This looks like a fascinating conversation between Albert Mohler and Peter Berger, which you can listen to (or read the rush transcript).
They talk about secularization theory (and how Berger’s mind has changed), Berger’s line that America is a country of Indians ruled by Swedes, “plausibility structures” (a term Berger invented), Berger’s latest book (In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic), what he’s working on now, and sundry other matters.
In the beginning of the interview Mohler talks about his intellectual debt to Berger:
When I look back at my own intellectual pilgrimage and development it’s clear to me that the influence of Peter Berger has intersected with my own thinking at many times. He has influenced me and caused me to think, sometimes I’m sure, what he would not necessarily want me to think. But that’s the way intellectual engagement works. An author writes a book, a reader reads it, a mind is shaped, minds meet , and the conversation continues. My honor today is to invite you to think in public as I have this conversation with Professor Peter Berger.
Peter Berger is one of the best known sociologists and intellectuals in the world today. He has influenced successive generations through his writings, books, and speaking especially on the issue of secularization and what it means. He writes from inside the Christian community and understanding the larger world of sociology. But he’s also able to speak with a particular expertise that has world renown to the questions that so many of us are trying to figure out today having to do with the placement, the intellectual placement, of Christianity in the modern world.
