Just a few centuries ago, belief in God was virtually unchallenged throughout in the Western world. Today, faith seems like one option among many, and often not the easiest to embrace. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age examines this shift, challenging the conventional “subtraction” story: secularization is not the inevitable loss of religion to science or reason, but the complex, socially-engineered rise of self-sufficient humanism. The upshot has been a transformation of individual identity and communal life, a transformation that demands dialogue and negotiation between believers and nonbelievers.

On Monday, April 22nd, we will discuss Taylor’s account of religion in our secular present. Though humanism’s eclipse of the transcendent leaves us all searching for otherworldly meaning, we are faced with a “supernova” of spiritual possibilities amid a pluralist society and authenticity-focused culture.

This seminar is the first in our Spring 2024 series Our Secular Age.