Well Charles Taylor's mighty effort A Secular Age is here. I am daunted by the prospect: I am still chewing over things I learnt in Sources of the Self.
His opening ploy is to say that the word 'secular' has been used in three senses. 'Secularity 1' describes the secularisation of public spaces - it is the official separation of church and state for example, or the insistence that religious arguments be inadmissable in public debate.
'Secularity 2' however has come about at pretty much the same time. And that is the decline of religious belief and practice. Now, S1 needn't mean S2: in the US there is a very strong sense of S1 but if anything a stronger sense that S2 is not occuring.
But Taylor's object in this study is S3: which he says 'consists of new conditions of belief; it consists in a new shape to the experience which prompts to and is defined by belief; in a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and spiritual must proceed.' (p. 20) Or, earlier he says 'the change I want to define and trace is on e which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one possibility among others...Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives.'
Secularity in this sense is a whole context of understanding, in which our moral/religious quest takes place. Taylor interestingly argues that S1 did not bring about S2, as is commonly thought: but it did bring about or had a share in bringing about S3...
3 comments:
Have you visited the new blog that largely discusses his work?
[Jeremy Halcrow said]
This is very interesting Michael. I'm currently reading new Oz sociological research called 'the spirit of Gen y'. The authors are big believers in s2 thesis and say their research proves it. But digging into the data all I could see was a trend towards anti-denominationalism. ie the teens and twentysomethings no longer identify with any one brand of Christianity. Perhaps this is the belivers version of s3 (indeed Church attendence rates within this age group are unchanged since 1980 which mitigates against s2)
Yes, Taylor is fairly scathing at how simplistic and triumphalist this analysis is. It comes from trying to use statistical data without a sophisticated analysis of culture to go with it. And it is fascinating, what you say about church attendence rates. This kind of analysis (the S2 one) is part of a modernist and progressivist narrative of the triumph of reason over faith. The newspapers tell this story all the time, without putting it in the wider context: ie, in the same period membership of political parties, sporting clubs and newspaper sales also fell!
Thanks for the blog reference/link, indie. It is wonderful! Taylor seems to grasp that ivory-tower authorship is a thing of the past: here he is in cyberspace with some of his greatest associates defending his theses. My admiration increases further.
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