“Modernity,” according to Root, “is the constant process of speeding things up.”[1. Andrew Root, The Church in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2021), 14.] Under the accelerating forces of modernity, human beings and communities are constantly scrambling to keep up with the rapid rate of change, leading to increasing levels of anxiety and depression. Root illuminatingly contrasts change with transformation: (more…)
Tag: Andrew Root
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Performance of Identity
I had a wonderful week last week with the Doctor of Ministry cohort at Providence Theological Seminary teaching a course called, “Thinking and Interpreting Theologically.” The students read several insightful texts in preparation for our time together. The one that seemed to generate the most conversation was Andrew Root’s The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Baker, 2021). It is the third volume in Root’s Ministry in a Secular Age trilogy. In the trilogy Root is dialoguing with the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in particular Taylor’s seminal A Secular Age. At the heart of Root’s project is the concern for developing ways for Christians to speak about and recognize the presence of divine action within the midst of a “social imaginary” that has reduced its vision to the “immanent frame.”[1. These are terms Taylor introduces in A Secular Age. I briefly engage with Taylor around some of these themes in For the Life of the World (215-216).] (more…)
