Modernity and Transcendence: A Dialogue with Charles Taylor

This collection of essays critically engages with Charles Taylor’s idea of a Catholic modernity through focusing on the crucial issue of the shape and role of religion in modernity. Taylor launched the idea in his seminal 1996 essay A Catholic Modernity?, and the idea is here explored in relation to other Christian denominations and non-Christian traditions. Taylor’s proposal has the potential to become a central and encompassing perspective in thinking about relations between modernity and religion/transcendence in each religious tradition. Six leading authors from diverse backgrounds-David Martin, Bernice Martin, Francis Schussler Fiorenza, Robert Cummings Neville, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Jonathan Boyarin-assess Taylor’s Catholic modernity idea and probe whether and how the extension to other religious modernities (Anglican, Pentecostal, Confucian, Islamic, Jewish) makes sense-or not. Charles Taylor reacts to their considerations and reflects on his own idea 25 years on.