I’m in a book group, which is perfectly expected behaviour if you read this blog.
Kevin is in it, and some smart people too…
We’re reading the rather weighty A secular age, which feels a tad over my head most of the time, but it’s undeniably interesting and challenging the old brain cells.
On the day that the yanks “got him” I was reading this and thought it appropriate.
Taylor has just been talking about the modern era, and the retreat of Christendom in virtually all north Atlantic societies, and he’s trying to explain the so-called “American exception” to secularity.
America is “exceptional” because the alignment of the religous with the nation-state is seen as unproblematic. Europe is quite different where the phrase “Gott mit uns” makes everyone a little uncomfortable
Quite different is the attitude of the United States. This may be partly because they have fewer skeletons in the family closet to confront than their European cousins. But I think the answer is simpler. It is easier to be unreservedly confident in your won rightness when you are the hegemonic power. The skeletons are there but they can be resolutely ignored…
A Secular Age
Charles Taylor
P528
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