In this episode we track the development of art as opening up a space of mystery and intrigue that comes to be a neutral space for unbelief to land in the Romantic era.
While at first the arts largely captured inherently beautiful things and expressed them in the appropriate public context, the context was first removed and later the subject, such that art could then just be beautiful and about nothing in particular.
Further, we posit that the next development has been that art no longer even has to be beautiful. But if beauty is something that naturally leads us to God, what does all this mean for the missionary in this space?
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (352-360)
-The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron
What happens to our understanding of our world and who we are within it when we start to realise that there is a mystery surrounding the physical origins of humanity and the world?
Charles Taylor highlights three themes that can emerge with this line of questioning:
i) ruins and deep time (time), the sense that there is an unrecoverable past that we have emerged from
ii) the sublime (space), the sense of the infinite expanse of nature at both the universe and microscopic levels
iii) the dark genesis of humanity (existence), the sense that our origins are mixed up mysteriously with that of the natural world around us, and we are perhaps less different than we might first imagine
As these directions spurt more and more avenues, so too does the no man's land between belief and atheism seem to widen. How are we to respond? We turn to a popular biblical narrative and return to the marketplace to find out.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (335-351)
In this episode we explore two shifts that occur at the turn of the 19th century that start to provide meaningful shape to the experience of living at the time: i) the shift from a cosmos to the universe, ii) an understanding an acceptance of the evoluntionary process.
As limits start to fade into a distant past, the imagination of the ordinary person slowly becomes more and more open to possibilities.
Rather than despair, this should be a moment of hope for Christians as we realise that imaginations everywhere are open for the rich reality of the Gospel.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (322-334)
In this episode we explore with Charles Taylor some of the felt dissatisfactions that begin to arise with the emergence of the buffered identity.
In the realm of resonance, these include i) the notion that Deism is too tame and that we must take love seriously, ii) a revulsion at goodness being only at the level of self-interest, and iii) the feeling that life within the immanent order is too easily reduced to a code.
In the realm of the romantic, these include i) the felt alienation of the self from the senses, ii) the felt alienation of the self from others, iii) the felt alienation of the self from nature. and iv) the felt sense of division between humanity and nature.
In the realm of tragedy, these include i) the sense that pain and suffering are too easily denied, ii) the loss of the heroic, iii) the rejection of a flat and levelled down sense of happiness, and iv) the lack of a place for death in the immanent frame.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (310-321)
In this episode we look at the objections of the Modern Moral Order to Orthodox Christianity:
i) it offends reason by holding a place for mystery
ii) it is authoritarian by holding an Almighty above us, offending both reason and freedom
iii) it poses impossible problems of theodicy
iv) it threatens the order of mutual benefit.
Of these, we take a particular look at theodicy, and the range of responses people might take.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (304-310)
In this episode we enter into the halls of Part III of A Secular Age - The Nova Effect. Once there is one viable option of unbelief, more and more become available and viable, as do ways of believing, as well as options at every point in between - an explosion of options for belief and unbelief.
Part III begins with Chapter 8 - The Malaises of Modernity, where Charles Taylor looks at what it feels like to be in a world so "progressed" and "free" but feeling like something isn't quite right.
We take time to note where we see the malaise in the world around us, and the response it draws out.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (299-304)
In a world where freedom has become such a key value, and in many ways is aligned with human dignity, does believing in God offend our freedom, or does it in fact provide a foundation for it?
In this episode we explore the implications of "I think, there I am" both in terms of how we view what is and could be real, and how we understand our freedom. With the glorification of disengaged reason, we can be fooled into thinking our mind is the sole maker of meaning in the universe.
"Disengagement may be quite the wrong way to go about increasing understanding" (p. 285)
"The prestige of the stance begins to dictate what we can take in as reality" (p.286)
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (280-295)
In this episode we look at 6 tensions between classical Greek thought and Orthodox Christianity as they played out in the aftermath of the Enlightenment: i) the importance of the body, ii) what of our lives is important when we reach our ultimate end, iii) the sense of the individual in eternity, iv) the importance of contingency and the unfolding of history, (v) the importance of the emotions, and vi) the human person as one who is capable of divine communion.
