Sublime

The way that this modern moral order takes shape around chosen identity makes it complicated for pastors. If the church or the pastor tries too hard to shape a person’s life, it will be a violation of the modern moral order.

Taylor, who affirms the genius of Durkheim but turns him against himself, shows with this triad how the social function of religion adds to the opaqueness of divine action.

For a wise articulation of this point, see Michael Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014).

What made Warren’s perspective both genius and problematic is that he offered Jesus at the level of the nova effect. Jesus was another third option amongst the thousands of others. Of course Warren was not shy in claiming that Jesus was the best option, a third way that could actually deliver in providing purpose and individual flourishing. But onc

Angrily bound in the immanent frame, a group of pastors and professors decided that the only way to deal with a secular age was to destroy it. Returning to the fundamentals—to the sources (the Bible and creeds) before the immanent frame challenged them—they

in a post-Durkheimian age religion would be completely severed from people’s conceived history, fading into one’s individualized and completely buffered sense of the self as a completely self-chosen identity.

But a slick youth program is no substitute for a youth pastor who unapologetically teaches the Bible.