The Art of Manliness - #238： Life in a Secular Age

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast it's said that

00:00:18.760 we live in a secular age but what does that mean is it simply that people are less religious or

00:00:24.280 is it something more mcgill university philosophy professor charles taylor wrote a 900 page tome

00:00:29.580 called a secular age in which he argues that secularity has more to do with a feeling of

00:00:33.780 uncertainty about truth that pervades our culture in which all ideas are contested and contestable

00:00:39.400 my guest today on the show wrote a reader's guide to taylor's epic work his name is james k.a smith

00:00:44.360 he goes by jamie he's a professor of philosophy at calvin college and his book is called how

00:00:49.020 parentheses not to be secular and today on the show jamie and i discuss what it means to live

00:00:54.060 in a secular age how we got here and why it creates so much existential anxiety whether

00:00:59.300 you're a believer agnostic or atheist you're going to find some fascinating insights about

00:01:03.120 today's culture jamie and i also discuss his latest book you are what you love in which he argues that

00:01:07.760 our lives are filled with liturgies whether we know it or not and how not being mindful of these

00:01:12.020 liturgies can result in living a life you're not wholly satisfied with put on your philosophical

00:01:16.760 and sociological hardhat we're digging deep into the mind of human existence in this thought-provoking

00:01:21.040 but accessible episode on secularity and spirituality after the show make sure to check out the show notes

00:01:26.360 at aom.is slash secular where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:01:31.740 topic jamie smith welcome to the show it's great to be with you thanks so you are a professor of

00:01:43.900 philosophy and theology at calvin college in michigan right grand rapids right that's right

00:01:50.300 okay and you've written uh a ton a ton of books i guess yeah yeah um but today i want to talk about

00:01:58.500 two that i've read um it's how not to be secular and you are what you love because i think they're

00:02:04.360 related uh in a way um so let's talk about your first book how not to be secular this is a reading

00:02:10.140 guide to philosopher charles taylor's book a secular age um can you give us a thumbnail sketch on taylor

00:02:18.260 and the thesis of his work and why you felt it was necessary to create this reading guide to this

00:02:23.280 his book yeah absolutely um so taylor himself is also a longtime professor of philosophy at mcgill

00:02:30.460 university in montreal is canadian uh trained in england and has long been sort of doing um what i would

00:02:38.980 call philosophical histories of modernity like he's sort of a genealogist of the contemporary he helps us

00:02:46.960 make sense of the cultural moment in which we find ourselves he had an earlier book called sources of

00:02:52.700 the self which is equally important in many ways and so his book a secular age is this 900 page

00:03:00.020 tome that is wending and winding and difficult but also like totally brilliant and incisive and

00:03:08.660 widely widely engaged and discussed so and and and what's interesting is taylor himself is a person of

00:03:15.560 faith he's a catholic christian who is in the middle of you know a mainstream academic world who's trying

00:03:22.700 to uh understand the nature of secularity and so i had an opportunity to teach a senior seminar class

00:03:29.720 uh here at calvin college and had 15 students sign up to walk through this 900 pages of dense

00:03:37.220 philosophical history uh in the course of a semester and they all did and i was so proud of them but what

00:03:42.800 what became clear in that experience is here's a bunch of 21 22 year olds who said this guy's been

00:03:50.220 reading my mail like he he sort of he's got his finger on the pulse of the world in which i live

00:03:56.680 and i started to realize that there was a lot of existential insight and bite to what he had to say

00:04:02.460 and and it had a lot of nuance and complexity that seemed to honor the messiness of the moment in

00:04:08.720 which we find ourselves and so that's what convinced me that i really felt like taylor's argument and

00:04:14.320 analysis would help a lot of people who would never sign up to read a 900 page philosophy book so

00:04:21.140 i i really just kind of came along as a servant of of the master and said i want to try to translate

00:04:28.300 this for wider audiences because i think it matters and i've i've been really encouraged uh by the

00:04:34.120 response and i i should say too i mean one of one of the kind of highlights of my academic career

00:04:38.600 was then getting to meet taylor uh about a year later and uh he very graciously welcomed me into

00:04:45.600 his home and he said you performed alchemy with your work you wrote the book that i was trying to

00:04:52.160 write so that was sort of like okay i could die now right what a great compliment um so let's get

00:04:59.040 into the the nitty-gritty of this you know we religious folks non-religious people we talk about

00:05:03.900 we're living in a secular age but sometimes i feel like we don't even know what that means like it's

00:05:08.720 like when we say i'm living authentically like what does that even mean um like so what does taylor

00:05:14.600 mean by a secular age yeah and in many ways he is pushing back on kind of the dominant paradigm for

00:05:22.700 understanding a secular age so let's say let's say the dominant story narrative paradigm for thinking

00:05:30.600 about secularity is something like the secularization thesis which was um in a way is kind of 100 years

00:05:38.540 old it's birthed out of the very heart of modernity and the enlightenment and it and it's this

00:05:43.100 prognostication that confidently believes the march of reason and science is going to make us wiser and

00:05:50.560 wiser and enlighten us to the point that we can sort of grow out of religious belief and usher in the

