SOPHIA (2009) 48:469478 DOI 10.

1007/s11841-009-0124-5

A Secular Age: Reflections on Charles Taylors Recent Book

Paul James Crittenden

Published online: 16 September 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Charles Taylor in A Secular Age describes the modern secular age as one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people. This article reflects on his historicoanalytic investigation of the emergence of modern secularity and his account of how it shapes the current conditions of belief. Taylor challenges the widespread presumption against belief mainly on ethical considerations, especially what counts as human fulfilment. The article argues that he fails to deal adequately with epistemic considerations bearing on belief and unbelief. Furthermore, his argument is weakened by a surprising absence of attention to the primary account of human fulfilment in Greek philosophy as a central element in the Christian tradition. Keywords Modern secularity . Conditions of belief . Exclusive humanism . Human fulfilment The Emergence of Modern Secularitythe Reform Narrative What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? That is the question that occupies the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in his recent book A Secular Age (2007). Writing with reference to Europe and North America (and the West more generally), Taylor notes the two standard markers of secularity: the extent to which common public institutions and practicesin politics, economics, culture, recreation, and so onhave come to be emptied of God; and the general decline in religious belief and practice (more so in Europe than in the United States). These considerations have a place in the inquiry, but the focus is on a third, related, sense of secularity
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Massachusetts and London, 2007 P. J. Crittenden (*) University of Sydney, 21 Rosemount Ave, Summer Hill, NSW 2130, Australia e-mail: paul.crittenden@usyd.edu.au

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constituted by the conditions of belief. In Europe in 1500 it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, whereas religious belief today is one option among others, commonly an embattled option. Taylors brief is to tell an overarching story of the vast changes that have taken place in the emergence of secularity over this time. He calls it the Reform Master Narrative. The historico-analytic investigation looms large in the book, extending over the first four parts, and giving shape to the analysis of the current conditions of belief in part V. The overly long (and rather repetitive) historical inquiry, rich in detail, thought-provoking, and occasionally provocative, defies summary. My aim will be to capture something of its character in the first section of this paper. For the rest, the focus will relate primarily to the discussion of secularity in the current age. As part of a general exploration of contemporary secularity, Taylor seeks to challenge the widespread presumption against religious belief, especially among academics and intellectuals. His counter-argument turns mainly on ethical considerations, in particular on what is to count as human fulfillment. I will argue that, for all its considerable strengths and interest, the study fails to grapple adequately with epistemic considerations and, even more paradoxically, fails to explore in sufficient depth ideas of human fulfillment. Our age is marked by confident, occasionally aggressive secular atheism on one side, firm religious belief on the other, and a wide, fragmented range of views lying between belief and its positive rejection. For Taylor, the epistemic markers of religion all relate to transcendence: belief in an agency or power that transcends the immanent order; belief in a higher good beyond human flourishing or mere human perfection; and belief in a higher life beyond this life. As the discussion unfolds, the focus falls especially on the idea of a higher good for human beings beyond human flourishing. The believer looks to such a good, the atheist denies it, and others are uncertain. For the atheist, the world of space and time definitively constitutes the limits of reality, and human flourishing marks the highest goal. This contrast leads to a succinct description of the difference between earlier times and the secular age: a secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people (1920). Secularity in this sense is not identical, however, with the secularist standpoint; rather, it is a condition in which our experience of and search for fullness occurs; and this is something we all share, believers and unbelievers alike (19); it is a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and the spiritual must proceed (20). The critical point in the long march to secularity lies, so Taylor argues, in the emergence, for the first time in history, of a self-sufficing or exclusive humanism in the course of the 18th century. However, self-sufficing humanism in a sense crept up on us through an intermediate form, Providential Deism; and both the Deism and the humanism were made possible by earlier developments within orthodox Christianity (19). In analyzing historical changes in the conditions of belief, Taylor develops what he calls the social imaginary of an age. This relates to the characteristic ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how they see themselves, the stories they tell, what expectations they have, and the normative ideas and images that underlie these expectations (171). In these terms,

