By: Rhonda Davis on January 24, 2020
I understand where Noll is coming from in his, albeit harsh, critique of the “innovative theologies” of the Pentecostal and Holiness movements.[1] The eschatology formed from the revivalist movement, which taught believers to forego thinking and education for the sake of evangelism due to the imminent return of Christ, did cause many Pentecostals to diminish…
By: John Muhanji on January 24, 2020
It is fascinating to read what Taylor’s thesis on secularism in our society during this 21st century. He believes that what is wrong with enlightenment quest of progress is what is coming out as secularization that lies behind the enlightenment, what comes to me with controversial issues and asking specific questions from the Africa perspectives.…
By: Mario Hood on January 24, 2020
The other day, I was just in the gym getting ready to work out, and I walked up to a conversation between two people, and one turned to me and said, “explain to her the difference between North Carolina and South Carolina.” Without hesitation, I knew what she was inferring that South Carolina people are…
By: Harry Edwards on January 23, 2020
The scandal of the Evangelical mind, regrettably, is all around us. It is in popular media, social media, the public square, politics, universities and in other accessible spaces. Embarrassingly, we just cannot avoid it. To check my claim, I decided just now as I’m writing this, to turn on the radio and tune in to…
By: Andrea Lathrop on January 23, 2020
Some of my cohort mates may have missed it but I slipped in a confession in our discussion last week. I had quickly said that I have times when I feel slightly embarrassed by my faith tradition. This occasionally occurs when discussing doctrinal matters. subjects more intellectual in nature or when thinking of charismatic charicatures.…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 23, 2020
Mark Noll keeps the Canadian connection alive, as all of our authors so far this semester have strong ties to Jenn’s motherland. Mark Noll, former Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is current Professor of History at Regent College in Vancouver. A prolific author, and high achieving academic, perhaps his most impressive…
By: Sean Dean on January 23, 2020
In his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind Mark Noll is quick to admit that the scandal is in fact the lack of an Evangelical mind.i Tracing much of the issue back to Evangelicalism’s fundamentalist roots he mourns the lack of desire to explore how the many facets of God relate to the world.…
By: Wallace Kamau on January 20, 2020
We live in a world where we have come to recognize that change is the only constant. This is so much so in what we have come to call “The secular world” or secular2 in Charles Taylor’s definition[1], change has become unpredictable because it happens too fast. In such an environment, and especially today when…
By: Shermika Harvey on January 19, 2020
Moving to the Bay Area in July 2019, was provocative and exhilarating. The accepted assignment to undertake was a role as Young Adults/Discipleship pastors within a 17–year church with a congregation of millennials full of hope and potential eager to evangelize to the people of their broken region. Of course, being an evangelist at heart,…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on January 19, 2020
In a lot of ways, the secular world wants the same thing as the emergent Christian world. There is just a difference in finding the answer. A philosopher and out-spoken atheist, Richard Rorty, once wrote: “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on January 18, 2020
Ted Smith describes Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age book as preeminently a reference book for the academy with prodigious references that can be understood only by people whose range of engaging philosophy, theology, sociology, and literature can match Taylor’s range and scope. Fortunately, James K.A. Smith has helped us all to engage Taylor’s work by…
By: Karen Rouggly on January 17, 2020
It’s hard to study the work of vocation without taking into consideration the deep fundamental shifts that took place during the Protestant Reformation. Luther, in his attempt to alter the “speeds”[1] or freedom[2] with which faith was exercised, ended up inspiring a reformation of faith. Luther succeeded at this Reformation while many before him had…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on January 17, 2020
Our American culture seems to have a fascination with the supernatural, the other-world. Whether vampires, zombies, fairies, or superheroes, Hollywood and much of the media continues to produce stories for us to be enchanted by. Even as I write this post Maleficent is playing on the screen in the airplane. The trailer says, “A vengeful…
By: Mary Mims on January 17, 2020
Charles Taylor’s massive treatise on secularism, A Secular Age, seeks to explain the shift in our belief system which focuses on the conditions of belief; “The shift to secularity in this sense consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which…
By: Jenn Burnett on January 17, 2020
Even before I was a pastor, I had a pastor’s heart. This has meant that when friends wrestled with faith, I wrestled with how to care for them through the journey. I’ve wondered at how to both create room for their questions while wrestling with why the answers that satisfied me, didn’t satisfy them. I’ve…
By: Digby Wilkinson on January 16, 2020
How (Not) to Be Secular is “a book about a book”.[1] It is a slight book because it pales in size to the monumental work it attempts to interpret. It is an introduction, a summary, and short commentary, or perhaps a ‘literary butler’ guiding the unitiated through the intellectual history of secular modernity found in…
By: Harry Edwards on January 16, 2020
Charles Taylor seems to stand alone in his evaluation of what is wrong in our human condition, more specifically in the West. Once cherished values, which many say are responsible for human flourishing, are no longer held. It is not difficult to point out the cause of moral decay in society: increasing divorce rates, normalization…
By: Andrea Lathrop on January 16, 2020
A Secular Age is a book I did not know I needed. I am indebted to James K. A. Smith for making it accessible through How (Not) to Be Secular, especially given the time constraints of this assignment. As Dr. Clark hinted at, I did find myself in the secularism story and have garnered more thoughts…
By: Mario Hood on January 16, 2020
If the thickness of a book tells the reader anything, then one only has to look at Charles Taylor’s 900-page work, A Secular Age, to know they are in for a journey of serious academic reading. Taylor aims to sketch out a historical timeline of the secular while also framing our current reality in secularism.[1]…
By: Rhonda Davis on January 16, 2020
I am grateful to James K. A. Smith for writing How (Not) to Be Secular. Frankly, I am not sure I would have made it through Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age without him. Smith, an evangelical professor of philosophy at Calvin College; and Taylor, a Roman Catholic professor emeritus at McGill University, are great partners…