00:05:57.260 sort of atheistic naturalistic kingdom of light you know like that's kind of that's really um what

00:06:04.600 so therefore a secular age is kind of like the realization of enlightenment and and in that story

00:06:11.940 um the secular is identified and equated with unbelief um even atheism naturalism and so on so and and this

00:06:22.240 is kind of the story that new atheists like richard dawkins or daniel dinette or um uh sam harris would tell

00:06:30.940 taylor comes in and says i first of all i don't think that's very good history and secondly he would say

00:06:39.420 i don't think that really describes the world in which people find themselves in 2010 or 2016

00:06:47.880 it that the world that we find ourselves in the culture in which we move is feels way more complicated

00:06:54.540 than that so for taylor um secularity and secularization is not synonymous with progressive

00:07:02.320 unbelief and certainly not with progressive and growing atheism instead what he would say is a

00:07:10.500 secular age is an age in which everyone's beliefs are contested and contestable and so absolutely

00:07:18.760 something like atheism becomes thinkable and possible in ways that that it couldn't have been before

00:07:24.140 but but what's what intrigues taylor is it's interesting that not that many people sign up for it really

00:07:31.900 at the end of the day i mean our op-ed pages tend to give a lot of play to a kind of almost

00:07:36.900 fundamentalistic atheism but you already see pushback on that from people who wouldn't necessarily

00:07:42.400 identify themselves as religious but would also say you know what that's not that's not how i see

00:07:47.560 myself so for taylor this a secular age is this age of kind of contested cross-pressured multiple ways

00:07:55.940 of believing otherwise um and it's not synonymous with atheism per se

00:08:01.900 gotcha and we'll delve deeper into that that feeling of the secular age but why i mean your

00:08:07.080 book is primarily aimed at christians but you say it's of interest to both religious and non-religious

00:08:12.720 folks like to understand uh the secular age i mean why is it important that everyone understands

00:08:18.180 what it means to live in a secular age yeah i mean i think i think taylor's conviction and i think it's

00:08:23.100 absolutely right is look everybody knows the world has changed like there's there's a different vibe

00:08:28.900 clearly um in the last hundred years and certainly in the last 500 years in the west and so he says

00:08:35.760 um and i guess what motivated me is on the one hand i want religious folks christians for example

00:08:42.320 to have a better account of the cultural moment in which we find ourselves but what i think is also

00:08:48.260 equally intriguing is that an account like taylor's helps people who might think of themselves as

00:08:56.500 non-believers or unbelievers or something make sense of why they're not necessarily

00:09:03.060 atheists or or why they don't even really identify with that kind of binary that they

00:09:08.460 they still hunger for a fullness as taylor puts it they still they their lives are still characterized by

00:09:16.360 a kind of transcendence and and even maybe they're wrestling with a certain kind of haunting of of that

00:09:23.680 there's something more and and i feel like um when you try on taylor's story and account of how we got

00:09:32.100 to this point he does a better job of doing justice to all the ways that um supposed non-believers are

00:09:39.920 still kind of haunted by something other than atheism if that makes sense yeah that makes sense i mean yeah

00:09:46.100 he talks about that a lot that we're haunted uh by the ghost of a secular age um so let's go back to

00:09:50.660 this feeling right so um you mentioned earlier we're filled with it the world of the secular age

00:09:56.600 is filled with these cross pressures so it's basically there's all these ideas and they're all

00:10:00.860 contested and contestable um how does that play into what he calls the nova effect yeah so um let's let's

00:10:11.000 pause for a moment on this metaphor of the cross pressure right so what he would say is

00:10:16.380 um in a secular age nobody can take their either their belief or their unbelief as axiomatic right

00:10:26.560 like nobody's posture nobody's kind of ultimate stance is universal so you can't because we all live

00:10:35.220 on a street where our neighbors believe things ultimate things differently than we do so nobody's

00:10:40.200 belief system or quote-unquote unbelief system is axiomatic and a default for an entire society

00:10:46.320 therefore everybody is kind of pushed and pressed and constantly encounters the alternatives to

00:10:54.140 what they believe right so you you you move in a world in which you rub up against stories accounts

00:11:00.940 confessions that challenge your own way of how you understand the most fundamental features of being

00:11:07.060 human and what the cosmos is and so on and and taylor says that leads to what he calls a fragilization

00:11:14.700 of our belief which is everybody kind of if they're really honest if they're not sticking their head in

00:11:20.380 the sand um they have to kind of own up to a certain degree of tentativeness of how they believe what

00:11:29.800 they believe it doesn't mean that they don't believe it just means they're always kind of around the

00:11:34.180 edges haunted by the alternatives and so taylor says that that means no matter who you are you

00:11:41.000 experience this kind of cross pressure so if you're a believer let's say you're a religious believer

00:11:46.100 um what that means is you are constantly going to feel the pressure to uh um well yeah to feel the

00:11:54.900 power of alternative stories right like the fact that an evolutionary psychological account does this

00:12:00.780 really incredible job of explaining a lot of things and you start like thinking man that's pretty

