Religious Life in the Post-Secular World: A Critical–Analytical Review of the Book How (Not) to Be Secular

Abstract

The primary aim of the present article is to examine and critically evaluate the book How (Not) to Be Secular? by James K. A. Smith and to provide a narrative exposition of Charles Taylor’s seminal work A Secular Age. Smith’s book adopts a simplified, narrative-driven structure, which entails the risk of reductionism. Rather than offering an independent theory of secularism, it should be regarded as an interpretive and rewritten text, a feature that underscores the necessity of its critical assessment. Smith’s fundamental presupposition is that secularism in the modern world should not be understood as the elimination of religion, but rather as a transformation in the conditions of possibility for belief. Grounded in the lived experience of faith, Smith’s argument demonstrates that religious life in a secular age depends less on philosophical argumentation than on the cultivation of affect, imagination, ritual practices, and communal forms of life. By adopting an analytical–structural approach and drawing on Foucauldian genealogical critique within the theoretical framework developed by Talal Asad, this article opens a new horizon for a deeper analysis of secularism and the possibility of religious life. Such an approach provides the groundwork for proposing a comprehensive model—one that, on the one hand, benefits from the achievements of modern rationality and, on the other, emphasizes the holistic nature of religion and its inseparable connection with both worldly life and the hereafter. This trajectory may contribute to a reconsideration of secularism theory and to the initiation of a more serious dialogue on the possibilities of religious life in the contemporary and post-secular world.