It may be that we will only see the secular’s true value by imagining the loss of it. When we imagine those scenarios, I think we begin to see that the religious and the secular are not enemies. Like male and female, like day and night, like waking and sleep, like faith and doubt, they need each other. It’s not that religion is holy and the secular is profane. It’s that both religion and the secular can be holy, and both can be desecrated, recalling again Wendell Berry’s wise words.7 Ultimately, the religious and the secular are not two things, but one: life.
