Professor emeritus of theology, religion and sociology

Peter L. Berger, a sociologist and theologianwhosaw signs of the divine in quotidian moments of everyday life and, in the thick of the 1960s “God is dead” movement, argued for religion’s continued relevance in modern society, died June 27 at his home in Brookline, Mass. Hewas 88.

Berger had a heart ailment, said a son, Thomas Berger.

The author of more than two dozen books, Berger was a professor emeritus of sociology, religion and theology at Boston University and a self-described snoop happy to learn from both prostitutes and priests.

“We could say that the sociologist, but for the grace of his academic title, is the man who must listen to gossip despite himself, who is tempted to look through keyholes, to read other people’s mail, to open closed cabinets,” hewrote in one of his earliest books, the popular 1963 introductory work “Invitation to Sociology.”

Berger, born into a Jewish family in Vienna, planned to become a Lutheran minister before turning to academia, where he spent much of his career bridging reason and faith and defying easy labels.

He organized academic conferences aswell as Catholic intellectual debates for the Vatican; attended civil rights and antiwar demonstrations in the 1960s before becoming a leading neoconservative critic; and identified as a Lutheran while sometimes attending Anglican and Eastern Orthodox worship services.

Hiswork focused on religion’s role in society but ranged widely to include studies on capitalism and Third World development. He believed capitalism and democracy were intrinsically linked, as were socialism and authoritarianism.

Berger also made major contributions to the field known as sociology of knowledge, which studies the ways in which society shapes human thought. His 1966 book “The Social Construction of Reality,” cowritten with Thomas Luckmann, was named the 20th century’s fifth most influentialwork of sociology by the International Sociological Association and was translated intomore than 20 languages.

Beginning with a subsequent volume, “A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural” (1969), Berger offereda rejoinder to the “God is dead” movement, a strain of radical theology united aroundthe argument that religion had lost its force in modern society.

He married Brigitte Kellner, a fellow sociologist, in 1959. She died in 2015.

Survivors include two sons, Michael and Thomas Berger, and two grandchildren.