For each of these, we've formulated a reflection question for you to think and/or discuss and/or pray about:
i) Is the body part of the highest good, or a hindrance to it?
ii) Is the whole story of ups and downs of someone's life important in the end, or just where you end up?
iii) Is the individual retained in the end or lost in the gathering of eternity?
iv) Has God pre-written the story, or does it unfold as different events and choices are made?
v) Does God have emotion? If we're moving towards being like God, what should be the place of our emotions?
vi) Are we created and saved to go to heaven, or to be in personal communion with the divine?
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (275-280)
With this episode we begin to look at the chapter 'The Impersonal Order'. As the exclusive authority of reason applied to the natural sciences starts to be applied to other fields, the communal image of God starts to shift. God is relegated to the sidelines with the Deist notion that he has set up the world and it is now left to humanity to make of it what we will.
Taylor claims that this movement was powered not only by reason, as some would posit, but an emerging distaste for 'old religion':
"The slide to Deism was not just the result of 'reason' and 'science', but reflected a deep-seated moral distaste for the old religion that sees God as an agent in history" (p. 274).
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (270-275)
In this episode we look at the point where the niche ideas of the elite expand into mainstream directives to such a degree that there is no going back. This is a turning point in the Western world.
We can't fully understand our own context until we appreciate the turn where rationality was no longer optional, and goods such as freedom, life, prosperity, peace, and mutual benefit start to be pursued for their own sake, no longer in reference to and increasingly in opposition to Orthodox Christianity.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (259-269)
In this episode we look at the idea of goodness and how humanity has shifted its understanding of why we pursue it.
How did humanity come to accept goodness in the same movement as distancing themselves from God? How did agape love descend to a form of measured universal sympathy? Is this is natural progression of humanity once the structures of religion are removed? We explore these and other questions, and seek to address the issue of how to be a missionary in this space in today's world.
"They could find within their own human resources the motivation to universal beneficence and justice" (p248).
"The disengaged, disciplined agent, capable of remaking the self, who has discovered and thus released in himself the awesome power of control, is obviously one of the crucial supports of modern exclusive humanism" (p 257).
"Like all striking human achievement, there is something in it which resists reduction to these enabling conditions" (p258).
"The core of the subtraction story consists in this, that we only needed to get these perverse and illusory condemnations off our back, and the value of ordinary human desire shines out, in its true nature, as it has always been" (p253).
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (242-259)
Website:
-https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
In this episode we look at the development of the Modern Moral Order as expressed in "polite society", the power of this communally held notion, and the impact of this upon religion and people of faith. Polite society has bequeathed us tolerance, but is this really what we're called to?
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (234-242)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
In this episode we look at the 3 forces Charles Taylor proposes as fuelling the rise of deism:
-the success of the order project, the mentality that "we can do it on our own"
-continuation of the ideals of the reformation, the decline of the mysterious and heroic as the ordinary vocations are affirmed
-reaction against the 'juridicial-penal' model, where self-interest came to be accepted as good in a rejection of the "depraved humanity" of Jansenism
We discuss what was it may have been like for the individual and their life of faith living in this period of transition, as well as the response of theologians through theodicy (giving an account for God). Taylor sums up this response when he says "Now that we think we see how it all works... [people begin discussing divine justice] and the theologians begin to feel that this is the challenge they must meet to fight back the coming wave of unbelief" (p. 233).
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (226-234)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
We proceed into looking at Part II: The Turning Point, as Charles Taylor outlines deism as a hinge point between classic Christianity and exclusive humanism.
In this episode we look at the 4 anthropocentric shifts Taylor outlines that characterise the shift to providential deism:
i) the eclipse of higher purpose than human flourishing in the here and now
ii) the eclipse of grace and intervention of God in daily life
iii) the eclipse of mystery and reduction of the world to a knowable closed unit
iv) the eclipse of the goal of human transformation/deification in this life
Taylor says of this line of Christianity that "it barely involved the saving action of Christ, nor did it dwell on the life of devotion and prayer, although the 17th century was rich in this. The argument turned exclusively on demonstrating God as reator, and showing his Providence" (p 225).
