1. SIGNS OF THE TIMES Canterbury March 2014

2. TWO LINES OF ENQUIRY 1. 1.Where are we today, culturally, socially, historically ? 2. 2.How might the church respond ?

3. A SECULAR AGE 1. 1.Secularism as an Enlightenment ideology 2. 2.Secularisation as a socio-historical concept 3. 3.The collapse or the radically questioning of the aegis of the secular

4. epistemological conditions 1. 1. MODERNITY : Belief as a weak and inadequate form of knowledge 2. 2. POSTMODERNITY : the structures of what we believe and what makes a belief believable have changed

5. mythological imagination 1. 1.Critiques of myth: Adorno, Horkheimer, Barthes & Midgley 2. 2.New investments in mythological thinking 1. 1.Critiques of myth: Adorno, Horkheimer, Barthes & Midgley 2. 2.New investments in mythological thinking

6. Lana Del Ray ‘Born to Die’

7. New visibility of religion 1.Secular confidence a1960s to mid-1970s phenomenon 2. 2.£12 million investment into the Religion and Society Research Programme 3. 3. New range of print and on-line resources for sociology of religion

8. RESPONSE FROM CHURCH 1.Coming to terms with its internalization of secularism 2.Institutions which are networked and 2.Institutions which are networked and highly flexible about membership 3. 3.The countering of theological illiteracy