Was there really a time when nature wasn't taken under a microscope? When art and music was used to tell stories, and the thought of testing its limits hadn't really been explored?

With this episode we begin looking at Chapter 2: The Rise of Disciplinary Society. Here, Charles Taylor begins by looking at the story of how humanity started looking at nature for its own sake.

As we follow the story through to today, it becomes scary to realise how quickly treating nature as void of intrinsic purpose can lead us to treating people as void of intrinsic purpose; things/people start to be seen more explicitly as valuable for what they can do.

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (92-98)

The new Christian transport is taking off: disenchantment and humanism start find movement in Christianity through inner personal devotion, uneasiness with sacramentals, and anxiety of judgment. We find Christianity swept up in the movements of reform, rejecting the old and charging on towards forging something new. Finding its peak in a Puritan Calvin society, it seems that remade, well-ordered society can become a human achievement. What we find however is that underneath is a deep anxiety, a society that we must constantly be at work to sustain, for God has been done away with as the sustainer.

Is this anxiety one of the inheritances bequeathed to the Western world by history? What role does control play in all of this?

With this episode we reach the end of Chapter 1: Bulwarks of Belief

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (75-88)

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/contemplatingculture

The pagan fear of the dead and the unsettled souls in the afterlife starts to give way in Christianity to a fear of death itself, on account of personal judgment. The increasing notion of the individual person means that the final judgment starts to give way to each person's particular judgment. We see the rise of auricular confession, indulgences, concern for sexual sin.

So how did this develop over the years, and where does it leave us now?

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (66-70)

Dissatisfaction has been a part of the human story since its beginning. But what happens when the widespread dissatisfaction of the masses is empowered with the belief that change is possible, and the tools to carry it out? In this episode we look at the drive for reform powered by dissatisfaction, and some of the implications in both ancient and modern history. What can learn from history, and what is our call moving forward?

Reflections:

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (60-63, 70-75)

In this era when time is a resource, and a valuable one at that, it can be difficult to fathom a relationship with time that isn't based on equal units of chronological time. Is there another way of viewing time? In this episode we launch from Charles Taylor's notion of a common sense of higher time that slowly eroded, into an exploration of time as we know it. Are we slaves or free? Is time empty, or can it carry some meaning independent of what we bring to it or fill it with? Our longest conversation yet, and one that could have gone much longer!

Reflections:

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (55-59)

Cartoon referenced: https://www.leunig.com.au/works/recent-cartoons/769-jomo

With the development of the buffered self, space slowly opens for people to shift from thinking primarily in the "I" instead of the "we". Slowly, society was no longer something held in place by God that we were part of, society became something we can (and must) make.

In a disenchanted world, it started to become possible to imagine a world where the tensions of a hierarchical society were simply crafted out of existence: enter the French revolutions.

In this week's episode we look at what sparked the period of revolutions and reform in France, and the impact of that experiment for the rest of the Western world. And for us today.

Reflections:

Where are the tension points in your life, in how you sit within society and your relationships?

What would it be like to say yes to the "we" of society as opposed to only operating from a stance of the "I", the self? In what areas could you explore putting this into action?

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (42-53)

In this episode we begin looking at the first of the three "bulwarks of belief", God the good spirit that protects us from a world of unruly spirits. With the progression of science examining the physical nature of the world, the mystery started to unravel and what was once a very "enchanted" world became slowly "disenchanted". As such, people began to shift from being "porous" (open to forces and meanings outside themselves) to "buffered" (able to close off to forces outside themselves and become their own makers of meaning).

Is there a place for mystery in a disenchanted world? What do we make of the things we cannot explain?

Reflections:

Where are the areas of tension and mystery in your life? Spend some time with God as He holds these tensions in place, and holds you in the midst of it as you ponder

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (27-41)

Cartoons: https://sites.google.com/view/contemplatingculture

Article about the eucharistic miracle in Buenos Aires, referred to in this episode: https://emmanuel.info/en/the-eucharistic-miracle-in-buenos-aires/

We begin Part 1, The Work of Reform. Over the coming episodes we will be exploring the dynamics at play that caused a flurry of movements that set out to "remake" society, rather than acceptance of the stability of how things were.

In this episode we begin Chapter 1, the Bulwarks of Belief. Belief was held in place by three key fortresses, and as each of these began to be taken out from the wall and examined, suddenly the pastures outside belief became a possibility. In 500 years Western society went from Christian faith for the masses to a state where even the Christians remaining cannot help but be posed with the question of why they choose faith when there are so many other viable options; questioning has become inescapable. The next few episodes will delve deeper into each of these bulwarks.

Reflections:

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (25-26)

Cartoons: https://sites.google.com/view/contemplatingculture

Charles Taylor claims that the heart of modern secularity is "exclusive humanism", where a life can be conceived involving no goal beyond human flourishing. How did we get here? The stage is set for the eclipse of the tri-fold connections to transcendence: 

Reflections:

References:

Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (17-21)

Cartoons: https://sites.google.com/view/contemplatingculture

What shapes the background of belief? In this episode we explore elements of our contemporary world view which mean that belief today cannot be the same as belief 500 years ago. Ideas covered include:

Reflections:

References:

 Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (8-12)

Cartoons: https://sites.google.com/view/contemplatingculture