By: Dylan Branson on January 19, 2020
In the Gospel of John, we read of a story that many of us are familiar with: The cleansing of the temple by Jesus. John writes: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at…
By: Darcy Hansen on January 19, 2020
As I read through Polyani’s The Great Transformation, words shared by Lord Glasman during our London/Oxford Advance kept resurfacing in my mind. He shared these words as he tried to explain the circumstances that predicated Brexit in the UK: “You think you’re acting in an altruistic way, but it’s really about self-interest in the end.”…
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…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 15, 2020
“Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is one of the most important books of the new millennium,”[1] proclaims The Christian Century, describing the massive tome as imperative reading. The good people at Theos describe it as, “long, dense, academic, and often obscured by Taylor’s idiosyncratic terminology, it is not for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, it is original,…
By: Sean Dean on January 15, 2020
A scream of abject fear rang out around our house. It was two in the morning, within seconds we were all awake and within a couple more minutes we had all gathered on my parents bed. My sister, the source of the scream, told us how she had awoken to a demon dancing in her…
By: Shawn Cramer on January 14, 2020
Building from a rich history and tradition, Evangelicals have the opportunity to innovate towards the next adjacent possible. Duke Divinity School proposes that traditioned innovation is “a way of thinking and being that holds the past and future in tension, not in opposition, [and] is crucial to the growth and vitality of Christian institutions” (Faith…
By: Joe Castillo on January 14, 2020
I want to reflect on chapter 5 from the book “Evangelicalism in Modern Britain” because it resonates with my own Methodist experience. I want to focus primarily on “The Methodist Holiness Tradition.” as I perceive it. There are two points that I come to mind as I read the chapter; WE ARE MADE HOLY IN…
By: Greg Reich on January 13, 2020
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, You who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were hewn And to the quarry from which you were dug.” (Isaiah 51:1 NASB) Though I have previously studied church history I must admit that I, like many, have tended to localize and personalize it without…
By: Dylan Branson on January 13, 2020
Have you ever looked at the social institutions of our world and simply asked the question, “Why?” Why is this here? Why is this run the way it is? Why does this group of people seem to thrive under these conditions while others don’t? At times we realize that our current situations are in place…
By: Steve Wingate on January 13, 2020
“God has established boundary stones in his word. They are primarily found in the Law but are elaborated on and repeated throughout the entire Bible. Our spiritual ancestors, through the history of the Church, have set a pattern for living by these ancient landmarks. These may be our fundamental doctrines, our Biblical pattern for living,…