00:12:06.300 persuasive persuasive sometimes right until you feel that pressure you might say that the believer

00:12:10.820 feels the pressure of doubt but what taylor gets at is that in the same place in the same way the

00:12:18.520 unbeliever also can feel the pressure and temptation to believe and that's that's this kind of cross

00:12:25.700 pressure so what you get that is the the pressure scenario creates this kind of pressure cooker kind of

00:12:32.660 metaphor or something so you've got all this pressure building up and so instead of issuing in this age

00:12:38.500 of unbelief what taylor says is you get this kind of explosion that a way of grappling with all that

00:12:44.620 pressure and you get a million different ways of believing so you instead of the diminishment of

00:12:50.400 spirituality and religion in some ways you get the explosion of all kinds of religious or at least

00:12:56.940 quasi-religious alternatives like and and that includes all kinds of religious expressions but

00:13:02.880 it also includes quasi-religious expressions like kind of eat pray love kinds of pie or you know oprah

00:13:08.940 kind of piety or uh crossfit cross yeah yeah sure absolutely i mean the the way that people invest

00:13:16.480 uh um things in their lives with a kind of ultimacy about them is actually their way of kind of

00:13:24.820 getting a handle on this haunting right i mean but here's the interesting thing so you know we have

00:13:29.980 these different cross pressures there's a lot it seems like there'd be a lot of tension there but

00:13:33.340 taylor argues and i think what your students were getting at when they said you know taylor just he's

00:13:37.620 been reading my mail is that this age can feel very flat and like it's full of malaise so why is it that

00:13:43.760 we have these like you know this tension that exists these cross pressures but you can just feel so

00:13:47.800 empty and just meaningless yeah it's a great question i mean it could be that what i actually

00:13:55.300 think a consumer culture has a lot to do with that that in some ways this this would be blaze pascal is

00:14:01.140 basically what society does is gives us a million different ways to be distracted so we're not haunted

00:14:07.200 right so you basically you sort of spend your way out of or you you i mean think of the million ways

00:14:13.220 that we are offered to be distracted precisely so that you don't ever have to sit quietly in a room

00:14:18.740 and feel the cross pressures so i think a consumer society offers us a million outs from feeling that

00:14:25.960 existential pressure which then issues in that kind of malaise right you're you're sort of numbing

00:14:31.460 yourself this is the world that david foster wallace is always describing um but there's maybe um

00:14:38.440 the malaise can also come from the fact that we we have been we've come up with inadequate ways of

00:14:45.860 really doing justice to the cross pressures right i mean at the end of the day taylor feels like we

00:14:51.480 need to probably be more honest that it's not just that we're haunted by a ghost it's that there's

00:14:57.060 someone there knocking right that there's there's something on the door and we might be trying to sort

00:15:01.480 of repress that which which breeds some of that malaise i don't know if that's an adequate account but

00:15:06.660 that would be part of it i think part of it and you mentioned david foster wallace sort of uh uh you

00:15:12.340 know a writer of the gospel of the secular age um who's kind of able to grasp and sort of articulate

00:15:17.760 uh what it feels like i mean are there any other movies or writers who do a really good job at

00:15:23.240 describing what it feels like to live in a secular age yeah that's a great question i mean it's it's

00:15:29.440 interesting with students this is going to feel dated already i i'm i'm getting old but i i think if you

00:15:35.620 watch a movie like american beauty right i think it's this really interesting account which begins

00:15:41.940 totally with the flatness and malaise of just typical suburban middle class life and then it

00:15:48.700 looks like lester burnham pierces through that with um you kind of sex drugs and rock and roll sort of

00:15:55.280 solutions but that actually turns out to be totally inadequate and so you get the ricky fitz character

00:16:00.640 who who manages to have a perspective on the world in which he sees beauty that is transcendent and he

00:16:08.080 sees it in a bag of dancing trash right and and it's he says actually in that one sort of confessional

00:16:14.600 climax moment he says you know there's there's that's when i knew that there was this force behind

00:16:19.840 things and so it's interesting you get this real testimony to a kind of transcendence smack dab in the

00:16:25.920 middle of this flattened experience of suburban life that that's one kind of example that comes

00:16:30.820 to mind uh i do think wallace is kind of my favorite example um are there do you can you think of others

00:16:37.740 that come to mind for you when you think of that uh i can't actually i mean in some ways a lot of people

00:16:43.900 make um a lot out of the sort of um recent kind of space film uh you know interstellar kinds of

00:16:54.080 films which are grappling with a kind of place we have in the cosmos and trying to do justice to

00:17:01.740 the sense that there's something more something other um i could probably yeah it's a great question

00:17:08.080 i i would want to muse on it some more to think of some alternative examples think of some more maybe

00:17:13.180 twilight zone like i always watch twilight zone i'm like these guys are getting us like existential

00:17:16.720 ideas when they're not when they're being yeah it could well be i mean you wonder if something like um

00:17:24.080 uh uh x files the the interesting thing about something like x files is you you've got the

00:17:31.740 voice of enlightenment modernity in there always trying to explain away the other and and we

