Summary: A collection of essays about Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.
At some point I will read A Secular Age. But frankly, the 900 page tome is far down my reading list. But this is at least the fourth book that I have read that is largely about A Secular Age. So now I have read about as many pages about a book as the book itself.
James KA Smith’s How (Not) to be Secular and Joustra and Wilkinson’s How To Survive the Apocalypse are both excellent introductions to Charles Taylor’s book. Richard Beck’s Reviving Old Scratch is a riff off of Taylor’s books, but not really directly about it. But more of an application of A Secular Age while looking at the concept of Satan. And now Our Secular Age is a series of essays put together by The Gospel Coalition that have been influenced by Taylor.
Any collection like this is uneven. But there are a number of helpful essays, even though I wanted to argue with a few of them. My problem is that I still have not read the original Taylor, so I am not sure if my impression of Taylor is accurate enough to adequately argue for or against the critiques here. Personally, I think John Starke’s chapter Preaching to the Secular Age and Brett McCracken’s Church Shopping With Charles Taylor were the two most helpful for me. Although I argued in my head with McCracken’s chapter virtually the entire time.
Alan Noble’s chapter, The Disruptive Witness of Art, is really an argument for the existence of the online magazine Christ and Pop Culture. (Which he helped to found and which I am a big fan of.) It is not a new argument to me, but I think it is an important argument. Art is evangelism and discipleship in light of the Secular Age.
This was put together by The Gospel Coalition, although not everyone that contributed would line up with all of TGC’s positions. But this is mostly conservative and reformed authors (and all white and all but one male). The essays are not universally affirming or condemning of Taylor. There are disagreements, but I would be interested in a slightly more diverse opinion.
If you have Kindle Unlimited, there is no reason to not pick Our Secular Age up.
Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition