Gospel Conversations Reimagined: Musings on Secularization and the Unraveling of Authority, Part 2
I will eventually post more on the Four Prominent Features of Faithful Recontextualization, but before I do, I want to add a bit more about my journey as a follower of Jesus and researcher related to the topics of secularization and the unraveling of authority. In 2016 Tim Keller gave a presentation at a Centered and Sent conference sponsored by Summit Church. He described modern western culture as the first to erase sacred order from society and thereby assign SELF as the highest form of authority. Eventually, Charles Taylor and Philip Rieff would underscore these assertions and this topic would begin to weigh on me.
Taylor’s argument in A Secular Age revolves around these two questions: “How did we move from a condition where, in Christendom, people lived naively within a theistic construal, to one in which we all shunt between two stances, in which everyone’s construal shows up as such; and in which, moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default option?”[1] Or, stated another way, “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?”[2] The purpose of writing A Secular Age was to trace the process by which modern society shifted positions. Taylor claims,
The coming of modern secularity in my sense has been coterminous with the rise of a society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true. [3]
In a previous post, I noted that Taylor’s secularization is not the absence but the presence of belief, but a secularized belief-system can only exist within an “immanent frame.”[4] This creates a new set of faith assumptions or conditions-of-belief about history, identity, morality, society, and rationality.
Taylor argues that if this secularization or exclusive humanism is to thrive, then, a new moral source must emerge, one that understands the way human society functions and is easily recognizable in the immanent frame. This new moral source must readily believe that humankind is motivated to act for the good of others. This exclusively humanistic ideology draws on familiar forms of the Christian faith and is a highly sophisticated caricature of the gospel of God.
I did some research on the ideology of humanism and discovered Humanists International—a world union present in over forty countries, consisting of humanists, rationalists, irreligious and atheist free-thought organizations. Humanists International promotes:
…a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirm human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their lives. It stands for the building of a more human society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and scientific inquiry. It is not theistic and does not promote supernatural views of reality.[5]
Further, Humanism affirms every human’s right and responsibility to create meaning and also requires the use of the word Humanism with no added adjective (like “secular”) and calls all Humanists to establish Humanism as a life stance. Fascinatingly, the humanist belief-system that Taylor describes and is everywhere present in places like public institutions and politics and is manifested by a corrosive moral relativism that is void of sacred authority.
Taylor’s bold conclusions regarding self-sufficient or exclusive humanism are worth quoting again,
The coming of modern secularity in my sense has been coterminous with the rise of a society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true.[6]
Much more learned scholars than I have published scores of articles and books on this topic, but I feel the need to share what I have learned because of the significance of secularization and the unraveling of authority—particularly in our quest to engage in meaningful gospel conversations. In addition, the weight of this realization kept me reading the Scripture and eventually led to Feature Two: Faithful Recontextualization Yields to the Full-Weight of God’s Authority, which I will write about in coming weeks.
If you are following this Series of Stories, thank you for reading! If you are burdened by some of the same things I mention in my posts, let me encourage you to keep reading your Bible. Start in Genesis and make your way to Revelation and pray that God will help you to see and comprehend the True Story of the Whole World. This book is a great tool that can help you read through the whole Bible in ninety days. DM me @CasMonaco if you have questions or comments.
[1] Taylor, Secular, 14. [2] Taylor, Secular, 25. [3] Taylor, Secular, 18. [4] Taylor, in Secular, 542, defines “immanent frame” as a constructed social space that holds instrumental rationality as a key value, where time is secular (this world). The immanent frame “constitutes a ‘natural’ order, to be contrasted to a ‘supernatural’ one, an ‘immanent’ world, over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one.” [5] What is Humanism? https://humanists.international/what-is-humanism/. [6] Taylor, A Secular, 18.