00:17:37.080 probably always feel like we have to do that kind of dynamic in a way right let's go going on this

00:17:44.120 idea of feeling the feeling of our secular age um taylor and going back to taylor's idea of he's

00:17:49.520 trying to create a philosophical history of the secular age he talks about uh in the pre-modern

00:17:54.760 world uh so this was before like the renaissance more or less yeah yeah i mean yeah think before

00:18:02.940 before the protestant reformation before the renaissance before the late middle ages

00:18:07.220 gotcha he says that the the self uh was a porous self and that now the modern self is a buffered self

00:18:14.260 so what does he mean by that and how does the buffered self make it harder to believe in

00:18:19.660 transcendence or god or something larger yeah so the the metaphor here of course is the poorest self

00:18:27.800 has all of these openings right so the human being is this kind of it's it's an entity it's a being

00:18:34.860 there's a sense of selfhood but there's a sense in which it's it's open to things that are outside

00:18:41.160 and other forces that can make these incursions now and and in both pagan worlds and christian

00:18:47.960 worlds that meant um you lived in this kind of enchanted universe where there were spirits and

00:18:56.440 forces and god and gods and and they could have these sorts of incursions into your life now on the

00:19:04.080 one hand that meant threat right so possession uh invasion that kind of dynamic but on the other

00:19:10.480 hand it also was grace right the infusion of grace the indwelling of the spirit so the poorest self

00:19:17.740 was open was vulnerable um which meant that the self could be both saved and helped but also

00:19:24.560 possessed and you know uh incurred yes exact torment now so there's there's a very long you know 300 page

00:19:36.100 history he tells here but what he thinks one of the key moves that happens in early modernity and you

00:19:41.260 could you could if you're looking for just a poster child of this it would be renee descartes you know

00:19:46.640 that kind of i think therefore i am sort of dynamic where now what happens is you get this emergence of a

00:19:52.580 new idea of the self as kind of contained and that's where he calls it buffered so that now the self is

00:19:59.420 this kind of atomistic monad that that self-contained self-sufficient in many ways and is not vulnerable

00:20:07.680 right is is uh encased and and because of that then it's it's protected it's no longer open to those

00:20:16.840 torments and incursions and possessions and so on and which then makes it possible for that self to

00:20:24.400 stop believing in god and the gods and spirits and demons because there's no threat anymore so

00:20:30.900 there's what taylor is saying is you get a huge paradigm shift in western cultures that makes it

00:20:37.880 possible for something like atheism to become a live option because you've really reconfigured what

00:20:44.420 you think's at stake for the self because prior to that in that porous self if you started to disbelieve

00:20:50.900 or if you believed otherwise you were open and vulnerable and you were kind of exposing yourself

00:20:56.540 to danger whereas in the the sort of modern leibnizian monad you're protected from that and so you can kind

00:21:04.160 of do whatever you want right so that's sort of the birth of individualism yeah very much and it's a

00:21:10.400 very atomistic individualism which van taylor says you actually you needed to kind of reconfigure your

00:21:17.080 understanding of the self for something like atheism or what he calls exclusive humanism

00:21:22.780 to be a live option of belief otherwise that would have been kind of unthinkable because it would have

00:21:28.620 been like a suicide mission right and he even makes the case that the buffer itself not only makes it

00:21:33.440 harder to believe in god or gods uh it even makes it hard to find meaning in personal secular projects as

00:21:38.960 well yeah and that's so that's why he says it it was never going to be sufficient for for quote-unquote

00:21:48.300 modern man you know the enlightened human to just throw off religion transcendence eternity because

00:21:55.800 prior to that every single sort of worldview and belief system even pagan belief systems nonetheless

00:22:05.040 invested significance in something like eternity and transcendence so if you just sort of cut yourself

00:22:12.320 off from eternity and transcendence you basically cut yourself off from meaning and so what taylor taylor

00:22:18.980 sees the real sort of invention of a secular age is the attempt to forge ways to have a meaningful life

00:22:27.500 a significant life that makes no reference to eternity and no reference to transcendence and and in a way he

00:22:33.840 thinks that is one of the most remarkable accomplishments of modernity although you also

00:22:38.860 get the impression from taylor that he doesn't think it's very sustainable and it doesn't maybe

00:22:44.560 quite pull itself off which might be another explanation for that malaise right and another interesting

00:22:51.920 aspect of uh taylor's work is you know how we came to the secular age he kind of he like you said he

00:22:57.600 argues against this sort of secularization theory that we got smarter so we stopped believing in god

00:23:02.000 um but he makes the case that even reformations within christianity actually helped disenchant the

00:23:08.280 word or not the word the world uh and create conditions for secularization how what's that

00:23:13.960 argument that he makes there because i thought it was fascinating it is an interesting argument it's

00:23:18.240 this kind of um uh the ways in which the protestant reformation in very unintended ways unleashed some of

00:23:27.000 the forces of uh secularization uh secularization and disenchantment in this way uh the protestant reformers

00:23:35.280 were deeply critical of what they saw as the emergence of a very superstitious form of christianity

