3 Definitions of "Secular" and Why They Matter for Our Mission

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age has been praised for its thorough analysis of how we arrived at the “secular” moment in which we live, a world where the biggest shift is not simply in what human beings believe or disbelieve, but what is believable.

Before reading this book, I considered “secular” as a synonym for “non-spiritual” and used the term as an antonym for “sacred” or as an adjective to describe an increasingly non-religious Western world. Taylor’s work challenged me on the meaning of “secular” by offering three reference points for secularity, showing how the term can take on different meanings. Read more