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (221-225)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
In our second episode with Bishop Mark Edwards OMI, we explore the role of a missionary within a culture.
Matteo Ricci SJ provides the example of taking Christianity into China, where he offers us three key guides for this kind of mission: i) befriend the people, ii) disentangle faith from your own culture so that you can inculturate into the new culture, and iii) seek to be authentic to your faith and to the culture you are living in.
Plenty of thought-provoking questions in this one.
Reflection:
-How do I feel about living in the culture and times that I do?
-What do I understand the missionary task to be in today's world?
References:
-'A Catholic Modernity', Charles Taylor (https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=uscc_marianist_award)
-'A Catholic Modernity: 25 Years On', Charles Taylor (https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/NTT2021.3/4.009.TAYL)
-'Matteo Ricci, Missionary of Inculturation', Jesuits Communication Office (https://www.jesuits.global/2022/12/19/matteo-ricci-missionary-of-inculturation/) -'Matteo Ricci: Shaped by the Chinese', Nicolas Standaert (https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20100521_1.htm)
In this very special episode of Contemplating Culture, Bishop Mark Edwards from Wagga Wagga Diocese in regional New South Wales joins us as we review Part I: The Work of Reform.
We look at key learnings, themes that stick out to us, and try and hold together the overarching story of the road travelled with Charles Taylor to date.
Reflection:
-Why did I begin listening to this podcast?
-What episodes have stuck out to me so far? Why?
-email us at: contemplatingculture@gmail.com
References:
-A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (1-218)
In the conclusion of Part I: The Work of Reform, we spend some time reflecting on what the driving force behind history is. Is it ideas that provide the power for change (Idealism), or do the external factors and motivations lead the way and wait for the ideas to take shape around them (Materialism)?
Taylor concludes in The Spectre of Idealism that it is both.
As missionaries, it is not just the movements of society through history, but the history of individual lives that we are concerned with. In this episode we explore how these principles apply for the big personal shift through history of conversion.
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (212-218)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
This week we look at one of the bequests of the shifting social imaginary: direct access society.
As things started to become more 'secular' (relating exclusively to ordinary time), the importance of higher times and therefore those that mediate to these higher times (priests, kings, etc) diminishes. What unfolds is the direct-access citizen-state, and the implications of this are huge.
We cover Taylor Swift, Jesus as a Saviour vs. Jesus as a friend, and a smattering of in-betweens.
Reflection:
-How does my own faith hold the tension of direct and mediated access to God?
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (207-211)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
Why did the American Revolution hold where the French case failed? How can a society honour both individual freedom and the common good?
In this episode we explore these and other questions as we look at the notion of "The People" as a commonly held notion distinct from religion and politics. Elements such as agreed-upon traditional practices, unifying spearhead figures, underlying philosophy and theories, the understanding of freedom - all these elements of the "path" to creating a common sense of the people indeed impact the "outcome".
Reflection:
-How would I articulate to a friend how choosing to follow the structures of my faith are not an impingement on my freedom but a fulfilment of it?
-Spend time this week conversing with others about how they understand freedom, and how this interacts with the common good
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (196-207)
-Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church, International Theological Commission (2014): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture
In the second of three social imaginaries that we look at as mutations away from the religion/politics stronghold, we talk in this episode about the public sphere.
Charles Taylor guides us through the changing landscape of dialogue that comes with commercial print media in the 1800s, as a trans-location, inter-referring conversation opens up. And the speed and reach of this dialogue has only amplified with the internet. How is the common opinion formed? How are are personal opinions formed? Is something true just because we saw or read it somewhere? Are things in the digital realm as real as things in the tangible?
Reflection:
-What forces and fears are at work when I curate how I express myself in the digital realm?
-What am I doing to develop my own moral conscience and power for reasoned decision making?
References:
-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (185-196)
Website:
https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture