originally published 11/19/2014

Philosopher James K. A. Smith, author of How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Eerdmans, 2014), examines Charles Taylor’s explanation (in The Secular Age) of how modern culture came to unlearn the theistic assumption of the West. Smith discusses the evangelical and ecclesial ramifications for Christians living within Charles Taylor’s third wave of secularism. In contrast to the classical-medieval paradigm in which the secular designates the temporal and earthly, and in contrast to the Enlightenment paradigm of a metaphysically detached or neutral secular realm, Taylor’s third wave of secularism is one in which belief in God is merely one choice among a plurality of choices or, for many, completely implausible.

25 minutes

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