00:23:42.780 in late middle age uh christian catholic roman catholicism basically and so the target of the reformers

00:23:50.940 critique was this version of christianity that wasn't just enchanted it had basically turned it

00:23:58.420 into magic like this kind of superstitious magic and they thought that's not true to scripture that's

00:24:03.500 not true to the nature of the cosmos and therefore they they sort of undercut that sacramental understanding

00:24:10.420 of the world in some ways and uh in doing so they really kind of unleashed the forces of disenchantment

00:24:18.980 whereas really what they what they meant to do was cap the forces of superstition uh uh the the

00:24:26.960 frankensteinish effect here was that the monster kind of outran them and they ended up giving birth

00:24:32.000 in some ways to enlightenment disenchantment right and i mean a lot of people i've heard argue that

00:24:38.320 protestant or just like what we're seeing like social justice warriors or liberalism is just you know

00:24:42.880 secular protestantism yeah in some ways that's right and and um and you can see

00:24:48.820 what then happens is that's precisely why people invest something like justice with eternal

00:24:57.740 i mean that's the new religion then right it's the you've got to invest something with this kind of

00:25:03.440 full significance and ultimacy and so if you've basically learned to be a kind of flattened secular

00:25:10.840 liberal you you might be tempted to invest justice with that kind of place that god used to have

00:25:19.300 gotcha so after reading and you know writing about taylor's work i mean do you think the depth of the

00:25:26.360 secular age will deepen or will change course as time marches on that's a great question i i am

00:25:32.680 i i'm not prone to prognostication i i think it's always going to be a mixed report and a complex

00:25:41.680 affair and i i do think one of the really important gifts of taylor's work is he's really trying to get

00:25:47.960 people to appreciate how messy and complex the situation is right he doesn't think there's he can't

00:25:52.640 pigeonhole stuff my my sense is um i think there will be some forces of secularization and uh um

00:26:02.200 and really the kind of refusal of religious belief that are going to deepen and intensify

00:26:07.540 however i think those could become louder precisely because they're a bit of a last gasp

00:26:14.700 and i'm uh i'm going a little bit beyond taylor here i i'm not at all convinced that the kind of

00:26:21.740 exclusive humanist take on how to be human is really sustainable because i don't think it does

00:26:27.260 justice to uh a kind of fullness of the cosmos that keeps pushing back on us and i think we can

00:26:34.780 already see uh some cracks in the secular in that respect i think you can already see um the the

00:26:42.340 certain failure of these accounts to do justice to who we are and what we're called to be and so i

00:26:48.420 actually see in the next generation or two a new openness uh to the recovery of enchantment

00:26:55.500 and that there's no going back there's no romantic uh repristination of where we were but i do think

00:27:03.100 that people might more and more sense the um inadequacy of of kind of flattened imminent accounts

00:27:11.340 of where we are and so i'm i'm interested to watch it and that's that's partly why i wanted

00:27:15.540 religious communities to to have a appreciation for taylor's account because i do think that there

00:27:21.080 are openings and opportunities there right and this doesn't necessarily mean that this re-enchantment

00:27:26.040 will be christian it could also manifest itself and i think paganism is like there's been a

00:27:30.780 in some ways that's right that's right and and um we we it would be a different conversation to then

00:27:36.860 ask why or whether christianity would be perhaps the best or one of the more robust accounts of of what it

00:27:44.340 means to make sense of transcendence that would be a more apologetic kind of conversation i mean i do

00:27:49.580 think um uh there are renewals in judaism for example that are happening that that also bear witness

00:27:56.900 to that your uh latest book you are what you love seems to provide answers but it's primarily directed

00:28:03.340 at christians on how to re-enchant our disenchanted secular age um and you start off the book arguing that

00:28:12.240 the question that uh jesus keeps asking throughout the gospel is what do you want why is that such an

00:28:19.140 important question to be able to answer in our secular age yeah i i love that we're building the

00:28:25.700 bridge between these two books because um i think one of the things that taylor emphasizes and does a

00:28:33.240 good job of is really kind of naming the fact that people in in a secular age the questions that they

00:28:41.120 feel are less questions of knowledge and like well in a way they're less questions and they're more

00:28:48.540 hungers you know like how do i make sense of these hungers that i have and um i think that actually

00:28:54.620 resonates with biblical christianity i don't think um i don't think the gospel is offered primarily as a

00:29:01.380 set of intellectual answers to propositional questions i think it brings us to an encounter

00:29:07.860 with a person who um is the lover of our souls and answers to the deepest hungers and longings of

00:29:15.180 who we are as humans and so what i'm i'm trying to get at is that human beings are not just thinking

00:29:20.540 things right it's it's again pushing back on this element of modernity we're we're not just thinkers

00:29:25.840 we're not even just believers at the end of the day human beings are lovers and um i think taylor

00:29:32.640 senses something like that and i think when you start reading the scriptures with new eyes you see

00:29:38.440 it all over the place and you you brought this great example of this russian film called stalker

00:29:45.120 because i think the question is like you can yeah yeah you you ask yourself like okay what do i want but

