This highly thought-provoking response to Taylor’s book suggests that Taylor employs his third definition of secularization in such a way that it becomes again possible “to re-insert secularization into the heart of the American story.” Whatever else religion in America might become in a secular age–however the people of the United States may continue to buck the predictions of the secularization thesis–religion in America, on Taylor’s account, is destined ultimately to be circumscribed by the modern values of authenticity, expressive individualism, free choice, and pluralism. Schmidt uses Twain’s narrative of the conjoined twins Luigi and Angelo to brilliant effect to suggest that the traffic, and therefore the cultural influence, between religious and secular perspectives in America is less unidirectional than that.

This is a great point, but, as it stirred me to think more deeply about Taylor’s intentions in this book, I found myself wondering whether in fact Taylor doesn’t already accept it. That is, I think Taylor would agree that both Luigi and Angelo need each other, that each reminds the other of dimensions of human existence that the other tends to overlook or neglect. This openness to differing perspectives, for example, seems to be the hermeneutic that informs the books final chapter, where Taylor is discussing the relationship of different perspectives within the Christian tradition.

Beyond this, however, in the final chapters, especially “Dilemmas 1&2″ and “Conversions,” I see Taylor drawing the outlines of a “new religious itinerary” that would have profound critical implications for the worldviews of both Luigi and Angelo. He would warn Luigi about the inadequacy of the immanent frame, and the need to move beyond it in certain ways. To Angelo he puts the equally serious warning not to conflate Christianity with Christendom, to resist identifying the agapistic message of the gospel, which stresses incarnation, particularity, and contingency, with the code fetishization of the modern moral order (read: Western Civilization), which stresses excarnation and a universality of rules.

In positioning himself this way, Taylor claims to take up a seat in “modern civilization’s loyal opposition.” Taylor applies this label to himself as a way of saying that he affirms the modern emphases on expression, authenticity, democracy, and human rights as real historical gains, while he remains critical of the flattening materialism that seems to him to be the fate of those who remain within the immanent frame.

Several students participating in a seminar I’m currently leading on this book also read Taylor’s affirmation of expression and authenticity as potentially problematic. What is so good about these things in themselves? Is it true that one’s religious orientation is now a matter of choice, or self-consciously held as one option among many possible alternatives? More importantly, how do these modern values that Taylor affirms comport with the “new religious itinerary” he attempts to draw in the book’s final chapter? My guess (based on p. 759) is that Taylor thinks the “quintessentially modern” demand for authenticity can provide the impetus we require to drive us toward the sort of new religious itinerary he recommends (while recognizing that embarking on such a path will also be fraught with risk). That is, he seems to be recommending a certain “channeling” of the modern quest for authenticity. It would be nice, however, if Prof. Taylor could say more about how he understands this connection.

This is a long way of saying that Taylor accomplishes more in this book than simply to find a way to re-insert secularization into the heart of the American story. That is, he does put some stock in the fact that cultural influence can and does travel in the other direction. As Schmidt agrees, secularization-3 does have a formative impact on modern religious expression in America. But Taylor’s story doesn’t end there, for it is precisely the new religious itinerary which he attempts to draw near the end of the book that he thinks also “has something very important to say to modern times” (703). That itinerary, on my reading, is the telos toward which the book continually moves, and it contains a radical and urgent message for both religious and secular people in our time.