Just a few centuries ago, belief in God was virtually unchallenged throughout 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, March 25th, we will discuss Taylor’s definition of secularism as a lived experience. Central to this is how we now understand ourselves: not as subjects of divine and evil forces like our medieval predecessors, but as "buffered," self-reflexive individuals.

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