Theological Journal – January 23, 2020 Attention (2)

Charles Taylor posits three forms of the Secular in the West.


Secular 1: Sacred/Secular Planes
Secular 2: Religious versus A-religious Spaces
Secular 3: The Negating of Transcendence


In Secular 1 the eternal existed with the temporal (the Medieval world). “Above” it, as it were. The transcendent regularly impinged on and intersected the temporal. People lived in expectation of commerce with the transcendent plane (for good or ill).


In Secular 2 the zone for the transcendent was reduced to spatial locales (beginning with the Modern era). Transcendence is ruled out though some people still believe and are allowed religious spaces (which jockey to expand those places). In terms of my interest here attention was diverted in other directions than transcendence by the additions of the primacy of reason, the growing interest in history and the fulfilment of human dreams and hopes within history. Attention to God was still tolerated as an idiosyncratic choice some people make. 


In Secular 3 the plausibility of transcendence is denied in a more thoroughgoing way (mid-1960’s to present). We live within what Taylor calls the immanent frame” (human life is fully natural and material). More additions are added to deflect attention to God. Even so, the immanent frame is not foolproof. Signals or echoes of transcendence still leak through with their sense of a “more” to life than living immanently can deliver. All sorts of searches for this elusive transcendence happens resulting in the unexpected (to some) revival of interest in religion, spirituality, and religious philosophy during this time. These expressions of religion are decisively shaped by immanence in that they take the form of an individually chosen and followed search for authenticity (spiritual but not religious,” Moralistic Therapeutic Deism [MTD]}.


Living in Secular three we experience the impact of the immanent frame at every turn. In particular, we feel it in the awareness that what we believe is but one of many options for people in our world and that we ourselves could not believe as well as believe. We feel vaguely ill-at-ease or guilty for believing. At the same time we may hear echoes of transcendence and seek to satisfy the longing it evokes in us. But because nearly all routes to genuine transcendence have been blocked by the additions to our sense of what life is in Secular 2 and 3 we have the efflorescence of religions and spiritualities we see today.


The point to all this is that the possibility of attention to God has been redirected and diverted in many different directions. The challenge we face as Christians is to (re)discover access to genuine transcendence, to God. Thus, in Secular 3, is what attention to God in our time is all about.

In sum,

-in Secular 1 attention to the Christian God required discerning genuine forms of transcendence in a world teeming with all sorts of spirits, powers, and gods. Their presence and activity in our world and lives was assumed to be ubiquitous.

-in Secular 2 attention to God meant maintaining and strengthening one’s ties to the places and locales of religious instruction and practice. That is, sustaining and extending the place of those entities in our world. This what most of us Baby Boomers grew up in and with and to the degree we are still in charge of churches and religious instruction we still attempt to build up and encourage participation in these places (though that strategy no longer works).

-in Secular 3 attention to God demands a (re)discovery of true transcendence in a culture that denies its existence.

Before we turn to this Secular 3 task we need to look a bit more at the avenue that has emerged as a possible point of access to transcendence in thus culture: the search for authenticity