The author of one of the most ambitious and influential efforts to explain why the " "Secular Thesis" failed - why religion has not proved to be antithetical to secularism-will come to Chicago for a public lecture at the Divinity School on Friday, Feb. 13.
Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of political science and philosophy at McGill University, is widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary philosophers and renowned for his work on Hegel. The author of 20 books, Taylor has influenced many religious scholars, but it was his 2007 work A Secular Age that has had a profound impact on religious scholarship.
"It's reframed the whole debate about secularism and religion," said William Schweiker, Director of the Martin Marty Center and the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School.
The centerpiece of Taylor's visit will be his 4:30 p.m. lecture in Swift Hall, in which he will discuss his book, which examines the role of religion in a secular age-and what happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one possibility among others.
Following Taylor's lecture, two Divinity School scholars, Schweiker and Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought, will present responses; Kristine Culp, Dean of Disciples Divinity House and Associate Professor of Theology, will moderate.
For more information on Taylor's visit, go to http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/about/.
To review some of the conversation surrounding A Secular Age, visit, "The Immanent Frame," a blog created by the Social Science Research Council that hosts discussion about secularism and religion: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/.
—Prof. Chuan He
