Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor

by Collin Hansen

Publisher:

Gospel Coalition

, 2017

Overview

Probably no book published in the last decade has been so ambitious as Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. He seeks nothing less than to account for the spread of secularism and decline of faith in the last 500 years.Now a remarkable roster of writers—including Carl Trueman, Michael Horton, and Jen Pollock Michel—considers Taylor’s insights for the church’s life and mission, covering everything from healthcare to liturgy to pop culture and politics.Nothing is easy about faith today. But endurance produces character, and character produces hope, even in our secular age.

Key Features

• Considers Taylor’s insights for the church’s life and mission
• Covers everything from healthcare to liturgy to pop culture and politics

Contributors

• Collin Hansen, “Hope in Our Secular Age”
• Carl Trueman, “Taylor’s Complex, Incomplete Historical Narrative”
• Michael Horton, “The Enduring Power of the Christian Story: Reformation Theology for a Secular Age”
• John Starke, “Preaching to the Secular Age”
• Derek Rishmawy, “Millennial Belief in the Super-Nova”
• Alastair Roberts, “Liturgical Piety”
• Brett McCracken, “Church Shopping with Charles Taylor”
• Bruce Riley Ashford, “Politics and Public Life in a Secular Age”
• Greg Forster, “Free Faith: Inventing New Ways of Believing and Living Together”
• Jen Pollock Michel, “Whose Will Be Done? Human Flourishing in the Secular Age”
• Bob Cutillo, “The Healing Power of Bodily Presence”
• Alan Noble, “The Disruptive Witness of Art”
• Mike Cosper, “Piercing the Immanent Frame with an Ultralight Beam: Kanye and Charles Taylor”

Praise for the Print Edition

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is a landmark book, and the essays collected here ponder it intelligently and charitably. Some echo Taylor, some extend his ideas, some contest his claims, but all engage his argument with a seriousness that the book deserves—and that Christ’s church needs.

—Alan Jacobs, distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University and author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

To be secular, says philosopher Charles Taylor, is to have no final goals beyond this-worldly human flourishing. This is only one of the many insights from which pastors can profit from Taylor's work in their ministry of the gospel to an age that has substituted spirituality and authenticity for religion and doctrine. The essays in this helpful volume do more than borrow from Taylor: they engage, question, develop, and occasionally criticize his influential account of our complex cultural moment in which we all--moderns and postmoderns, millennials and non-millennials--are trying to live, move, and have our being as disciples of Jesus Christ. Reading and applying the insights of those who have read and applied Taylor is a salutary exercise in understanding oneself and others in an age that is not only secular, but fragile, frustrated, and confused.

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

As Christians, we sometimes misunderstand not only the answers our secular neighbors have but the questions they are asking too. No philosopher has offered more insight regarding the state of belief in the modern age than Charles Taylor. In Our Secular Age, first-rate evangelical scholars and practitioners deliver 13 essays in which they explore and apply Taylor's thought. This work will benefit all Christians by teaching them to communicate the gospel to a secular culture with neither ignorance nor fear.

—Russell Moore, president, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention

Product Details

• Title: Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor
• Author: Collin Hansen
• Publisher: Gospel Coalition
• Print Publication Date: 2017
• Logos Release Date: 2021
• Pages: 163
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Taylor, Charles, 1931 › -Secular age; Secularism; Religion and culture
• ISBNs: 9780692919996, 0692919996
• Resource ID: LLS:RSCLRGCHRLSTYLR
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:47:19Z

About Collin Hansen

Collin Hansen (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) serves as the editorial director for the Gospel Coalition. He previously worked as an associate editor for Christianity Today magazine and coedits the Cultural Renewal series with Tim Keller. He and his wife belong to Redeemer Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and he serves on the advisory board of Beeson Divinity School.