Notes from the Undercroft

What Does the Episcopal Church Teach?
—Christian Doctrine in the Anglican Tradition

Discussion 1: Doctrine, Dogma, & Adiaphora

In this first discussion, we clarify our terms—namely, doctrine, dogma, and adiaphora. This is the first of three preliminary discussions before we turn our attention to the actual Doctrines of the Episcopal Church. 

Being Christian in a Secular Age: A Pilgrimage
Session 5—A New Kind of Secular: Glimpses of Transcendence

Over the span of five episodes, I'm joined by the Rev'd Justin McIntosh, Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia to discuss Being a Christian in a Secular Age. In this fifth discussion, we put the theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy in conversation with the understanding of our Secular Age that we have gotten from Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith, David Bentley Hart, and Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm. We appeal especially to the work of John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock to re-orient ourselves to this Sacramental Cosmos that just is the Creation of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This reawakening to glimpses of transcendence is more available to us now than it was to our immediate predecessors because the Secular is not actually the sphere of disenchanted, mechanistic atheism we've been told but a bustling marketplace of metaphysical ideas and spiritualities, where Truth and Beauty are constantly breaking in like shafts of light through stained glass windows.

Being Christian in a Secular Age: A Pilgrimage
Session 4—Dispelling Disenchantment

What is Disenchantment? And in our Secular Age, are we, in fact, Disenchanted, or are we simply enchanted by the story of Disenchantment?

 Over the span of five videos, I'm joined by the Rev'd Justin McIntosh, Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia to discuss Being a Christian in a Secular Age. In this fourth episdoe, we explore the Myth of Disenchantment, to echo the title of Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm's book on the subject. We place Josephson-Storm's research and ideas in conversation with Charles Taylor's work in A Secular Age and William T. Cavanaugh's thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence.

Being Christian in a Secular Age: A Pilgrimage
Session 3: Out-narrating the Secular Stories

Can we tell a better story than the secularization narrative?

Over the span of five discussions, I'm joined by the Rev'd Justin McIntosh, Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia to discuss Being a Christian in a Secular Age. In this third episode, we turn a critical eye toward the Master Narratives that underwrite the Social Imaginary of our modern, Secular Age and offer a different, more complex and nuanced story of our history. In this alternative (and more accurate) story, the Church and Christian faith are not a relic blocking the way of progress but, more often than not, an impetus for and an engine of human flourishing throughout the ages. For it is this same Christian faith that has inspired the greatest philosophers, artists, theologians, musicians, scholars, and scientists of history.

Being Christian in a Secular Age: A Pilgrimage
Discussion 2—Stories of the Secular

What is the story we all tell ourselves about how we got to this Secular Age? And is it true?

Over the span of five episodes, I'm joined by the Rev'd Justin McIntosh, Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia to discuss Being a Christian in a Secular Age. In this second episodes, we trace the Master Narratives that underwrite the Social Imaginary of our modern, Secular Age and its correlative Exclusive Humanism. Here we draw on Charles Taylor's magisterial work, A Secular Age, as well as James K. A. Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular. Other sources for our discussion that remain yet unmentioned but are no less important are David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions, William Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence, and Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm's The Myth of Disenchantment. 

Being Christian in a Secular Age: A Pilgrimage
Discussion 1—Mapping the Secular

If we drew a map of our modern Secular Age, what would look like? What would it include? What would e the center? What would be left off?

Over the span of five episodes, I'm joined by the Rev'd Justin McIntosh, Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia to discuss Being a Christian in a Secular Age. In this first episode, we reflect on Charles Taylor's A Secular Age and James K A Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular to describe the uses of the word "secular" and map out our present "Secular Age."