What Does It Mean to Live in a Secular Age?
Berger: Process of world building is dialectical
Externalizations is the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world, both in the physical and mental activity of men..
Objectivation: attainment by the products of this activity of a reality that confronts its original producers as a facticity eternal to and other than themselves
Human curiously create things that last longer than themselves. Things exist pror to us such as San Francisco or democracy that we inherit and have to confront.
Internalization: appropriation by men of this same reality, transforming it once again from structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness.
People pour themselves into the environment, they are creative and they organize, build and create
We imprint objective world onto our identity such as creating music, ideas, or technology. When the next generations come into this world it is different then what it was when we came into it.
Berger: Anomy means being without order (nomos).
When society breaks down and things break down for individual person, they don't know what role to play or identity to take. They don't know the meaning of life or how to order it in any sense.
For example, COVID-19 pandemic showed us the danger of loosing meaning in life. People became submerged into disorder and senselessness.
Berger: Secularization is a process by which sectors of society are removed from the domination of religious institutions
Live without benefits of religious interpretations
Factors such as economics, politics and science become divided from religious power or authority. Capitalism separates economy and church.
Taylor: Difference between spirituality and religion
Religion is authoritative. Institutions of religion claim they have authority over people and mandate the spiritual life of the community.
Religion requires sacrifice and belonging to a group.
"Well, religion, I feel, is doctrine and tradition, genuflecting, and you have to do things this way. " (pg. 508)
"...that is the authority claims by churches which see it as their mandate to preempt the search, …” (pg. 508)
Spirituality is about an individual self-quest. It is a personal search and fulfillment and balance.
Spirituality involves figuring out individual life, career, family in order to become a true self and find one's own path.
A person might meditate, or participate in retreats or perform other health practices or believe in icons without subscribing to the authority of religion
"Finding out about oneself, expressing oneself, discovering one’s own way of becoming all that one can…is opposed to denying or sacrificing oneself for the sake of a super-self order of things" (pg. 509)
"They are seeking a kind of unity and wholeness of the self, a reclaiming of the place of feeling, against the one-sided..” (pg. 507)
"Spirituality is an inner feeling, an allowance of however you perceive it in your world, in your mind , and however it feels is okay…spirituality, I think, is what enters you and lifts you up and moves you to be a better person, a more open person" (pg. 508)
Taylor: Age of authenticity
Definition: each person has a life and realizes their own humanity. We follow own destiny and have to do so without giving into deformity
The final authoritative figure is yourself.
Having choices has the highest value and priority. The more choices we have, the happier we are.
It is the highest expression of freedom and highest expression of authenticity. It is the model for happiness.
"Expressions like do your own thing become current…be yourself in the world of today…therapies multiply to find yourself, realize yourself, release your true self and so on…”"
Explains why many people are choosing not to be religious
People don't want to submit themselves to an authority other then themselves. We live in an age when a human being is the highest authority.
None under the religious choice of the census box is the fastest growing group
We have gone from a place where believing in God was a given (impossible not to believe in God) to where believing in God is just one of many possibilities
Modern society is marked by choices in which believing in God is possibility among others
“Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.” (pg.1)
For example, in 1500 Germany there was very little choice and if a person said they don't believe in God they would be excluded from society.
In today's society there is religious freedom. Our government is not mixed with any religious institution.
A person can participate in society without ever referring to God or any religious beliefs.
"One understanding of secularity then is in terms of public spaces. These have been allegedly emptied of God, or of any reference to ultimate reality. Or taken from another side, as we function within various spheres of activity—economic, political, cultural, educational, professional, recreational—the norms and principles we follow, the deliberations we engage in, generally don’t refer us to God or to any religious beliefs;” (pg. 2)
In order to exist you don't need to have revelation from heaven, just need to use rational.
On page 13, Charles Taylor says: "The difference I’ve been talking about above is one of the whole background framework in which one believes or refuses to believe in God.”
Nowadays, the default seems to be not not believing and people need to be convinced to believe
"But we have also changed from a condition in which belief was the default option, not just for the naïve but also for those who knew, considered, talked about atheism; to a condition in which for more and more people unbelieving construal seem at first blush the only plausible ones” (pg. 12)
Change 1: belief is one possibility among others People have so many choices of how to be religious or spiritual.
Change 2: For many people they begin with unbelief and later they convert to believing after having exposure to a community.
Similarity between Berger and Taylor
Society has become independent of religion or God. Political, economic, and cultural lives are not religious. A person can participate in any of those and not be reminded of religion.
Secularization is a process that has happened over time.
Many people are born into world in which objective society (full of so many things we learn as a young people) is not full of religious symbols or elements. People can go through their entire life without encountering religion. They may over time encounter religion and internalize these religious elements. Then they would internalize these elements and build an identity based on it.
500 years ago the world was saturated with reilgious elements; there was no escaping religion
"Spirituality is an inner feeling, an allowance of however you perceive it in your world, in your mind , and however it feels is okay..." (pg.508)