Contemplating Culture: A Missionary Walk Through A Secular Age

What impact did the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s have on how people understood and interacted with the sacred? What has the response of the faith been to this dramatic shift in the western world? Together we explore these questions, and look ultimately to the teaching of Pope St John Paul II as a treasure trove the Age of Authenticity in understanding the beauty of the sexual ethic of...

Like every other age, the Age of Authenticity has its own set of ethics and goals. In this episode Kat opens up what it is like being a formator in a religious community and a spiritual director in the midst of this age, particularly when elements of the age seem at odds with the nature of religious life or Christian discipleship. References: -Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor (pp 473-486)

With the rise of migration from rural areas into cities, people were displaced from community and there was a felt lack which provided the perfect ground for the emergence of the Age of Mobilisation. Many societal structures and efforts of evangelisation were based around the needs and nature of this Age. In this episode we explore what some of the elements of the Age of Mobilisation were, and the...

In this episode we begin a new section of A Secular Age, looking at how various parties construct their narratives of secularisation and the impact this has. There is a pervading notion that religion is either false, irrelevant, or unattractive, and that secularisation is a simple transfer of this reality via diffusion and differentiation. The narrative would say that those wishing to sustain reli...

In this episode we explore how the British synthesis of duty and altruism fared through the world wars. As faith was shaken, numerous options emerged (or were forged) to help people find a meaningful way forward. References: -Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor (pp 407-419)

In this episode we examine the British ethic of the 19th century that arises with its principles of being British, decency, Protestantism, and civilisation. These values are embedded into schooling, and find their peak heading into the First World War. As always, a pendulum swing comes in the other direction advocating for the redemption of spontaneity and freedom, and a gamut of positions emerge...

In this episode we follow some of the cases of the increasing number of expressions of belief/unbelief that emerge in the 19th Century. The old faith is considered unbelievable, but much of what it offered comes to be seen as somewhat essential. It is a period of exploration, with many different trajectories emerging in the pursuit of something plausible. References: --Pages of A Secular Age, Char...

At the turn of the 19th century, two factors rise as influential in maturing the nova of unbelief that emerged in the 18th century, namely i) the scientific stance as a higher standard, and ii) the continued unfolding of the new cosmic imaginary that had little place for a personal God. Faith came to be seen as childish and immature, and even standard exclusive humanism came to be seen as not far...

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 no...

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 s...

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 possibili...

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 easi...

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 respo...

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...

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 r...

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, an...

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...

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 pu...

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 que...

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/contemplatingcu...

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 i...

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 o...

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 fait...

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 episod...

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 m...