What does it mean to live in a Secular Age?
Peter Berger
Charles Taylor
How humans create worlds
Externalisation
Why do we build worlds?
Humans are unfinished creatures at birth
To survive and thrive, we must socially construct worlds
Objectivation
Internalisation
Pouring ourselves onto our environment
When we externalise, the things externalise often last longer than the humans who externalised them
So these are things that people have to confront as they are already there
Humans learn to play a role
Imprinting the objective world onto your identity
We are born into a world where there are social constructs, and we internalise these objective ideas
Nomos and Anomy
World building is a nomising activity
A method of organisation and structure
Structures our individual consciousness, and helps us make sense of things
Anomy is when society and individuals break down
If one doesn't know his role and identity, then he/she is in psychological danger
Not knowing the meaning behind life and cannot order it in any significant sense
Religion
World building in a sacred mode
When the world that humans created is given a non-human and extraordinary power and sense
Instead of giving lives transitory and precarious meaning, it is now ultimate, universal and sacred
When life does not conform to social construct, religion helps us make sense of it
Secularisation
4 Factors
Times when religion dominated all aspects of life, but have now entered an age of secularisation
Individual secularisation, secularisation of consciousness
The process of which society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols
Higher numbers of non-religious people
Capitalist economic system separates the economy from religious authority and control
Separation of politics and religion (eg. separation of Church and State)
Development of modern science has separated knowledge from religious authority (eg. Bible)
Reformation such as the Protestant reformation leads to less religious mystery in the world
Dichotomy between spirituality and religion
Different attitude towards religion and spirituality
Common nowadays is using them as a method to find one's true self
Resulting in different attitude to people before
Before, religion was an authority and forcibly a part of everyday life
Religion is authoritative
Religious institutes claim power over people in their community
About sacrificing oneself for the greater good of the group
Spirituality is an inner feeling
More individual
Individual quest to find oneself
One may perform actions that seem religious, but unless they submit to authority, then they are spiritual, not religious
Age of realisation
Final authority = oneself
Personal choice is of highest value
Choice is inherently good, and authority is inherently suspect
Mutual display - needing other people to witness your actions and to determine the meaning of your actions
Paradox - personal choice is of highest value, yet we need mutual display to learn how to be ourselves
Naturally, when personal choice becomes highest value and authority, religion becomes less relevant
Because for religion you must submit to authority that is beyond you
Entering into a age of secularisation