The noted sociologist Robert Bellah[1] has referred to A Secular Age as "one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime.

Although there continue to be important disagreements among scholars, many begin with the premise that secularism is not simply the absence of religion, but rather an intellectual and political category that itself needs to be understood as a historical construction.

[5] In his book, Taylor explores the concept of 'secularization' in the modern West and its relationship to religion, examining the different kinds of lived experiences involved in understanding one's life as a believer or unbeliever.

Rather, he argues that a movement of Reform in Christianity, which aimed to raise everyone up to the highest levels of religious devotion and practice, caused the move to secularization.

Taylor sees "three important forms of social self-understanding": the economy, the public sphere, and the practices and outlooks of democratic self-rule.

The changing understanding of God in recent centuries is more complicated than just a move to an indifferent universe, and the motive force behind the Enlightenment's use of reason and science was reformed Christianity.

Taylor notes that the secular age creates cross pressures, leading to the loss of heroism and a feeling of malaise.

The belief in an impersonal universe arose from the advances in science and the new cosmic concept that promoted a materialist view of the world.

Finally, Taylor notes the emergence of a new secular morality that places an emphasis on humanism, altruism, and duty, which created a rebellion among the younger generation at the end of the 19th century.

(p. 417) Taylor challenges the notion of secularization by proposing an age of mobilization from 1800 to 1960 where religion evolved and recruited people on a large scale.

To the "horizontal" notion of "the economy, the public sphere, and the sovereign people" (p. 481) is added a space of fashion, a culture of mutual display.

Despite this, churches' codes and values are still out of touch with modern society's acceptance of sexuality, fluid gender roles, and identity issues.

This has caused a breaking down of barriers between religious groups but also a decline in active practice and a loosening of commitment to orthodox dogmas.

It will be "unhooked" from the paleo-Durkheimian sacralized society, the neo-Durkheimian national identity, or center of "civilizational order", but still collective.

(p. 524) Or (2) it may be the difficulty that the secular elite has in imposing its "social imaginary" on the rest of society vis-a-vis hierarchical Europe.

That is the consequence of the story Taylor has told, in disenchantment and the creation of the buffered self and the inner self, the invention of privacy and intimacy, the disciplined self, individualism.

Taylor argues that both arguments are "spin" and "involve a step beyond available reasons into the realm of anticipatory confidence" (p. 551) or faith.

To resolve the modern cross pressures and dilemmas, Taylor proposes a "maximal demand" that we define our moral aspirations in terms that do not "crush, mutilate or deny what is essential to our humanity".

(p. 706) The vertical hopes to rise higher, to reestablish trust, "to overcome fear by offering oneself to it; responding with love and forgiveness, thereby tapping a source of goodness, and healing" (p. 708) and forgoing the satisfaction of moral victory over evil in sacred violence, religious or secular.

Taylor examines the Unquiet Frontiers of Modernity, how we follow the Romantic search for fullness, yet seem to respond still to our religious heritage.

(p. 727) Against unbelief, Taylor presents a selection of recent spiritual conversions or "epiphanic" experiences in Catholic artists and writers, including Václav Havel, Ivan Illich, Charles Péguy, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

(p. 772) In a brief afterword, Taylor links his narrative to similar efforts by e.g., John Milbank and the radical orthodoxy movement, while also elucidating the distinctiveness of his own approach.

He calls the tale told by radical orthodoxy thinkers the "Intellectual Deviation" story, which focuses on "changes in theoretical understanding, mainly among learned and related élites," (p. 774) whereas the story he relates, which he names the "Reform Master Narrative," is more concerned with how secularity "emerges as a mass phenomenon."

[6] Charles Larmore was critical of A Secular Age in its approach, especially with it having too many references to Catholic theologians and a noticeable absence of Protestant figures (see section I paragraph 7 within the cited article).

Larmore feels Taylor, in his book, may have "an adequate basis for jumping to metaphysical or religious conclusions" concerning the understanding of a secular view of the world, but to do so is "precisely what we ought not to do" (Section II, paragraph 5).

Larmore disagrees with Taylor's insistence that people, having adequate information, should take a stance on God's presence throughout the world (Section II, paragraph 7).