Sheltering under the sacred canopy - Peter Berger and Xunzi

The article brings Xunzi's views on religious practice into conversation wi th Peter Berger's sociological understanding of religion in an effort both to deepen our understanding of their theories concerning the constructed na ture of religious worldviews and to consider critically the plausibility of their arguments. The author suggests that comparison of Berger's theory in "The Sacred Canopy" with Xunzi's account of the "Dao" enables us to explai n why certain weaknesses arise in Berger's theory - namely, the difficulty of imagining how the self could ever escape the sacred canopy to achieve au thenticity and the tension between his assertions about the precariousness of the social order and the apparent stability of the social order suggeste d by his descriptions. By uncovering Berger's hidden assumptions about the self, comparison with Xunzi's work also suggests a way the problems might b e remedied.