| Abstract
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This essay appreciates Taylor’s qualitative (rather than quantitative) approach to secularization, which has revolutionized recent discussions of this topic. Taylor’s earlier work on Hegel provides a context for interpreting his proposal in A Secular Age that Western societies are secularly religious or religiously secular—neither devoid of concern with transcendence, nor committed to theologically definite accounts of transcendence. Two major points of critique follow—first, that Hegelianism with its “immanent frame” excludes a distinctive Christian claim regarding Jesus’s incarnation; and, second, that Taylor’s hypothesis of faith “fragilized” by the “revisability” of contemporary religion needs empirical support to be fully credible. Taylor often represents religion as a lowest-common-denominator aspiration for something higher, rather than God coming to us incarnationally (John 1:14). Deism-with-transcendence is not Christianity. Taylor’s “fragilization” theory might mean that secularity, too, is “fragilized,” and it ought to provoke pastoral reflection on how “fragilized” faith might be stabilized. This essay appreciates Taylor’s qualitative (rather than quantitative) approach to secularization, which has revolutionized recent discussions of this topic. Taylor’s earlier work on Hegel provides a context for interpreting his proposal in A Secular Age that Western societies are secularly religious or religiously secular—neither devoid of concern with transcendence, nor committed to theologically definite accounts of transcendence. Two major points of critique follow—first, that Hegelianism with its “immanent frame” excludes a distinctive Christian claim regarding Jesus’s incarnation; and, second, that Taylor’s hypothesis of faith “fragilized” by the “revisability” of contemporary religion needs empirical support to be fully credible. Taylor often represents religion as a lowest-common-denominator aspiration for something higher, rather than God coming to us incarnationally (John 1:14). Deism-with-transcendence is not Christianity. Taylor’s “fragilization” theory might mean that secularity, too, is “fragilized,” and it ought to provoke pastoral reflection on how “fragilized” faith might be stabilized.
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