Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is also frequently invoked as describing the postsecular,Smith, James K. A. “Secular Liturgies and the Prospects for a ‘Post-Secular’ Sociology of Religion.” The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society. Ed. Philip S. Gorski, et al. New York, NY: New York UP 2012. 159-184. Print. though there is sometimes disagreement over what each author meant with the term. Particularly contested is the question of whether “postsecular” refers to a new sociological phenomenon or to a new awareness of an existing phenomenon—that is, whether society was secular and now is becoming post-secular or whether society was never and is not now becoming secular even though many people had thought it was or thought it was going to be.Jacobsen, Rhonda Hustedt, and Douglas G. Jacobsen. “Postsecular America: A New Context for Higher Education.” The American University in a Postsecular Age. Ed. Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen and Douglas G. Jacobsen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. 3-16. Print.Hadden, Jeffrey K. “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory.” Social Forces 65.3 (1987): 587-611. Print. Some suggest that the term is so conflicted as to be of little use.Beckford, James A. “Public Religions and the Postsecular: Critical Reflections.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 51.1 (2012): 1-19. Print. Others suggest that the flexibility of the term is one of its strengths.Dunn, Allen. “The Precarious Integrity of the Postsecular.” Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 37.3 (2010): 91-99. Print.