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the shared pre-modern imaginary saw the natural cosmos as embodying signs and images of the divine. God was everywhere present in their institutions and practices, life was shaped by sacred times and places, and to a considerable extent, individuals were embedded in hierarchical structures leading up to God. They lived moreover in an enchanted world of spirits, demons, and contending moral forces in which they looked to God (and angels and saints) to keep them safe in a threat-filled world and to ensure that good would triumph over evil in the end. All this changed radically in the wake of the 16th century movement for reform, especially in its Calvinist manifestation. Reform was an engine of disenchantment in sweeping away medieval conceptions of the sacred, especially elements of seeming magic or idolatry in the old religion: such things as ritual practices, sacramentals, relics, and images. A process of excarnation developed in which embodied religious forms gave a place to religion of the mind and heart. The repudiation of the claim of monks and religious orders to a higher status was also significant. Against this hierarchical structure, lay life in the worlda godly secular lifecame to be affirmed as the common vocation of the Christian. This marked the beginning of a new affirmation of equality. Again, the emphasis on personal commitment and inner transformation through faith became the charter for a new conception of Christian liberty. There was now a commitment to a new order of discipline in personal life, a renewed Christian stoicism. This dynamism quickly translated itself into the project of re-ordering society as a whole: to effect under God, whether in Calvins Geneva or Puritan England, a reformed church in a reformedthat is, rightly orderedsociety. The impetus to social reform subsequently took on its own momentum. The 17th century saw the rise of the disciplinary society and the emergence of the modern individual in the complex social process that Taylor calls the great disembedding. Concomitant with this, the contested modern social imaginary came into being. At its heart is the idea of a new moral order, an ethics of freedom and mutual benefit, together with a new sense of the self as an autonomous agent, self-possessed and powerfulthe buffered self in Taylors term. In this imaginary, human beings are free, equal individuals with pre-existing natural rights; in coming together in civil society they set up an instrument for their mutual benefit: for the defense of individual rights and freedom, for exchange and prosperity, and for peace and security against threats from within or without. The economy develops as an objectified reality, the public sphere emerges as a secular association for debate and opinion distinct from Church and State, and the idea of the sovereign people takes shape. In a generally religious setting, the smooth working of society on these lines could be seen as a providential disposition, but it could also appear as a system in its own right, an instrument set up by human hands and working to serve human ends without reference to God. Already, modern science had led to a mechanized world-picture in which the homely cosmos of the Greek and medieval world gives way to a conception of the universe as a vast machine in motion. Divine providence remains as the source of design and sustainer of the system, but here too it becomes possible to think of the universe as a self-contained order operating in its own right according to the laws of nature, a world from which God is absent.

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The common story is that the growing power of scientific understanding constituted the fundamental challenge to religious belief over this time. However, the appeal to science, Taylor argues, would not have worked had it not been for the critical change in moral outlook over this period. Increasingly the new moral-social order of mutual benefit came to be seen as an achievement falling within human power, an order discerned by reason and realized by disciplined activity. From this point, an exclusive humanism is only a step awaythough it would be restricted to an elite, of course, before becoming more general in the 20th century. Throughout the inquiry, Taylor is engaged in a sustained polemic with what he calls subtraction stories of secularity, the prevailing approach in a good deal of 20thcentury theory. Secularity, in this view, is a progressive liberation from religion brought about by science and rational inquiry. Having shed the religio-metaphysical illusions of earlier times, we are now free to see the world as it is and to develop our full potentialities. The great weakness of an account of this kind, Taylor argues, is that it gives too little place to the cultural changes wrought by Western modernity, the way in which it has developed new understandings of the self, its place in society, in space and in time (573). These complex changes came about through the adoption of particular values, habits of mind, and practices, many of which are open to question. The fundamental error of the subtraction account, then, is to treat a specific historical outlook as if it were the natural and only proper way to think about the world and human destiny. I want to turn now to Part V where, in a long conclusion, Taylor draws on key elements of the historical account to explore the current prevailing conditions of belief. This is a time in which we come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient immanent order; or better, a constellation of orders, cosmic, social and moral (543).