00:29:49.980 then you say okay i think i know what i want but like what do you really yeah really want and you say

00:29:55.440 this russian film can provide some you know that can teach us something important about figuring out

00:30:00.720 what we really want yeah so in in tarkovsky so by the way if if folks have never watched tarkovsky a lot

00:30:06.880 of this stuff is available free online and uh he's also the one who did the film andrei rublev about

00:30:12.640 uh the famous iconographer it's just a stunning stunning work but but in this film the stalker

00:30:17.840 very quickly the port port that interests us is this guide brings these people to a room in which

00:30:26.160 you get what you want right so this it's this kind of magical sacred room where once you step inside

00:30:31.480 it's going to give you what you want and as they get to the threshold of the door stalker basically

00:30:37.440 says the guide says you know all right here we are who wants to go first and both of them get cold

00:30:42.760 feet because they start to realize what if i don't want what if i don't really want what i think i want

00:30:48.680 right but there can be this gap between what i know and believe and think and what my heart has learned

00:30:55.960 to really hunger for and uh that's that's the tension that interests me i i think our loves our deepest most

00:31:05.720 fundamental longings and hungers are shaped and primed and directed by the practices that we're

00:31:14.680 immersed in and they're not just the outcomes of what we think and so there's a kind of unconscious

00:31:20.840 force or at least pre-conscious force to our deepest hungers and longings and we might not realize

00:31:26.920 that the extent to which they've been shaped um by cultural practices that have taught us to love

00:31:33.640 something at that unconscious level that is quite antithetical to what we believe on a conscious

00:31:39.560 propositional level does that make sense yeah it makes perfect sense um and so this brings us to

00:31:44.920 your idea of liturgies um that we're surrounded by these liturgies and like liturgies not don't

00:31:50.920 necessarily have to be religious um so first for our listeners who might not be familiar with liturgy

00:31:55.560 because that's not really popular in a lot of christian churches nowadays uh what do you mean by that

00:32:01.080 what is a liturgy so i'm i'm i'm actually trying to sort of recover and repurpose what is an old

00:32:08.840 kind of churchy word but i'm using it in a much broader sense so for me liturgy is just the shorthand

00:32:15.880 term to talk about love shaping practices right let so think of rhythms routines rituals that aren't just

00:32:26.360 something that you do they do something to you and and ultimately what they do to you is they're

00:32:34.280 they're covertly and subtly and implicitly kind of training you to love certain goods a certain vision

00:32:42.520 of the good life they're they're aiming your heart in a certain direction and if if you think of liturgy in

00:32:48.680 that broad sense and i'm using the word liturgy just so that we can feel the kind of religious

00:32:55.480 force of cultural practices cultural rituals then you'll start to realize that man there are kind of

00:33:03.160 liturgies everywhere right this is this is certainly not confined to the walls of churches because

00:33:09.080 there are all kinds of cultural rituals that we give ourselves over to that are implicitly

00:33:15.000 training us to love certain things as if they were ultimate right and you give the example of a

00:33:21.480 secular liturgy would be like going shopping uh yeah the mall the mall is the cathedral of consumerism

00:33:30.840 right and and it's the point here is the way you learn to love something as ultimate is not because it

00:33:39.880 teaches your intellect some idea it's because the rituals and liturgies of these institutions and

00:33:48.040 practices actually capture your imagination co-opt your heart's longings and sort of train you

00:33:56.520 to love something as ultimate in ways that are it's like the way to your heart is through your body

00:34:02.760 and so the mall is this kind of liturgical experience which is it's not like you walk into

00:34:08.040 the mall and they say well here's the 16 things the mall believes right or you know this is this is

00:34:12.600 what the mall wants you to think the mall doesn't want you to think that's the last thing it wants to

00:34:16.680 do instead it's drawing you into an experience of a liturgy a ritual that is kind of picturing for

00:34:25.400 you what the good life is and and the mall's outreach it's evangelism is marketing which totally

00:34:32.760 understands that we're not thinking things it knows that we're lovers it knows that we have these

00:34:37.000 hungers and so what marketing holds up to us is not information but the invitation into a story

00:34:44.760 where some good or product or service is going to finally give you the happiness that you've been

00:34:49.880 longing for right and you even talk about there's been research done where when you know people buy

00:34:55.240 an apple product like the same part of our brain that lights up when someone's worshiping lights

00:34:59.480 up when you're buying or thinking about that apple we all know the cult of apple right i mean i'm

00:35:03.640 looking i've got three mac devices sitting on my three apple devices sitting on my desk here right

00:35:07.800 now and and um there's a there's a fantastic uh pbs frontline documentary called the persuaders

00:35:16.200 which is um uh this and you know it's pbs so this is not a religious organization at all but they they

00:35:22.680 do this study of how marketing works and and completely voluntarily all these big marketing executives

00:35:29.640 start talking about literally evangelism when they wanted to understand how brands worked they studied

00:35:35.480 cults and so the the kind of religious force of brand loyalty of how they communicate uh to the heart

00:35:42.840 i mean it's really it's it's if if listeners are interested google it you'll find it free online it's a

