{"id":441,"date":"2014-01-18T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=441"},"modified":"2014-08-12T23:42:22","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T23:42:22","slug":"space-for-god-in-the-modern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/space-for-god-in-the-modern\/","title":{"rendered":"Space For God in The Modern"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Charles Taylor\u2019s Modern Social Imaginaries<\/em> we are treated to wide ranging study of our modern mentality describing not only what it is but also how it came about.\u00a0 Drawing on history, philosophy and social theory, Taylor discerns a dramatic shift in how people imagine their lives today from their imaginaries of the past.\u00a0 The shift has been a slow but radical movement away from religion as the unifying factor for society to a society based on the individual.<\/p>\n

Taylor is brilliant in describing the historical background for these developments, showing the slow disenchantment of the world that lead to the disembodying of the individual from their long held cosmic situation that required a new map to orient the individual in the modern world.\u00a0 The theories of thinker like Locke and Grotius provided the foundation to begin a fresh understanding of society, based now on natural law (which developed later into human rights).\u00a0 Taylor suggests that theory leads to an action that ultimately leads to a full-formed social imaginary.\u00a0 These common understandings are largely unconstructed and unarticulated.\u00a0 The particular features\u2014in a sense\u2014simply \u201cshow up to us.\u201d[i]<\/a>\u00a0 It is, in other words, the way things naturally seem to be.<\/p>\n

What Taylor suggests is that out of a strong religiously informed and highly structured society grew a vastly different social imaginary based on the individual that resulted in four clear forms: \u201ceconomy, public sphere, and a polity ruled by the people\u201d along with human rights.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 Now \u201chistory can be understood, for instance, as the slow growth of a human capacity, reason, fighting against error and superstition.\u201d[iii]<\/a> \u00a0This \u201cgrowth entails coming to see the right moral order, the interlocking relations of a mutual benefit that we are meant to realize\u2026\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n

The sharp turn to the modern is primarily mankind making its own way in the world.\u00a0 Taylor sees this as a stunning paradox: A people that presided over their own political birth.\u00a0 Today our modern social imaginary is built solely on human capacity and control without any outside or divine influence; built not on ancient foundational myths but on historical founding stories that creates room for all individuals to participate fully in all aspects of society.<\/p>\n

However, the question that most haunted me waited to the very end to be answered: Is this turn to the modern imaginary a good development or bad?\u00a0 Taylor is clear that the process has not been without it faults and has elicited some harsh reactions with tragic results (including fascism and communism).\u00a0 Further, even with the altruistic goal (mutual benefit), the process has been slow to recognize many on the margins who (like slaves) were not yet part of the \u201cwe\u201d in \u201cWe the People\u201d for many years.\u00a0 What isn\u2019t discussion is the fact that this moral order is based on pure reason and a vague concept of \u201cmutual benefit,\u201d a morality based on consensus.\u00a0\u00a0 It begs the larger question of whether this is the best foundation for determining valuable issues of human existence, truth and justice, right and wrong.\u00a0 The best our modern imaginary seems to offer is \u201cmutual benefit\u201d which for individuals across the board can mean many things and might cause as much harm as good.\u00a0 As Taylor suggests, the \u201cdark side of our modern Western social imaginary\u201d[v]<\/a> is that it \u201ccan be full of self-serving fiction and suppression\u201d and often times \u201cexcluded and disempowered groups or imagining that their exclusion is their own doing.\u201d[vi]<\/a>\u00a0 Having witnessed the extremes of our modern sensibility, from exclusion and persecution to inclusion and compassion, it makes general judgments on modernity extremely difficult.<\/p>\n

It is only at the very end that Taylor suggests that religion is not necessary absent in our strongly humanistic modern construct.\u00a0 As individuals and groups, the modern society allows for the personal practice of faith and disciplines, which provide opportunity to inform and define political identities.\u00a0 Since personal and social identities are never set or final in our modern imaginary, \u201cthere is always room for reinvasion of the political identity by the confessional.\u201d[vii]<\/a>\u00a0 Here I would suggest is where Christianity, by acting more like Jesus, might effectively influence our modern imaginary. Not by lording it over others, but through the process of leavening, slowly and quietly working as yeast, that the church might again influence society.\u00a0 Here I agree with Taylor, that in this very humanistic system, there might indeed be space for God.<\/p>\n

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[i]<\/a> Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries <\/em>(Durham, SC: Duke University Press, 2004), 25.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[ii]<\/a> Ibid., 172.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[iii]<\/a> Ibid., 175-6.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[iv]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[v]<\/a> Ibid., 182.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[vi]<\/a> Ibid., 183.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[vii]<\/a> Ibid., 194.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Charles Taylor\u2019s Modern Social Imaginaries we are treated to wide ranging study of our modern mentality describing not only what it is but also how it came about.\u00a0 Drawing on history, philosophy and social theory, Taylor discerns a dramatic shift in how people imagine their lives today from their imaginaries of the past.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"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":[2,185],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-taylorimginaries","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","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\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1769,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}