The Epistemic-moral Argument for a Closed-world Perspective The prevailing constellation of orders is oriented towards a closed perspective away from belief in transcendence, but religion, contrary to its long-predicted demise, continues as a not-inconsiderable presence, and there are significant elements of resistance to a purely immanent outlook even among non-believers. Indeed, Taylor suggests that, with new forms of spiritual practice emerging, we have entered a post-secular stage: we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious searching, whose outcome no one can foresee (535). The common immanent frame may be interpreted therefore as self-sufficient as atheists insist, or open to something beyond as religious believers claim; or undecided as with those who stand in what Taylor calls the Jamesian space where you can feel the winds pulling you, now to belief, now to unbelief (549; 592). In studying the fate of religious faith in the West, Taylor identifies himself as a religious believer who also believes that there is some truth in the self-narrative of the Enlightenment. In particular, he thinks that its achievements in the practical domain constitute a great gain that could hardly have come about without some breach with established religion (637). However, what he sees as wrong and stifling in secular humanism, and a threat to what has been achieved, is the metaphysical

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primacy it accords to human life. From this standpoint, he is concerned in the first place to question the common conviction, especially among intellectuals, that a closed world structure is the obvious or natural reading of our situation. This is part of a more general concern to draw attention to considerations that lend support to the belief in transcendence. Belief in a closed-world structure typically rests on an epistemic argument to the effect that science, especially post-Darwinian science, disproves God and religion. Such arguments, Taylor points out, manifestly go beyond anything that scientific inquiry could establish. Why then do they seem impressive? We must look, he suggests, not so much to the science as to the package of moral values that surrounds it. This of course is a reprise of his earlier argument in relation to 18th-century humanism. Some of the relevant values relate directly to a specific conception of science as the paradigm of knowledge and arbiter of what we can know. In this setting, disengaged reason takes precedence over other domains of understanding, and an ethics of belief comes into play with a demand for standards of evidence that are unattainable in many fields of inquiry and experience. Religious experience and belief is thus made to appear weak. At a more general level, the science-related talk of the death of God goes with a coming of age story of moral growth. Religion, with its promise of ultimate security, is construed as a stage in the childhood of humanity; but now we have grown up and have the courage to give up comforting illusions and face the truth. Maturity also carries the promise of liberation from centuries of religious obfuscation and authoritarianism, freeing us from a Church-imposed morality that suppresses the body and human desire. On the familiar subtraction pattern, liberation from religion thus presents itself as a coming of age for humanity, giving us for the first time the opportunity to focus on the single great goal of human flourishing. All of this bolsters the original argument from science, making it appear more persuasive than it would otherwise be. Taylors analysis constitutes, certainly, a significant reflection on how a weak argument from science could gather the appearance of strength. But the critique suffers from a weakness of its own: for, apart from a passing reference, he fails to consider more sophisticated philosophical challenges to religious belief. The sole comment, to be found in fact in the earlier historical inquiry, refers briefly and obliquely to Humes Dialogues: Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, with its arguments against miracles, may seem to us today a crucial blow in the battle for unbelief. But my hypothesis is, that without the new moral understandings I have been describing, it would have had little impact (268). It is possible that Humes arguments against miracles, and his objections to the argument from design in the Dialogues, would have had little impact in the absence of the new moral understanding at the time of their publication, but it would be completely implausible to suppose that these were weak arguments that happened to gather strength on the wings of a surrounding moral package. This is not to say that Taylor would say this. The problem is that he fails to consider the force of arguments of this kind in their own right. Paradoxically, this vast study of the divergence

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between belief and unbelief in regard to transcendence suffers from a serious neglect of epistemic considerations.

