The Sacred Canopy Quotes

“religion has been the historically most widespread and effective instrumentality of legitimation.”
― Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

“Religion legitimates so effectively because it relates the precarious reality constructions of empirical societies with the ultimate reality.”
― Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

“THE FOLLOWING ARGUMENT is intended to be an exercise in sociological theory. Specifically, it seeks to apply a general theoretical perspective derived from the sociology of knowledge to the phenomenon of religion. While at certain points the argument moves on levels of considerable abstraction, it never leaves (at least not intentionally) the frame of reference of the empirical discipline of sociology.”
― Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

“most historical relationships are ironical in character, or, to put it differently, that the course of history has little to do with the intrinsic logic of ideas that served as causal factors in it”
― Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion

“Activity becomes process. Choices become destiny. Men then live in the world they themselves have made as if they were fated to do so by powers that are quite independent of their own world-constructing enterprises.”
― Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion