{"id":25401,"date":"2020-01-15T08:49:29","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T16:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=25401"},"modified":"2020-01-15T08:49:29","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T16:49:29","slug":"taylor-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/taylor-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cCharles Taylor\u2019s A Secular Age<\/em> is one of the most important books of the new millennium,\u201d[1]<\/a> proclaims The Christian Century<\/em>, describing the massive tome as imperative reading. \u00a0\u00a0The good people at Theos<\/em> describe it as, \u201clong, dense, academic, and often obscured by Taylor\u2019s idiosyncratic terminology, it is not for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, it is original, thoughtful, provocative and immensely erudite.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Both of these are true as A Secular Age<\/em> provides unique background and commentary on the secular time in which we live, and the way our identities are crafted in relation to our environment.<\/p>\n

A McGill professor emeritus, Taylor is the cultural product of Canada, where he was born into a bilingual household, excelled academically, studied in Oxford, and returned to Canada for a storied career in philosophy, social commentary, and (lucky for us readers) a handful of failed political campaigns.\u00a0 \u00a0His goal both with his life\u2019s work, and with his writing, seems to be surrounding the question of life\u2019s meaning and purpose, in a Post-Enlightenment and Post-Reformation, globalized world.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know this for certain, but I do think that Taylor would have enjoyed the play Avenue Q.<\/p>\n

A Secular Age<\/em> describes the deconstruction journey that has brought about the secular worldview of today, this involving a progression away from a religious world view in the public sphere, the lack of individual and personal religious institutional involvement, and then ultimately a splintering of ideas that had grounded the social norms of the prior era.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Author and public commentator Stephen Prothero laments these realities in his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn\u2019t<\/em>, from the perspective of a Boston University Professor.\u00a0 Numerous clergy ponder the potential outcome of the secular world as their communities of faith, and potentially even the fields in which they are trained, experience dwindling energy, resources, and hope. \u00a0Proof of this lack of institutional involvement in my own tribe is brazenly demonstrated when the official headline from the denominational news service positively spins the reality claiming the decline has \u201cslowed.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Pop the Champaign!<\/p>\n

Luckily another Canuck, one who teaches in the great state of Michigan has written something that can help us through the momentous two-fold task of reading and understanding Taylor, and then applying that garnered wisdom into our lives and work.\u00a0 How did we arise at this secular age and how can we \u201cshare the good news?\u201d James K. A. Smith has an answer in How (Not) to Be Secular<\/em>. \u201cThese are the sorts of questions this book aims to answer. Think of it as a doctor of ministry program between two covers \u2014 a philosophical ethnography of the world you inhabit, and in which you minister. Think of me as an assistant docent to this new world \u2014 coming alongside the primary guide, philosopher Charles Taylor, whose book A Secular Age<\/em> is just the resource you didn\u2019t know you needed.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

And yet I wonder if Charles Taylor is more pointing us to the theologian we all know we already have.\u00a0 If the issues with secularism have arisen because society no longer sees the wonder, the mystical transcendence of \u201cthe divine\u201d in the world, in one another, or in relationships, it causes me to ponder the issues of identity within every interaction.\u00a0 Taylor discusses the importance of incarnation and this certainly isn\u2019t a Christian only spiritual theme.\u00a0 When I read on the pages of Taylor a suggestion for how the divine can still be somehow shared in this difficult age is that, \u201cwe should find the center of our spiritual lives beyond the code (of morals and laws) deeper than the code, in networks of living concern (agape) which are not to be sacrificed to the code, which must even from time to time subvert it.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> If there is anyone who has ever preached, taught, or lived these type of words, it is Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 Jesus has called people for the last 2000 years to \u201cfollow me,\u201d from the banks of Galilee and beyond; in a new light, and in a new era, Taylor appears to be doing the same.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Smith, Ted A., \u201cHow (Not) to Be Secular, by James K. A. Smith,\u201d The Christian Century<\/em>,\u00a0 June 10, 2015, https:\/\/www.christiancentury.org\/reviews\/2015-06\/how-not-be-secularm-james-k-smith<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u201cA Secular Age\u201d by Charles Taylor, Theos, August 11, 2011, https:\/\/www.theosthinktank.co.uk\/comment\/2009\/02\/01\/a-secular-age-by-charles-taylor<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Dean, Sean, \u201cBetween Demons and a Secular Age,\u201d DMINLGP<\/em>, January 15, 2020, https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/between-demons-and-a-secular-age\/<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Rick Jones, \u201cPCUSA Membership decline has slowed,\u201d Presbyterian News Service<\/em>, April 23, 2019, https:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/news\/2019\/4\/23\/pcusa-membership-decline-has-slowed\/<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor<\/em>, (Eerdmans, 2014), Preface.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Charles Taylor, A Secular Age<\/em>, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 743.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCharles Taylor\u2019s A Secular Age is one of the most important books of the new millennium,\u201d[1] proclaims The Christian Century, describing the massive tome as imperative reading. \u00a0\u00a0The good people at Theos describe it as, \u201clong, dense, academic, and often obscured by Taylor\u2019s idiosyncratic terminology, it is not for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, it is original, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"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":[835,1321,833,1322],"class_list":["post-25401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-charles-taylor","tag-dminlgp9","tag-james-k-a-smith","tag-lgp9","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25401","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\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25402,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25401\/revisions\/25402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}