Ethics and Transcendence: Ethical Experience and Ontological Space To turn now to the ethical theme that forms the central thread of Taylors argument. A secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable for many people. What disappears in this eclipse is the prospect of a higher, transcendent good beyond human flourishing. The lengthy discussion of this issue is richly reflective and suggestive, but the argument as a whole is marred in two main respects. First, the consideration of what might count as human flourishing, or mere human perfection, is surprisingly incomplete. And secondly, Taylor fails to discuss the related question of the ethics that would be needed to support the belief in a higher good beyond human flourishing. The theme of ethics and transcendence unfolds in three main stages. It appears first in comment on the Jamesian space between belief and unbelief in Chap. 16. In response to an amorphous, fragmented range of views in this domain, Taylor floats the idea that no one can escape the question of transcendence. The issue presses itself on us, he suggests, in three key areas of experience: we have a sense of ourselves as active, creative beings; we find ourselves subject to ethical demands; and we respond to beauty and power in art and nature. This reflection leads immediately to a challenge to all positions that take their stand in immanence: How can one account for the specific force of creative agency, or ethical demands, or for the power of artistic experience, without speaking in terms of some transcendent being or force which interpellates us? (597). This question, I suggest, does not amount to a compelling argument. In response, why should one think that a transcendent source is needed to explain how it is that we find courage admirable and cruelty reprehensible, or why we marvel at Shakespeares dramatic power, or are moved by Mozarts music? Taylor presses on immediately with a follow-up question for those who dwell in immanence: how do you find ontological space for ethical experience without some reference to the transcendent? (60506). The implication is that the believer can meet this less than transparent requirementprecisely how is not made clear by reference to God; whereas modern secular ethicsmention is made of Kantian, Humean, and utilitarian ethicsall fail the ontological test, again in terms that are not made clear. At this point, the argument ends abruptly, but the question remains: why suppose that ethics needs ontological space, or if it does, that it must be of a transcendent kind? What ontology is needed, an inquirer might ask, to ground mathematical principles or the laws of logic and the practices we base on these systems? Ethics is different of course in not being an a priori form of knowledge, but we can think of it on similar lines as a body of general ideas, principles, and standards related to practices. For instance, would a well-constructed account of the good, specifically of the good for human beings, with a treatment of the virtues, provide an adequate ground? The topic, unhappily, fails to make an appearance in the inquiry.

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Ethics and Transcendence: Criticisms of the Aspiration to Transcendence The discussion turns, in a long second stage, to deal with the view that transcendent fullness of life is in fact damaging to human well-being. Some critics object that religion, in its emphasis on asceticism and renunciation in the name of a higher life, denies or inhibits human fulfillment; it seeks to repress the senses and passions; it induces in us, as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum suggests in Loves Knowledge, hate and disgust at our ordinary human desires and neediness. It inculcates a repulsion at our limitations which poison the joy we might otherwise feel in the satisfactions of human life as it is (626). Nussbaums argument is that religion goes wrong precisely in seeking a level of external transcendence beyond the human. This is not say that transcendence is not important in ethics; but its proper scope, she suggests, is transcendence of an internal kind, one that can embrace the aspirations of ordinary life as well as more heightened aspirations provided they fall within the scope of human achievement. While not conceding the objection as a whole, Taylor acknowledges elements of the critique: specifically that Augustinian Christianity in particular has tended to repress the senses and passions and to deny the body, but it does not have to be that way, he argues. In finding a place for renunciation and for lives of heroic, selfdenying dedication, religion can nonetheless remain fully open to the affirmation of ordinary life, ordinary pleasures, and needs. On the other hand, he allows that this is an unfinished task: the religion of incarnation has tied itself in knots for a very long time over the senses, passions, and the body, and the prospect of breaking free from these knots is far from assured. A second line of criticism of the Christian moral ethos derives from the tragic direction. The most prominent version is the Nietzschean view that Christianity has sought to eliminate the aggressive, combative, self-assertive elements of humanity in favor of tame servile attitudes of conformity and harmony. The effect is to void life of its heroic dimension, gloss over real conflicts of value, and artificially remove the tragedy, the wrenching choices between incompatibles, the dilemmas, which are inseparable from human life (635). Now, as Taylor points out, the Nietzscheans subject secular humanism, with its ethos of egalitarian benevolence, to the very same criticism. This sets the stage for a three-cornered dispute concerning human fullness and transcendence: on the side of unbelief, the secular humanists, heirs of the Enlightenment, together with the anti-humanist Nietzscheans; and in the third corner, believers in transcendence. Within this frame, Taylor writes with a sense of urgency about the dilemmas, tensions, and possible contradictions that Western societies face in working out a satisfactory notion of fullness of life. He sets out the basic problem as follows: how to define our highest spiritual or moral aspirations for human beings, while showing a path to the transformation involved that doesnt crush, mutilate or deny what is essential to our humanity. Let us call this the maximal demand (63940). The maximal demand might perhaps be called the impossible demand, for in the defined terms the contending parties disagree both about our highest spiritual or moral aspirations and what is essential to our humanity. Secular humanists speak of an order

