The Myth Of Secularization

(Click on link for episode) The Myth of the Secular, Part 7

IDEAS producer David Cayley concludes his series with three thinkers who believe that division of the world into the secular and the religious both oversimplifies and impoverishes political and religious life. Political philosopher William Connolly (author of Why I Am Not a Secularist) argues for a richer and more inclusive public sphere; historian of religion Mark Taylor (author of After God) calls for a new philosophy of religion; and Fred Dallmayr (editor of An Islamic Reformation?) presents the case for a deeper and more thorough-going pluralism.

A separation of the secular from the religious was one of the founding ideas of the modern world. In the interests of peace and civic order, religion was to be stripped of worldly power and made into a purely private and spiritual matter. Public affairs were to be governed by secular considerations. God might get the occasional nod – like the acknowledgement of his supremacy in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms – but the secular was generally imagined as a religion-free zone. That was the theory, but in recent years this way of cutting things up has come under serious challenge. The boundary between the secular and the religious has eroded. Scholars like Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor have pointed out, for example, that the secular is in many ways a product of religion. And secularization itself seems to have gone into reverse – with religion resurgent all around the world.