Charles Taylor's A Secular Age

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Taylor's A Secular Age tells the story of secularization in Western society. Throughout the book, Taylor is critiquing the mainstream secularization thesis which he calls secularization2: This characterization of secularity has to do with "the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to church" (2). Taylor argues for hos own definition of secularization in his book, secularization3. (Secularization one has to do with religion in public spaces.) Secularization3: It is a "move from a society where belief  in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace" (3).

Taylor's book is divided into five parts. Part 1 discusses religious reform; Part 2 is the "turning point" the move toward exclusive humanism; Part 3 is the "Nova Effect" the multiplying of possible positions; Part 4 covers different narratives of secularization (Taylor's own arguments against secularization2); part five analyzes the immanent frame and possible stances to transcendence.

Part 1: The Work of Reform

Taylor's key question: "The question I want to answer . . . why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?" (25)

God's presence retreated in three areas: 1. The people did not see natural events as acts of God. 2. Society was no longer "conceived as grounded in something higher" (25). 3. People now live in an disenchanted world.

Five major changes from 1500 to 2000:
1. The First major change was disenchantment.
2. The second major change was the creation of the buffered self: this self can disengage itself from anything external to it.
3. The third major change was the breaking of the equilibrium of duties to the state and duties to God.
4. The lost of holy time, plural concepts of time to only clock time.
5. The final change was losing the view of a cosmos and exchanging it for a universe.

Another cause of secularization was the creation of a disciplined society. One part of it came from the Renaissance "notion of civility." A second part came from combining civility with piety. Basically the call for the moral order in society without God.

A big emphasis in the book is how these changes changed the "social imaginary."

James K. A. Smith says that Taylor allows you to feel what it is like to be open to the transcendent and what it feels like to be closed to the transcendent.

Part 2: The Turning Point

This part tells how exclusive humanism "became a live option for large numbers of people" (221).
Four major shifts: First, the shift from the idea that God has a purpose for us outside this world. Second, a shift from the need for grace to accomplish God's purposes. Third, now believing reason can discover everything. No need for mystery. Deists are a transitional stage to exclusive humanism.

Part 3: The Nova Effect

Three stages: First, the development of exclusive humanism as an alternative to the Christian faith. It was followed by the diversification of the nova effect: the creation of many options are particular worldviews in the world. Third, it spread from the elites to the general population. Art became an option for unbelievers.

Part IV: Narrative of secularization:
The Ago of Mobilization from 1840 -1960. The Age of Authenticity began in the 1960s. This is the age we live in. Taylor describes it as a "culture of authenticity," which emphasizes individual expressivism: each person is on a search to find themselves. Emphasis on spirituality, rather than organized religion. Loosening of sexual restrictions. Emphasis on subjectivism. We have seen the end of Christendom. A minimal religion is practiced by the many. Emphasis on tolerance and intolerant of intolerance. We are not to judge how people live. LGBT become an option.

Part V: Conditions of Belief

We all now live in an immanent frame. Taylor asserts, "We come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient order" (543). There is no need for God in the immanent frame. Taylor distinguishes the immanent frame from two possible spins open to the transcendent or closed to the transcendent. Taylor's "understanding of the immanent frame is that, properly understood it allows for both readings" (550).

Throughout the book Taylor has analyzed different positions in the unbelievers' camp. In the last chapter, Taylor provides examples, exemplars, of people who broke out of the closed frame of the immanent domain: Vaclav Havel, Ivan Illich, Charles Peguy, and Gerard Manly Hopkins.

Taylor has written an impressive book that has provoked much discussion. One must be aware that Taylor is Roman Catholic and his religion does influence some of his interpretations. In other words, some Protestants might disagree with some of his conclusions about how Protestants have influenced secularization. Taylor writes in good, readable prose. It is almost like reading a novel because he is telling the story of secularization.