BERGER, L’ERETICO RILUTTANTE

: Peter Berger was one of the most authoritative theorists of the secularization’s paradigm. In 1999 he himself announced that this assumption was wrong. Outside of Europe and, partially, of North America, in the rest of the world religions ap-peared to him, in fact, furiously vital, amidst spiritual awakenings, revolutionary mobilizations and conquests of political power. The author wonders if it was a true epistemological turning point that Berger experienced and recounted in his resear-ches before and after 1999. The hypothesis put forward is that, on closer inspection, Berger, while changing the point of view in the analysis of the religious phenomenon, he has always remained a reluctant heretic. That he was first convinced of the decline of religion in the modern world and, subsequently, forced to make self-cri-ticism does not mean that Berger was not completely a sociologist faithful to the methodological rule of studying the religious phenomenon etsi Deus non daretur. The fact that he was a believer did not prevent him in any case from a heretical at-titude with respect to his personal faith. A heretic who has never succumbed to the temptation to apologize for his faith.