Smith's Guide to Taylor's A Secular Age

Smith, James K. A. How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.

James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has written a guidebook for Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It could be helpful for those unable to read Taylor's book which is almost 800 pages. It could also be used to guide one as one reads through Taylor's book. Smith's purpose is not criticism, but outlining Smith's argument in the book. He also includes questions for applying it to current Evangelicals.

Smith's, How (Not) to Be Secular is divided into five chapters to go alongside Taylor's five parts in A Secular Age. Chapter one describes the reforming of Christianity which led to secularization. Chapter two describes the path from Deism to Atheism. Chapter three analyzes the "Malaise" of the Secular Age. The next chapter covers Taylor's arguments against secularization 2. The last chapter describes people who broke out of immanence to transcendence.

Smith describes Taylor's book as a map of our current age. Smith thinks our age is "haunted." Even the immanent frame is haunted. Unbelievers are tempted by belief, and believers or faith "is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability" (4). What Taylor describes as secularization is a "situation of fundamental contestability when it comes to belief, a sense that rival stories are always at the door offering a very different account of the world" (10). Taylor's question is : "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 (19)?" Taylor's book is basically a history of this change.

Taylor looks at religious reform as responsible, in some sense, for bringing about secularization. Some other changes contributing to secularization were disenchantment from the premodern view of the world, to development of a buffered self, and going from a cosmos to a universe. Some other causes are Deism, excarnation, the disengaged self, and others. Providential Deism provided a path for exclusive humanism. Taylor believes that we all live in an immanent frame. In this frame, we can be either open or close to the transcendent.

Taylor believes that we now live in the Age of Anxiety in which expressive individualism is prominent. An important part of this age is the quest for the self or authenticity. Taylor believes there are both pros and cons to this movement.

Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a good guide of Taylor's book. It could be used alone as a summary of Taylor's argument or read alongside Taylor's book to keep the overall argument in mind. I read Smith's book a few years ago, then, I read it alongside Taylor's book, then I read it a third time after finishing Taylor's book. I believe Smith's book helped me to better understand Taylor's book.