How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor

By: James K.A. Smith

Narrated by: Trevor Thompson

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" - it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work, A Secular Age, and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times.

Taylor's landmark book, A Secular Age (2007), provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present - a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers.

Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are - whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.

©2014 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (P)2018 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

James K. A. Smith is Amazing

Smith here condenses an immense tome dense with insight and knowledge into a digestible nugget. The accomplishment here shouldn’t be overlooked. What’s more, his own commentary and thoughts on Taylor’s opus are simple, sharp, and essential. Smith is a brilliant mind and this book allows for the convergence of two such brilliant minds between Smith’s own thoughts and Taylor’s. This is an invaluable aid to anyone interested in Taylor or our modern age.

Accessible Charles Taylor!

I have tried to read Charles Taylor... many times. Couldn't make it through. James Smith explains Taylor in a way that everyone can understand. The narration is spot on. Nice job! Worth a listen.

Excellent

This is an excellent commentary on Taylor’s “A Secular Age”. The rendering is well done.

Charles Taylor... Explained

Would you listen to How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor again? Why?

Yes. I am a huge fan of Jamie Smith. Love this book in print... and with that voice of the narrator = perfection in audio!

What did you like best about this story?

Not really a story. Accessible analysis of Charles Taylor. Very thoughtful.

Have you listened to any of Trevor Thompson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes. Solid and competent narration. Golden voice.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

Listen to this book!

Tough to begin, but well worth the finish!

Being that this is an academic work, I thought it would be too challenging to listen to an audiobook version. and whole at first I was right, I was quickly swept up into this and am thoroughly glad I finished the book. This challenges how we look at our world today and helps us see that we are all much more similar than we may care to admit to our neighbors.