00:35:47.800 fascinating study so what have you been as you've been talking jamie about um you know shaping what we want

00:35:54.440 is is through the body it's done through behavior uh it sounds like you're making an an aristotelian

00:36:00.120 virtue ethic argument about training character training the soul is that what you're doing totally i mean

00:36:08.120 in and in so far and and in that sense um you could say ancient christian thought was uh already

00:36:15.000 appropriating um something like aristotle's framework as a way of making sense of biblical intuition

00:36:21.560 interpretation so um yeah the the the conviction here is really a different model of the human

00:36:28.440 person right so the center of the human person here is not located in in the head so much it's not

00:36:34.840 located in the intellect though that's not unimportant it's just that the center and seat of the human

00:36:40.360 person is located in something more like the affections in what in what the bible calls the heart

00:36:45.000 which is this visceral seat of our longings and hungers but those are trained uh in in in there

00:36:55.480 you sort of acquire these habits and for aristotle virtues of course are those good habits which are the

00:37:03.000 internal dispositions that you acquire that make you sort of inclined in a certain direction and uh i just

00:37:10.280 think it's a very rich way of trying to make sense of human action what what i i also think we live in

00:37:16.520 an interesting time insofar as a lot of cognitive science and neuroscience right now is confirming

00:37:22.200 very ancient intuitions about human action works and that so much of what i do in a given day

00:37:28.920 is governed by these kinds of habits that i've acquired not because i'm thinking through all the

00:37:34.360 options and then making some conscious choice to do x and uh i i think there's a lot of spiritual

00:37:40.760 significance to thinking through that and appreciating that so um that's really interesting but and you

00:37:47.160 make the case finally in this book um that you know for christianity to thrive in a post-modern age

00:37:52.440 it needs to embrace uh ancient forms of liturgy and worship which i think is interesting because the

00:37:58.520 trend you've been seeing in the church for the past 20 or so years is making church more pre or more

00:38:05.960 post-modern making it less church-like yeah um why do you think that approach misses the mark

00:38:13.960 well i think i i understand the impetus behind it i i it there's a kind of missional desire behind it which

00:38:20.760 is we don't want people freaked out we want people to sort of feel welcome so let's make you know

00:38:28.520 people don't like going to old stodgy churches but they like going to the mall so why don't we make

00:38:32.280 the church more like the mall i i understand the logic here's the problem what i'm saying is the

00:38:39.160 mall's liturgy the very form of the practice of the mall is itself already a loaded game that is aimed

00:38:49.720 and oriented and indexed to a very different vision of the good life which is the consumer gospel which

00:38:56.680 tells you stuff will make you happy and it commodifies everything in the world and so

00:39:03.080 when you sort of appropriate that form and think well we're going to appropriate that form we're

00:39:07.000 just going to kind of put jesus content in it you you think you're jesusifying the mall but what you're

00:39:11.960 actually doing is commodifying jesus because people who've been in that mall liturgy who are in that

00:39:18.200 practice know oh everything that's in the mall is there to make me happy oh there's jesus on the

00:39:23.160 on the shelf now he must be there to make me happy it's it's you've completely reconfigured the

00:39:29.000 encounter i i'm i'm suggesting that um the robust sort of thickness of ancient christian worship and

00:39:40.040 spiritual disciplines is exactly the countermeasure we need uh to those kinds of secular liturgies and and

00:39:48.040 i'm not that's not a sort of fundamentalist i'm not saying you know go hide out in some sort of

00:39:51.880 enclave what what i'm saying is precisely so that we can be centered in a biblical story you need the

00:39:58.280 thickness and and by the way the embodiment the tactile nature of uh historic christian worship

00:40:05.560 practices so that the gospel gets into your bones so that you can then resist uh um the lure of these

00:40:13.240 these other practices the irony for me is how much of contemporary christianity is also then just

00:40:19.800 reduces the gospel to a message you get um sort of in your intellectual receptacle i i think the church

00:40:26.840 has largely bought into modernity and thinking thingism and that's been our problem right they've bought

00:40:33.160 into the buffer itself right that you're sort of this atomized individual yeah and they've they've bought

00:40:37.480 into basically thinking human beings are brains on a stick uh with with emotional bellies so what we

00:40:43.720 do is a typical church services is let's stir their emotional let's fill their emotional belly for 30

00:40:48.760 minutes of of emotivist song so that they're satisfied to at least sit down for the 45 minute lecture where

00:40:55.880 we're going to tell them what to think or you know fuel their intellect and i i'm just saying that

00:41:00.520 that's a really stunted reductionistic picture of the human person and that embedded in the ancient

00:41:06.440 practices of the church is a much more holistic uh account that i think does more justice to who we

00:41:13.160 are so what does a post-modern ancient christianity look like at a congregation or an individual level

00:41:22.040 um i mean it's going to there i don't want to deny that there's going to be a certain strangeness or

00:41:28.040 weirdness about it compared to um the sorts of rituals that we're used to in modernity right

00:41:37.400 but i actually think it's that's its strength because it sends signals about the strangeness

00:41:42.040 of transcendence in a flattened imminent secular age so um i mean i don't want to i don't want to

