Some good weekend reading
I love the title of this WSJ book review: The Re-Enchantment of the World.
We live in a strange time, in which religious belief seems to be flourishing, church attendance is high, evangelical preachers are household names and traditionalist congregations are more populous than ever. And yet one has only to turn on the television, go to a movie theater, look at a newsstand or read about, say, sex- education courses in the public schools to feel that our society is almost militantly at odds with revealed religion and biblical teaching. Meanwhile, tracts on atheism ride the best-seller lists — alongside books of soft spiritual uplift from mega-church pastors. What age are we living in, exactly?
His answer is the book’s title.
A secular one, says Charles Taylor, the distinguished Canadian philosopher and political theorist (and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize). But his answer is complicated and in no way meant to suggest that religious sentiment is fated to disappear anytime soon. Far from it. “A Secular Age” tries to explain the modern world to itself in all its contradictions. These include, within a secular culture, the persistence of profound religious conviction and fervent religious observance.
Sounds like it would attract a certain segment of the population, and turn off other folks. But it also sounds like Taylor speaks well to all.
The appeal of Mr. Taylor’s work lies in its fairness: He does justice to the achievements of modernity — e.g., its self-governance, humanitarian ethics and respect for rights — even as he raises unsettling questions about the “expressive individualism” and nihilism that shadow so much of modern life. His prose can be demanding, but he writes with a certain elegance, too. He is at home in Francophone culture and philosophy as well as Anglo-American scholarship. He leans to the left politically (having been active for decades in Canada’s New Democratic Party) but not dogmatically. In recent years the Catholic dimension of his thought has become more pronounced, but his capacity for critical self-examination is strong and his mode of argument almost dialectical, tacking among differing points of view. Even extreme skeptics are likely to follow his arguments with interest and at least provisional sympathy.
There’s a lot packed in that paragraph to make me want to get it. But God alone knows where I’ll put another book, or find the time to read it. Sometimes, we just have to take time, seize the moment, you know? It’s the weekend, good excuse to do what I tried to do when my boys were little….Drop Everything And Read. It’s DEAR time.