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of justice, liberty, equality, basic rights, and benevolence, while rejecting religious aspirations to transcendence. Religious believers respond, as Taylor says, with the insistence that there is an irrepressible need of the human heart to embrace transcendence and go beyond human flourishing (638). Finally, anti-humanists reject the religious quest as illusory and damaging; but like true believers they too long for radical transformation and are no less scornful of the self-satisfied humanist standpoint. Humanists and religious believers, Taylor argues, share common ground and face common dilemmas. With neo-Nietzschean anti-humanism, portrayed here in extreme (and, I think, misleading) terms, he has no sympathy. However, in what might seem to be an impasse, the Nietzscheans serve to move the discussion forward. The critical point is that anti-humanists are inclined to consider that violencethe right kind of violence of courseserves as the engine of human transformation and achievement. (In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche observes that all the great civilizations of the world have involved elements of considerable cruelty, for example, slavery in Athens, especially in the silver mines). This leads to a long discussion of the phenomenon of violence in the context of religion, speculative in many respects, powerful as a whole, yet strangely inconclusive. The starting point is that there is a deep original bond between violence and religion fixed in the act of sacrifice, the act of destroying something of ourselves, to placate a powerful god or seek protection in a threatening world. In time, the overt connection with mutilation was gradually broken. Nonetheless, elements of the earlier sense of a need to placate divine violence remain. Redemption in Christianity is gained through the violent crucifixion of the Son of God. Gods wrath against sinners and his power to inflict eternal punishment continues to occupy a central place in religious teaching. There is also an unhappy history of sacred killing in the persecution of heretics and non-Christians, in the blessing of wars, and in innumerable forms of institutional violence within Christianity against its own members. All this constitutes a deep and continuing problem for religion, as Taylor freely acknowledges, but it is not one that could be solved, as some critics suppose, by ridding ourselves of religion entirely. Given the considerable evidence of violence in nonreligious contexts, it is fanciful to imagine that it would disappear with the absence of religion. What all sides need to recognize is that violence is a problem with deep metabiological roots in the human condition, a problem that confronts everyone: secular humanists and religious believers are brothers [and sisters] under the skin faith and secular thinking face a similar challenge (675). In any case, there is no prospect that society could rid itself of religion or that it might simply disappear. The only choice, Taylor concludes, is to encourage good religion over bad, specifically to develop religious-based forms of counter-violence as exemplified in the Gospel. With this thought, he keeps open the idea that Christianity can hope to respond to the challenge more profoundly than the humanists and, certainly, the Nietzscheans. This leads to the third and final stage of the ethical debate.

Ethics and Transcendence: Human and Beyond-human Flourishing In a brief survey of modern approaches to ethics, Taylor finds each of the candidates ineffectual in dealing with the great concerns confronting humanity. This is the verdict

