"With modernization Europe became more Christian too"

Saying that the Qur'an is read more in the modern period in Turkey should of course not be taken as a flattering of modernization.

The greater reading of the Qur'an with modernization is a situation related in general to the spread and formalization of the book, of book culture, of the printing press and of education. This has in fact been a development that has directly affected our religious perceptions, the absorption of the Book by the masses, and the very quality of our religious culture.

Before railing against modernization, before getting stuck on what has been lost from us with modernization, it is both a matter of fairness and very important, for being able to develop languages suited to the spirit of this era, to also note what kinds of possibilities and opportunities this new era has brought to people.

In proportion to the development of the printing press, and especially of formal and informal education, access to the Qur'an and the basic religious sources has become immensely easier for everyone. This will of course have a direct effect on religious authority institutions and on perceptions of them. Just as in an environment where no one has any knowledge other than what the hodja teaches we would not expect the hodja's authority to continue in the same way in this period, this will inevitably be reflected in the quality of the hodja's sermon.

Therefore, saying that Qur'anic education, teaching and even awareness have developed more within these developments, which in general coincide with the Republican period, does not mean attributing this matter to the policy and will of the Republic. As we have said before, on the contrary, what was expected even of Qur'an translations in the early period of the Republic was not the conveying of the Qur'an's message but, on the contrary, that its content, imagined to be superstition and myth, would be seen by the masses as well, and that through this effect the authority of religion would be toppled.

Of course, the exact opposite of what was expected and desired happened. The more the Qur'an was read, the more people believed in its content, the more they became attached to it, and the more they became determined to fulfill what it requires.

This was clearly the uncalculated, untargeted and unwanted result of the action. The Qur'an's being read more by the masses also changed the nature of religious authority, brought the authority of the book to the fore in place of the authority of the hodja, and in its wake opened the way to a process that makes everyone an authority. Where this has brought us is plain. To those who see more traces of secularization in the present situation I would suggest following the process backward, but I cannot be very optimistic in this suggestion, because in this matter some feelings that take our feet off the ground come into play in truly reading history. An approach that sanctifies the past in advance, for example, installs a perception that everything is going from bad to worse, unquestioned, at the wheel of all our readings.

If truth be told, the process we have lived through in this respect is not very different from the one in the West. For example, in the West there is an almost unquestioned rote belief that secularization reached its peak with modernization and that religious authority diminished. Yet this thesis has recently been almost turned inside out, especially by the startling research and theses of the famous sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman.

In their research on the European case, Berger and Luckmann even say that Christianity lived its real golden age in the modern period. The religiosity valid in the Middle Ages, in which religiosity is assumed to have been more dominant, especially in rural areas, consisted of a paganism with unclear boundaries and discourse. Look for Christianity in the true sense there and you will find that the content of the existing Christianity is no different from paganism.

Yes, there was an unquestionable authority that Christian priests had established and maintained, through the influence of the feudal lords, over ignorant villagers who did not know the Gospel and had no opportunity to read it. But it was out of the question for those priests to allow this authority to be converted into a religiosity that the villagers could choose through their conscious, informed and individual evaluations and wills.

Frankly, the Church was in no hurry to convey its own religious-theological approach to the peasant masses. The masses' obedience was enough, and in return for this obedience there was an ontological security guarantee given by the Church. This security was, at the simplest, if it were a plot of land in paradise, the key to the gate of paradise, and in this exchange, in Spinoza's phrase, the cunning peasant could even think he had come out ahead by deceiving God.

In fact the famous German sociologist Max Weber had objected much earlier to the praises made of the European peasantry in the name of religiosity. According to him, the image of the "pious peasant" is a simple fiction of European romanticism that idealizes its rural past. Both peasants and primitive societies resort to the magic provided by religion only for empirical purposes such as good harvests or healthy children (Bryan S. Turner, Max Weber ve İslam, Vadi Y. p. 191).

Therefore, with Church organizations that found more opportunity to develop with urbanization, more bookish forms of religiosity came into play, and at least a healthier meaning and expression of religion found the opportunity to spread more at this level. Here too the Gospel and other sacred texts were read more, and a healthier literature on them gained a more egalitarian and participatory field. That is why, contrary to the claims of secularization, sociologists say that Christianity today in Europe is much stronger than in the past.

This is a reading that somewhat upsets rote beliefs, of course, but it is also worth reading from here.