{"id":15811,"date":"2018-01-11T11:57:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T19:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15811"},"modified":"2018-01-11T11:57:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T19:57:45","slug":"a-field-guide-to-the-secular-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-field-guide-to-the-secular-world\/","title":{"rendered":"A Field Guide to the Secular World\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

I own a field guide on mushrooms, one on birds and one on rocks and minerals, but I don\u2019t have one on living in the secular age. How (Not) to be Secular<\/i> by James K. A. Smith\u00a0is what its author calls \u00a0\u201ca field guide\u201d on Taylor’s A Secular Age<\/i>. [1] While A Secular Age<\/i> asks the questions, \u201cwhy is it that we can no longer take it for granted that people believe in a higher authority and how did we get to this place?;\u201d Smith asks the question, \u201chow can the church make an impact in the world in which Taylor describes\u2014the secular world?\u201d\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I read the preface to Smith\u2019s book I almost felt like I was reading the story of my life\u2014only instead of moving from Brooklin to Berkley, I moved to Pennsylvania to Prague. From a rural conservative community of 5000 people in the hills of Pennsylvania to a city of 1.3 million people where the only faith for the majority of the people is the belief in one\u2019s self.<\/p>\n

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At that time I expected that all secular people were \u201cbad\u201d people. I expected that all secular people were atheists and I expected that all secular people unhappy. I was wrong! The secular people with whom I had coffee, went to dinner, visited their homes and developed close friendships were generally happy, they loved their families, they were deeply interested in spiritual things, and they were \u201cgood\u201d people. How was this possible? At the time Taylor had not written his seminal work and Smith had not written his companion book. I wish they did.\u00a0 I struggled with the things that I took for granted and in many ways, I was naive in my understanding not only of a secular worldview but of what it meant to be a Christian. [2]<\/p>\n

In the secular world in which I served, religion was a topic of great disdain. It was “religion” that caused all of the problems of the world. Religion was a\u00a0 political entity that cared little about people and most about power. Religion was a methodology by which the “powerful” control the powerless. Religion was preached but never lived. Only the fool follows religion. And yet, talk of God and spiritual things were welcome. I found myself in a society that though religion was not a good thing, one is permitted to believe in God, or not! I was in a place where people viewed the world as filled with options and choices with new meanings and possibilities. [3]<\/p>\n

In the secular world in which I served, I arrived feeling morally and ethically superior compared to those who were secular because I had it \u201call worked out!\u201d For me, the orderliness of the \u201ccosmos\u201d was clear\u2014 God is both immanent and transcendent at the same time. But for the people I knew, my friends, there was no order. All was chaotic. We were, in fact, flying through space and time with no control and no one in control. We are, after all, all alone. Therefore, I will believe in myself only. I have asked the question many times:\u00a0 \u201cV \u010dem v\u011b\u0159\u00edite?\u201d (In what or whom do you believe?) \u00a0The answer is, most often, \u201cV\u011b\u0159\u00edm s\u00e1m sob\u011b!\u201d ( I believe in myself only!) and they were fine with that! [4]<\/p>\n

And what of pain and suffering? Are we completely unprotected? Is there nothing or no one out there to protect us. In the secular world in which I lived transcendence has no place or was no longer needed. All of the necessary answers to life could be found through engagement and analysis of the pain and suffering. (See Julian Barnes) The \u201cimminent framework\u201d within which a secular world seeks its answers,\u00a0 finds all of its resources in the here and now. The reasons are before us; we just need to discover them for ourselves. [5]<\/p>\n

On my return back to the United States I found myself on familiar ground\u2014it seems the United States had become and is becoming more and more secular. We can debate ad infinitum if it is happening, if it is good or bad, how it will impact the church and its mission. But the debate will, hopefully, sooner than later, need to end and the Christian must get on with the mission. Which leads to a question that Frances Schaffer asked in the 1970s and we are again asking ourselves only in a different setting: How Should We Then Live? [6] We all face a time-of-decision that is \u201cultimately an adventure in self-\u00adunderstanding\u2026whoever \u201cwe\u201d might be: believers or skeptics, devout or doubting.\u201d [7] Do we consider the \u201ctake\u201d where we look clearly at who we are, who God is and how he functions in our world, or the \u201cspin\u201d where we do our best to explain the transcendent when we are clearly living in a world that functions within an immanent frame? [8] From where I sit, there is no better way to face these questions and work through them than to live in another culture. It is in that context that one encounters the removal of their cultural underpinnings and is forced to face, with fear and trembling, the essential questions of life and faith. (Philippians 2:12) In the absence of that experience, or in addition to, Taylor and Smith provide a voice and a guidebook that asks some important questions and points in a direction that will help us to answer those questions.<\/p>\n

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    \n
  1. James K. A. <\/i>Smith. How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor<\/i>. 1st ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014, ix; Charles Taylor. A Secular Age<\/i>. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.<\/li>\n
  2. Smith., 8.<\/li>\n
  3. Ibid., 47.<\/li>\n
  4. \u00a0Ibid., 93.<\/li>\n
  5. Ibid., 123.<\/li>\n
  6. Francis A. Schaeffer. How Should We Then Live<\/i>? Study Guide ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1976.<\/li>\n
  7. Smith., ix.<\/li>\n
  8. Ibid., 93.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I own a field guide on mushrooms, one on birds and one on rocks and minerals, but I don\u2019t have one on living in the secular age. How (Not) to be Secular by James K. A. Smith\u00a0is what its author calls \u00a0\u201ca field guide\u201d on Taylor’s A Secular Age. [1] While A Secular Age asks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"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":[833],"class_list":["post-15811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-james-k-a-smith","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15811","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\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15811"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15819,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15811\/revisions\/15819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}