{"id":20835,"date":"2019-01-17T17:33:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T01:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20835"},"modified":"2019-01-17T17:33:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T01:33:34","slug":"get-on-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/get-on-board\/","title":{"rendered":"Get On Board!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Taylor, though long winded and tangential, discusses profound and contemplative concepts of secularism in his text <em>A Secular Age<\/em>.\u00a0 His thesis is not new \u2013 in fact Max Weber, author of <em>The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, <\/em>presented similar thoughts about disenchantment as a result of the reformation.\u00a0 Taylor adds value to Weber\u2019s initial thesis by further exploring disenchantment in the post-Christian era. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the Taylor\/Smith literature assignment.\u00a0 Smith\u2019s text, <em>How (Not) to Be Secular, <\/em>is a condensed and concise recap of Taylor\u2019s ramblings.\u00a0 My greatest assumption prior to delving into these texts was that the authors would take on secularism as the \u201cdownfall of humanity\u201d or \u201call that is wrong in today\u2019s world\u201d.\u00a0 And to be honest I dreaded a negative book.\u00a0 Instead, Smith writes of Taylor\u2019s epiphany that \u201ctoday\u2019s secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion\u2014although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined\u2014but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In my desire to better understand and internalize Taylor\u2019s concept of secularism and humanism (as interpreted by Smith) I needed to explore my own beliefs and behaviors.\u00a0 Have I fallen victim to humanism?\u00a0 Am I more concerned with fulfilling my own happiness and desires, all the while orchestrating it through personal choice and personal strength?\u00a0 Maybe?\u00a0 Maybe not?\u00a0 You see, I encourage this with clients in my role as a mental health therapist in this secular world\u2026walk the journey of finding your identity (<strong>who am I<\/strong>) and meaning (<strong>what is my \u201cplace\u201d in this world<\/strong>) so that you can be true to yourself.\u00a0 Sounds humanistic, eh?\u00a0 (A shout out to our Canadian author, Taylor).\u00a0 The key words here are <u>identity<\/u> and <u>meaning<\/u> \u2013 and they are not necessarily separated from God.\u00a0 Exploring the tension between spirituality and secularism is definitely worth the investment of time and thought.\u00a0 And as a Christian, it\u2019s on ME to sift through all my spiritual and religious options, hang-ups, research, theorists, secularists, etc. in this secular world to land boldly on Jesus.\u00a0 Maybe God has perfectly ordained this time in history \u2013 filled with options, distractions, and the need to critically think \u2013 as a precursor to an even deeper lived faith\u2026???!!!<\/p>\n<p>One deeper way to live faith is highlighted by James Smith in an interview with Timothy Keller \u201cIn my tradition, for all the right reasons, we emphasize systemic structural transformation. That&#8217;s important. In the same way, the civil rights movement had to change laws. But on the other hand, I think we&#8217;ve seen all kinds of evidence that you also need to be transforming the agents who inhabit those structures and systems and laws. What disappoints me when people despair about the marginalization of the church is that they&#8217;ve decided that the present is an indicator of the future. But that doesn&#8217;t seem like a kind of expectation. It&#8217;s not logic.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Smith is spot on when he pinpoints the disconnect between structural transformation and agent transformation.\u00a0 There are so many palpable examples in today\u2019s (and by today I mean January 2019) world.\u00a0 And here they are as connected to marginalized and oppressed populations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>African Americans\u2026The Civil War officially abolished slavery, but it didn\u2019t end discrimination against African Americans. Today they continue to endure the devastating effects of racism every day in the forms of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural dominance, and violence.<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Here\u2019s a relevant example from TODAY\u2026CNN headline <em>Inside the GM plant where nooses and &#8216;whites-only&#8217; signs hung<\/em> (this happened in Toledo, Ohio https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/01\/16\/us\/gm-toledo-racism-lawsuit\/index.html)<\/li>\n<li>Women\u2026In 1920 the constitution was ratified to allow women the right to vote. \u201cAchieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> And today?\u00a0 Women still struggle for pay equity (equality in the workplace), the right to control their own body, equity in representation, and equity in domestic tasks.<\/li>\n<li>Immigrants\u2026\u201cGive me your tired, your poor \/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, \/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, \/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.\u201d Emma Lazarus\u2019 famous poem, \u201cThe New Colossus\u201d was written as a tribute to the Statue of Liberty \u2013 an iconic national symbol to welcome the immigrants arriving in the United States, then and now. Somehow, through the years, immigrants have become targets of xenophobia and racism even though laws exist to allow for asylum and resettlement.\u00a0 Instead of embracing immigrants (as our ancestors once were) the country has created a culture of hostile, anti-immigrant social and political climate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I share these three examples of marginalization to lend evidence and support to James Smith\u2019s proposal that systemic structural transformation does nothing to change the \u201cagents\u201d who inhabit the structures, systems, and laws.\u00a0 Clearly laws and rules do not change the <u>heart.<\/u>\u00a0 Perhaps this is the very opportunity Charles Taylor refers to after his lengthy reflections\u2026 \u201c<em>We are, instead, moving toward\u2026a galloping spiritual pluralism. People in search of fullness are able to harvest the intellectual, cultural and spiritual gains of the past 500 years.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\"><sup><strong>[5]<\/strong><\/sup><\/a><\/em>\u00a0 Finding self-identity and life meaning can be spiritually intertwined with advocating for a heart change for self and others \u201cpeople are called to greater activism, to engage in more reform. Religious faith or nonfaith becomes more a matter of personal choice as part of a quest for personal development.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\"><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 I, for one, plan to get on board!\u00a0 Will you?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/catalog.php?isbn=9780674026766<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> https:\/\/www.cardus.ca\/comment\/article\/catechesis-for-a-secular-age\/#<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> http:\/\/www.racialequitytools.org\/resourcefiles\/structural_analysis_oppression.pdf<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> https:\/\/www.ourdocuments.gov\/doc.php?flash=false&amp;doc=63<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/07\/09\/opinion\/brooks-the-secular-society.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/07\/09\/opinion\/brooks-the-secular-society.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Taylor, though long winded and tangential, discusses profound and contemplative concepts of secularism in his text A Secular Age.\u00a0 His thesis is not new \u2013 in fact Max Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, presented similar thoughts about disenchantment as a result of the reformation.\u00a0 Taylor adds value to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"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":[471,186],"class_list":["post-20835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smith","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835","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\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20836,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835\/revisions\/20836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}