David Breeden is speaking all week about the common task.

Transcript:

Hello, I’m David Breeden, I’m the senior minister at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, a historically humanist congregation. And this is coffee and wisdom. Got a reminder for you. We are going to summer wisdom next week. So next week we will be going to a live on Tuesdays and Thursdays schedule. Just as a reminder, we’ll be live at 9:00 a.m. Central Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning next week for our summer wisdom. So we get out into the world a little bit more. This week. We have been looking at the idea of a common task, and specifically I’m looking at how can a nation that is increasingly secular stick together and have a task to do. And I’ve been looking at ways in which a lot of religious people would argue that we can’t because you have to have a common religious heritage. Well, that’s not going to happen in the U.S. So how are we going to do this? Other thing is the question I’ve been talking about Charles Taylor, a very important Roman Catholic philosopher from Canada. His central book is A Secular Age from the from twenty seven. The central question of that book is, why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, fifteen hundred in our Western society? Well, in 2000, many of us find this not only easy, but even in escapable. That’s the central question of the book. Again, Charles Taylor being a religious person, but is he’s taking secularity very seriously in the way that he is considering how we are changing in the Western world, what he calls the the North Atlantic states.

This is a common critique of secularism from Charles Taylor. Quote, The dark side of individualism is a centering on the self which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer and meaning and less concerned with others or society. Very common critique. And he does go into some ways that’s not the case. But that is a central thesis of the book that secularity equals concern for self and unconcern for others and for society. I mentioned this book yesterday. It’s an earlier book, Charles Taylor A Sources of Self. He says that we have so many options that we have become perpetual seekers and that is the reason for. He argues that what we call identity politics that is occurring certainly in the US but also in Canada. And his argument is that identity politics, this idea of being perpetually seeking for the self, the authentic self, then produces this extreme individualism and it can be politically divisive. But also, he says, and I agree, that it can also function to call us to our better selves as we examine and reexamine our attitudes, our prejudices, where we’re coming from and why we think certain things. So here are some questions that I want to ask that I don’t necessarily know the answers to.

Those are the right kind of questions. First is, is religious thinking a different way of thinking from other ways of thinking? Because Charles Taylor certainly is saying, yes, it is. But is that the case? If so, how is religious thinking different than secular thinking? And if not, what is it in other forums? What is religious thinking from a secular standpoint? I think these are central questions to ask. A lot of philosophers and theologians are thinking about these issues these days. There are lots of answers floating around out there. But the real answer, I don’t know, it may still be eluding us. But these are very, very good questions to be asking. I think another book that Charles Taylor wrote is called Modern Social. Imagine areas. He didn’t make up this term. He didn’t coined the term, but he uses it a great deal.