{"id":11791,"date":"2017-02-16T21:12:59","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T05:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11791"},"modified":"2017-02-16T21:12:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T05:12:59","slug":"secular-to-sacred-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/secular-to-sacred-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Secular to Sacred \u2013 Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Smith has a prophetic voice that captivated me from the first page of the Preface of his book, How Not to Be Secular:\u00a0 Reading Charles Taylor.<\/em>\u00a0 I was the church planter from Terre Haute, Indiana, small-corn town USA that moved to the New York City Metro area out of a call in 1987.\u00a0 Smith said, \u201cYou\u2019ve left your Jerusalem on a mission to Babylon.\u00a0 You came with what you thought were all the answers to the unanswered questions these \u2018secular\u2019 people had.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I decided to read James Smith as \u201cJohn the Baptist\u201d preparing the way for Charles Taylor.\u00a0 This paper is coinciding the principles and prowess of two books and two authors.\u00a0 The outcome of my exposure, is up to me what I become \u2013 secular or sacred, convinced or confused, passionate or passive.\u00a0 Would the wielding sword of truth from Smith and Taylor challenge me or anger me?\u00a0 Or both?<\/p>\n

Charles Taylor embraces three levels of secularity: \u201c1. Secularized public spaces, 2. The decline of belief and practice, 3.\u00a0 Consists of new conditions of belief; it consists in a new shape to the experience which prompts to and is defined by belief; in a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and spiritual must proceed.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The word \u201creligion\u201d has been a challenge to me.\u00a0 It represented a set of rules and regulations that were tainted more toward man than God.\u00a0 In my mind, \u201creligion\u201d was man attempting to organize and structure God.\u00a0 Taylor uses a totally different spin to the word \u201creligion\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cSo \u2018religion\u2019 for our purposes can be defined in terms of \u2018transcendence\u2019\u2026It is our relation to a transcendent God which has been displaced at the centre of social life (secularity 1); it is faith in this God whose decline is tracked in those theories (secularity 2).\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Taylor and Smith had me from their Introductions.\u00a0 They were describing me and the world around me.\u00a0 They were challenging ministry effectiveness, but with a surgeon\u2019s scalpel that dissected more than feeling and headed to the core and centrality of who Christ is.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith makes his claim to the writing of his book very simple:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, this is a book about a book \u00ad\u2013 a small field guide to a much larger scholarly tome.\u00a0 It is about an homage and a portal the Charles Taylor\u2019s monumental Secular Age, <\/em>a book that offers a genealogy of the secular and an archaeology of our angst…..On the other hand, this is also meant to be a kind of how-to-manual \u2013 guidance on how (not) to live in a secular age.\u00a0 It is ultimately an adventure in self-understanding, a way to get our bearings in a \u2018secular age\u2019 \u2013 whoever \u2018we\u2019 might be:\u00a0 believers or skeptics, devout or doubting.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Taylor states his purpose for writing, \u201cSo what I want to do is examine our society as secular in this third sense (my observations of Taylors three levels of secularity above- mine) <\/em>which I could perhaps encapsulate in this way:\u00a0 the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, ever for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s purpose in How Not to Be Secular,<\/em> is to parallel alongside Taylor\u2019s five-part book and offer his own commentary and challenges all of us to realize how secularized and humanistic we have become.\u00a0 \u201cSo the shift to a secular age not only makes exclusive humanism a live option for us, it also changes religious communities.\u00a0 We\u2019re all secular now.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

My feeble attempt to embrace two chapters, of the five main chapters, of each book for this paper was daunting.\u00a0 I was shaken in a good way.\u00a0 I was mesmerized by what I had missed for so many years.<\/p>\n

Taylor\u2019s first chapter is \u201cThe Work of Reform\u201d and Smith\u2019s is \u201cReforming Belief:\u00a0 The Secular as Modern Accomplishments\u201d.\u00a0 Charles Taylor asks, \u201c\u2026why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in say 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many us find this not only easy, but even inescapable\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Taylor references \u201cbulwarks\u201d that were part of the tapestry of society that have eroded.\u00a0 We wanted to believe in God, we sought disciplines but time and self-centeredness turned us to long for \u201cmodern\u201d more than ancient.
\nTaylor describes this progression; \u201cEven more important to our lives today is the manner in which this idea of order has become more and more central to our notions of society and polity, remaking them in the process.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Smith responds to Taylor\u2019s chapter<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University in Canada, speaks at a conference titled, “Renewing the Church in a Secular Age,” at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome March 5. Also pictured is Mary McAleese, president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011. (CNS photo\/Paul Haring) See SEEKERS-FRANCIS March 6, 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

in a warning:\u00a0 \u201cThe emergence of secular is also bound up with the production of a new option \u2013 the possibility of exclusive humanism as a viable social imaginary<\/strong> \u2013 a way of constructing meaning and significance without any reference to the divine or transcendence.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

My first response to reading was, \u201cHow did we get here?\u201d.\u00a0 This daunting question turned quickly to \u201cwhy\u201d?\u00a0\u00a0 The resolve was, \u201cWhat am I going to do about it?\u201d\u00a0 Fall in line and become secularized alongside the rest of the planet?\u00a0 Or be a beacon of light and an intensity in my saltiness (Matthew 5:14) that is a change agent to the world I live, pastor, and take up space in?\u00a0 Taylor and Smith have pushed me to a deeper desire of the divine and transcendent.\u00a0 The vacuum of society and humanism may have taken its toll, but God always does well with a remnant.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> James K. A. Smith, How Not to Be Secular:\u00a0 Reading Charles Taylor, <\/em>(Grand Rapids, MI:\u00a0 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), vii<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, <\/em>(Cambridge, MA:\u00a0 The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 20.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 20.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Smith, ix.<\/em><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Taylor, 3.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Smith., 28.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Taylor., 25.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid., 161.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Smith, 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction James Smith has a prophetic voice that captivated me from the first page of the Preface of his book, How Not to Be Secular:\u00a0 Reading Charles Taylor.\u00a0 I was the church planter from Terre Haute, Indiana, small-corn town USA that moved to the New York City Metro area out of a call in 1987.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[288,829,471,186],"class_list":["post-11791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sacred","tag-secular","tag-smith","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}