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on the liberal humanist ethics that aspires to universal justice and benevolence; on Kantian and post-Kantian ethics; on Humes morality of the emotions and its appeal to sympathy as fundamental; on Utilitarianism; on Nietzschean-type heroic gestures; and on current types of Stoicism that he associates fleetingly with Camus and Derrida. Whatever their merits, these approaches all fail the test of identifying moral sources that could generate a genuinely commensurate moral response. One striking feature of this survey is the omission of a major strand of contemporary ethics. Taylor says nothing about the considerable attention to ethical concerns associated with Greek tragedy, and more particularly, the re-emergence of virtue ethics, notably in the writings of Philippa Foot or Alasdair MacIntyre. Endorsing Nietzsches critique of Enlightenment ethics, but drawing on Thomas Aquinas as well as Aristotle, MacIntyre has developed a modern Aristotelian-based account of ethics and politics with a focus on the virtues, human flourishing, and a conception of the common good. One main criticism of modern ethics, as Taylor notes, is the failure to find an effective ground for the idea of a common humanity. Appeals to equality, altruism, or general sympathy are all put aside as problematic. In their place, he invokes an ethics that looks to God for its moral source and motivation. The operative principle is that the Christian sees in the other the image of God. So the relation of sharing in Gods love embraces all others in an unconditional love, not for their merits or lack of merit, but precisely as images of God. As to whether the response to the image of God in others is really possible, he surmises: I think this can be real for us, but only to the extent that we open ourselves to God, which means in fact over-stepping the limits set in theory by exclusive humanisms (703). If not that, he concludes, then our highest aspiration must be the solitary, unmotivated concern for others of someone like Dr. Rieux in Camus The Plague. But Taylor s either-or is far too simple. Is a detached, unmotivated courage the sole alternative to a faith-based concern for others? Why not the commitment of a life lived in keeping with the virtues? In its own terms, the proposed ideal of universal love takes wing entirely on the belief that we are made in the image of God. What this needs by way of support is a substantive ethics, in part to give content to this idea (the terms in which human beings are images of God). It seems obvious that a virtue ethics of some kind, with its roots in Greek and Christian thought, would be relevant to the discussion. About this, however, as I have said, the text is silent. In the introductory chapter, in fact, Taylor speaks of an unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy. The critical issue is the calling to renounce ones own flourishing for the higher good of serving God. God, he agrees, wills ordinary human flourishing: witness the Gospel stories of how Christ makes this possible for those whose afflictions he healed. Rather: The call to renunciation doesnt negate the value of flourishing; it is rather a call to centre everything on God, even at the cost of forgoing this unsubstitutable good; and the fruit of this forgoing is that it become on one level the source of flourishing to others, and on another level, a collaboration with the restoration of a fuller flourishing by God (17).

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It seems clear that human fulfillment or ordinary human flourishing that one might be called to renounce must have the limited sense of something like going along well or sharing in the good things of life. What is the difference between Greek philosophy and Christian belief in this regard? Is it that the Christianbut not the Greekmight be called to forgo this kind of flourishing for a higher good? Considerations of the things going well kind figure in most accounts of human fulfillment, whether Greek or Christian, but this aspect is not in fact the essential component of human flourishing in Greek thought in general any more than it is in Christian teaching. In Greek ethics from Socrates to the Stoics, human flourishing consists primarily in seeking good in virtuous activity. It would not make sense to suggest that anyone should be called to forgo human flourishing of this kind to serve God. On the other hand, a life of virtue, for Christian or Greek could in many circumstances involve a person in having to give up the hope of flourishing in the ordinary sense. Where then is the unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy in this regard? In the study as a whole, the topic of human flourishing appears as the primary point of division and opposition. It constitutes contested ground between those who see flourishing as the highest goal and those who aspire to a higher good beyond it; more than anything else, Taylor appeals to it to mark the dividing-point between believers and non-believers in relation to transcendence. In the three-cornered debate, openness to transcendence stands against the closed, this-world perspective of secular humanism and Nietzschean anti-humanism. To be secular in this specific framework is, in effect, to be anti-religious, to affirm a view of human fulfillment shaped by opposition to religious aspirations. This oppositional frame drops away, however, if flourishing is understood as living a morally good lifelets say, a life in keeping with the virtues. For fulfillment in these termsas Thomas Aquinas argues in his account of happiness in the Summa Theologicais an essential component in the religious aspiration to share in divine life and is constitutive, in itself, of the best, albeit imperfect, happiness of which we are capable in this life. Aquinas goes on, of course, to affirm a higher, perfect happiness but precisely as taking up the happiness that human beings can hope to attain naturally. The absence of this whole considerationso central in theology from Augustine, through the Middle Ages, and beyondleaves a huge gap in Taylors story of secularity and the conditions of belief. In the absence of a substantive account of ethics and politics, the appeal to a higher good, on which he puts so much weight, fails to connect with the conditions of human life. At the same time, an enriched account of human flourishing would open up a significant domain of possible agreement between religious and secular standpoints. In this, as in much else, the secular could be seen, religiously speaking, as the ground of religious possibility. One might then speak of a sense of the secular, not in opposition to religious belief, but as marking out the vast domain of the natural and the human world that can be shared by believers and unbelievers alike. This would link up with an early Christian conception of the secular that goes back to pre-Constantinian times, one in which the secular marks, not a line of division, but common ground between believers and others.