How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor

by James K.A. Smith

Fundamentally, there is a leveling at work here. Rejecting the “multi-speed” and “two-tiered” models, Reform ratchets up expectation: in Reform movements within Christendom, everyone is now expected to live all their lives coram Deo, before the face of God. In the language of Saint Paul, they are expected to do all for the glory of God (Col. 3:17). This is actually the flip side of a new sanctification of “ordinary life” — a refusal of sacred/profane distinctions and the beginning of the erosion of the sacred/secular distinction. Domestic life is affirmed as a sphere of grace. It’s not just priests and nuns who are “religious”; the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker can also undertake their mundane, “this-worldly” tasks with a sense of devotion and worship.