In Encountering the Secular, J. Heath Atchley proposes an
alternative to the understanding of the secular as that which opposes the religious, and he turns to
American and Continental philosophy to support his critique. Drawing from thinkers as disparate as
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gilles Deleuze, and engaging with contemporary literature and film, Atchley
shows how the division of experience (individual, cultural, political) into the distinct realms of
the religious and the secular overlooks the subtle ways in which value can emerge. Far from arguing
that the religious and the secular are the same, he means instead to suggest that the dogmatic
separation between these two realms gets in the way of experiencing an immanent value, a kind of
value tied neither to a transcendent reality (e.g., a god or an ideal) nor to a self-centered
reality (e.g., pleasure or knowledge).Each chapter cultivates a particular concept that
challenges the breach between the secular and the religious, rendering that breach ambiguous. Such
ambiguity, the author affirms, is relevant to a time when rigid and simplistic notions of religion
and secularity are used to justify thoughtlessness and even violence. All too often the secular is
thought of either as a triumph in "overcoming" the presumed irrationality and oppression
of religion, or as lament in "losing" the meaning religion is thought once to have
offered. Atchley suggests a view of the secular as an opportunity to experience an immanent value
that is neither controlled by the human self nor conferred by a divine entity.Written in a
prose that is lucid, lively, and provocative, Encountering the Secular shows how
a philosophical endeavor might be understood as a spiritual practice.