This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centrepiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. The lecture, delivered at Dayton University in January of 1996, offered Taylor the opportunity to speak about his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. Four well-known commentators on religion and society were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling-Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society.
