find ourselves in a very different situation.

Whether we like it or not, if we are honest religion for most of us (except for the people who has had direct experience with God, can not be based on proven knowledge but only on belief (and faith). If one acknowledges that one's religious existence is based on faith and not on knowledge one must find a way to articulate this fact.

In order to seek certainty one should have his own religious experience. Probably a less strong certainty could be achieved by associating and trusting the experience of another fellow human being.