Tag "Charles Taylor"

Expressive Individualism: Our Twenty-First Century American Ba’al

During the middle of the twentieth century, the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that the Western world was a “world come of age,” by which he did not intend a compliment; he meant that Westerners had learned to manage life without reference to God and that life without God is deeply unhealthy for individuals [ Read More ]

Christian Witness from the Cultural Margins

In the last century, our social order has been radically desacralized. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer described this as a “world come of age,” in which Westerners attempt to manage life without God. Sociologist Philip Rieff deemed this a third era in world history, an age in which social order has been severed from sacred order and in which the West’s [ Read More ]

Jordan Peterson: High Priest for a Secular Age

An article in The Spectator recently described Jordan Peterson as “one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years”—and they have a point. Peterson went from being virtually unknown in 2012 to perhaps the most famous public intellectual in the world in 2018. He has more than 2 million followers on YouTube and [ Read More ]

Christian Politics in a Secular Age

Recently, The Commonweal Project invited me to speak on “Christian Politics in a Secular Age” at their conference in Atlanta, GA. As it turned out, C-SPAN showed up to televise the talk and subsequent Q&A session. The televised talk is divided into roughly five segments: An introductory segment in which I draw upon sociologist Philip Rieff [ Read More ]