I recently received review copies of two books on the same day. The first, a galley of a book to be published by Eerdmans near the end of July, was
Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age
, by Dale C. Allison, Jr. The second, just out from Hurst, was
Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World
, by Elle Hardy. The fortuitous juxtaposition was ironic, of course, but more than that, it was very close to my heart. Like you, I expect, I have seen an ever-increasing number of articles and books intimating a radical shrinkage of “religion,” ranging from Ryan Burge’s
The Nones
to recent provocative columns by Philip Jenkins (to mention just two examples from a vast field). And behind this, of course, we must acknowledge the enormous, though to me still unaccountable, influence of Charles Taylor’s
A Secular Age
.