00:41:49.880 pick a particular horse here but i guess i would say it would look like i mean it's not going back to

00:41:55.480 your grandma's church do i'm not talking about that i'm talking about inheriting say the core of of

00:42:03.160 uh what an anglican sort of vision of the church would look like but doing it in a contextualized way

00:42:09.720 where you're engaged in an urban environment and you know who your neighbors are um so it's it's sort of

00:42:16.360 like um a catholic church in the middle of austin you know like i'm it's it's it's both

00:42:24.600 ancient strangeness with contemporary relevance i i actually think it's our strangeness that makes

00:42:31.240 us more relevant that's interesting i think it's interesting too because like right now we're working

00:42:35.720 on a series on the site about uh christianity's man problem um across denominations you know there's

00:42:41.960 more women and men sitting in the pews but like the few exceptions are like eastern orthodox

00:42:47.640 yeah uh catholicism um and i wonder if like just like this that strangeness that embodiment that

00:42:53.560 vigorousness that the the worship service requires is maybe appealing to men on a level that we're not

00:42:59.880 getting today that's a great uh hypothesis i mean it's it's not something i've thought about i think

00:43:05.560 anecdotally i have i've seen the impression of of what you're talking about sometimes i think um

00:43:13.960 i i mean there's there's a certain layers of gendered questions that we would have to sort out

00:43:21.000 to really have that conversation i i think uh some of the churches that attract men are also ones that

00:43:26.920 can be very intellectualist right and actually buy into thinking thingism and in that case i'd be worried

00:43:32.520 about how we've just configured malehood there's a man right there but but yeah no it's an interesting

00:43:40.200 thesis i mean um certainly there is a long history of uh um men feeling called to um uh a monastic life

00:43:52.520 right that was not um and that was seen to have a kind of vigor and rigor about it and the question was

00:44:01.000 almost um are you man enough to do this life not this is a retreat from the world yeah and so i mean

00:44:09.160 on a individual level what would the sort of you know incorporating ancient worship or liturgy what

00:44:14.360 would that look like in a person's life well i mean you mentioned disciplines like spiritual disciplines

00:44:19.000 yeah yeah yeah i mean i do think i i think it means to have a congregate it means having a congregational

00:44:25.400 center to your spiritual life and so it means um sort of locating yourself in a communal expression of

00:44:33.880 this faith where you keep getting centered around the word and table uh that that kind of um ancient

00:44:39.880 sort of catholic expression but then uh on an individual level i think it yeah it's the difference

00:44:45.240 between thinking of discipleship mostly as intellectual content uptake and and imagining it as a way of life

00:44:53.720 where you are practicing these disciplines that re-habituate you so in in that sense the work of say

00:45:00.120 dallas willard and and richard foster celebration of discipline you know classic disciplines of

00:45:07.720 fasting morning and evening prayers um uh the liturgical calendar i think these are all ways that are

00:45:15.320 actually re-habituating us not just informing us reforming us not just informing us right shape the

00:45:21.720 character shape the soul yeah yeah which takes practice and takes repetition and takes time

00:45:26.840 yeah that's the that's that's the other thing problem that people have uh with modernity this

00:45:30.280 mindset that things can happen just right away um but yeah because if you are what you think you

00:45:35.800 just go to the lecture you finally get the piece of information you need and like okay i'm good to go

00:45:40.440 except we all know that that doesn't work so it's it's taking seriously the fact that i'm more than what i

00:45:46.360 think which is why i need to learn to re-habituate my hungers and longings and that takes time you

00:45:53.400 know it's it's like it's like a workout of the soul and you keep exercising it's not you can't even

00:45:58.760 just have these you can't go um work out for three if you're if you're 45 you can't go work out for three

00:46:06.200 months and say all right i'm good to go right because in you know in six weeks you're right back to the

00:46:11.080 flabby self that you were right well jamie this has been a great conversation i mean i would love

00:46:16.280 to talk to you for your longer uh longer because there's so much we could talk about but uh where

00:46:19.640 can people find out more about uh your your two books we talked about and the rest of your work

00:46:23.560 oh yeah probably the easiest place is if you just went to jameskasmith.com and uh my publisher has

00:46:30.200 got uh pretty much all the info that you would need on their speaking engagements when i'm out and around

00:46:34.520 the country and stuff about the books and articles and things like that and some videos uh that might

00:46:38.760 help people um get a grasp of the book too awesome well jamie smith thank you so much for your time

00:46:43.320 it's been a pleasure thanks brett my guest today was jamie smith he is a professor of philosophy at

00:46:48.040 calvin college and the author of several books uh but today we discussed how not to be secular and

00:46:53.160 you are what you love you can find those books on amazon.com checking out they're really fascinating

00:46:57.800 you can find out more information about jamie's work because he's written a ton more by going to

00:47:02.360 jameskasmith.com make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is

00:47:07.880 secular where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:47:21.640 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:47:25.800 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:47:29.720 the show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher helps us out a lot

00:47:33.880 as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:47:37.640 stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#238： Life in a Secular Age

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