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Chapter 2 - Living in a Secular Age

from Part I - The Problem in Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2022

Robyn Horner
Affiliation:
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
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Summary

Chapter 2 is a reflection on how people in Western societies seem to struggle to understand the ongoing place of religion, which means that they also and perhaps particularly struggle with the idea of a divine revelation and the possibility that there is anything more than the immanence of the world. The average person growing up today – whether or not he or she is religious in some way – inhabits the world as a secular reality. That person might have links to a religious community, might have a sense of openness to the transcendent and might name that transcendence 'God' in ways that are shaped by the tradition of that community. Any commitment to transcendence will be challenged, however, not only in the face of the encounter with multiple other beliefs and worldviews, and not only because something like Charles Taylor's 'immanent frame' overwhelms the social imaginary, but also in the face of the radical interruption and forgetting of traditional symbolic networks on which particular religious systems and their communities depend. The injunction to remember that is at the heart of the three Abrahamic religious traditions simply no longer comes to mind in the once-Christian West.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Experience of God
A Phenomenology of Revelation
, pp. 20 - 38
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Living in a Secular Age
  • Robyn Horner, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book: The Experience of God
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009118729.003
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  • Living in a Secular Age
  • Robyn Horner, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book: The Experience of God
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009118729.003
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Living in a Secular Age
  • Robyn Horner, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • Book: The Experience of God
  • Online publication: 13 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009118729.003
Available formats
×