A secular age by Charles Taylor

Author:Charles Taylor [Taylor, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2010-11-08T00:17:18.688884+00:00

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a s e c u l a r ag e

uals didn’t stand apart from, but rather built on their “Christian” meaning, e.g., giving thanks to God for the birth of a child.43

We can’t neatly separate the Christian from the “pagan” in this religious form; but nevertheless, there was an important gap in this “ancien régime” mode of religious life. The same rituals were lived and understood rather differently by élites, clerical and/or other, on one hand, and by the popular majority on the other. The élites as we saw were made uneasy by many of the popular rituals and practices, and were often tempted to remake or even abolish them. From the popular side, we have in the nature of things less evidence of how they understood their religious life. But it seems clear from the examples we have cited, and others, that they valued and responded to the marks of personal sanctity in their priests; that for them these marks had more to do with charity, devotion to their flock, an openness to everyone (as against a too close relation to the squire or notable), and were less concerned with heroic forms of self-abnegation, sexual or otherwise (except insofar as abnegation directly served charity). For the rest, popular religion had a very important festive dimension: saints’ days, pilgrimages to shrines, celebrations, in which religious ceremonies and more earthy festivities: banquets, dancing, were combined—too promiscuously combined, in the eyes of many clerics. Here was another source of friction with clergy, and a target for the latter’s Reforming zeal.44

In this “ancien régime” form, we have a close connection between church membership and being part of a national, but particularly a local community; this connection was cemented in part by the coexistence of official orthodox ritual and prayer, on one hand, with, on the other, ritual forms concerned with defense, luck, warding off evil. These latter were designed to protect individuals, but also the community. At this deep, pre-Axial level, we are all in it together, when it comes to certain practices. The abstainer lets down the whole body. This synthesis of the pre-and post-Axial long continues even in societies which had passed through a process of Reform, whose goal was to raise personal commitment over (much) community ritual; and to purge the magical and pagan elements of the latter.

But these local community forms are disrupted. In a sense, the disruption starts with the Reformation itself, but the force of popular religion allows them to be reconstituted, often on an altered basis. It is a feature of the whole modern period, as we saw above (Chapter 2), that social élites become detached from, even hostile to much of popular culture, and attempt to make it over. One of the things they have frequently imposed is disenchantment, the suppression of “magic” and unofficial religion. And this by itself is disruptive of what we have called “ancien régime” forms.

Élites can often have tremendous power to impose these changes; their very secession from the popular forms can destabilize them.

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