In our ongoing discussions, Patrick Lee Miller continues his exchange with critics of his recent post on “Immanent Spirituality,” Arjun Appadurai responds to Jason Kuznicki’s criticisms of his post, “The magic ballot” (and Kuznicki fires back), Christine Wicker and Conrad Hackett consider how best to grasp the polling impact of “evangelicals,” and readers of Christianity Today and others react to D. Michael Lindsay’s post on evangelical leaders and the “Changing of the guard.”

“To see the sacred within the profane,” Diggins concludes, “to derive God from the sentiments of society, does little to relieve us of Weber’s secularized world where politics is no longer an ethical calling and religion no longer an ascetic ideal. Taylor may locate the drama of the soul in society, but the meaning and mystery of God remain as elusive as the enigma of existence and religious morality becomes little more than social convention. There are many reasons to read the profound meditations in A Secular Age, but waiting for God to show up is not one of them.”

Read the entire review.

Although it won’t be supporting video, The Immanent Frame—a new SSRC blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere—will provide a venue for sustained dialogue and critical exchange on the work of Charles Taylor and other scholars of “the secular.” And we’re kicking things off with a series of posts on Taylor’s big book.

The series launches this week with a post by Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah, who calls A Secular Age “one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime.” In the weeks ahead we’ll have additional posts on Taylor’s book—from Akeel Bilgrami, Wendy Brown, Hent de Vries, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Colin Jager, and a number of others.

But The Immanent Frame won’t be limited to discussions of A Secular Age. Later this fall we’ll also have a series of posts responding to Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. And there will be posts on a variety of other topics—pluralism and the “post-secular”; religion and humanitarianism; international relations theory and political theology; reconciliation and transitional justice; religious freedom and the law; secularism and the future of shari`a.

The blog will draw on, and is closely linked to, the SSRC’s work on religion and the public sphere—and, indeed, Charles Taylor himself is a member of our working group on religion, secularism, and international affairs. We invite readers to email us at religion@ssrc.org with ideas for blog topics or questions about the SSRC’s work.