Changing Our Mind on Secularization

An appreciation by Andrew Nussey 

The Atlantic Theological Conference, now in its twenty-ninth year, is an opportunity for people from across North America to come together to stimulate thought, build relationships and strengthen their faith.  It was held June 23-26 at St Peter’s Cathedral in Charlottetown.

This year’s theme was “Changing Our Mind on Secularization: The Contemporary Debate about Sacred and Secular in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”  All the speakers challenged us to broaden our definition of “the secular” and explained how the realms of “the sacred” and “the secular” have co-existed with each other throughout history to this day.  A simplistic notion of what is “secular” is inadequate to a larger discussion of our present experience.  

As Dr. Wayne Hankey asserted, secular states have acquired the marks of religion without checks—the American people, for instance, are encouraged by the President and the advisors of his “state religion” to feed the free market by way of consumption to help restore the economy—thus, it becomes both a civic and a moral duty to consume and gluttony becomes a virtue under the new “state religion.”

The Episcopal Visitor to the conference was the Rt. Rev. David Hamid, Suffragan Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe.  Bishop Hamid, in his sermon during the Conference Eucharist on the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, pointed out that near the saint’s feast day the days gradually become shorter while after the feast of the Nativity of our Lord, Christmas, the days begin to lengthen.  This phenomenon points to the humility modelled by the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (St. John 3. 30).  The Church, said the bishop, must not point to herself, but away from herself, and toward God.  The witness of St. John the Baptist is certainly relevant when we consider the role of the sacred life in relation to the secular world.

The papers and responses to the papers helped guide us in our consideration of the conference’s theme, from Dr. Peter O’Brien’s consideration of the early Roman understanding that civic duty and piety were demonstrated and tested by religious practice, to Dr. Alexander Treiger’s presentation of notions of the sacred in Islam in contrast to those in Christianity in relation to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and its rejection in Islam.  All in all, there was much food for thought—sometimes more than could be chewed and digested on site. Formal and informal opportunities for discussion following the talks allowed us to grapple with the intriguing concepts presented by the speakers.

Probably what struck me the most was Dr. Eli Diamond’s final paper in which he presented Charles Taylor’s claim that the prevalence and normative nature of atheism, as we experience it in the Latin West, comes out of our own Christian culture’s development of Christianity in recent centuries. Such a claim certainly assists us in “Changing our Mind on Secularization,” as the title of the conference suggests.  Such a claim, in fact, suggests the need for humility in the Christian discourse with the world around us, which brings us back to Bishop Hamid’s observation of the role of St. John the Baptist, which must be ours as well.

I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to attend this conference and I would encourage the participation and support of all who are interested in this valuable opportunity for both intellectual and spiritual growth.

The conference papers are published each year in book form by St Peter Publications. The 2009 ATC papers will be available just prior to the 2010 conference.