Review Article A SECULAR AGE by Charles Taylor Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2007 The Canadian Catholic academic Charles Taylor—Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University, Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Philosophy at Northwestern University in Chicago, and author of nearly twenty books—is undoubtedly one of the world’s most influential and respected intellectuals. His work on the roots of modern selfhood, encapsulated systematically in his magnum opus, Sources of the Self, has established him as a front-ranking philosopher, numbered by the American philosopher Richard Rorty as “among the dozen most important philosophers writing today, anywhere in the world”. 1 Taylor’s contributions to the subject of multiculturalism have also been widely influential, and his expertise in that area was surely a large contributing factor in his appointment in 2007 as Co-Chair (along with Gérard Bouchard) of Quebec’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. This was not Taylor’s first foray into Canadian political life. He had four unsuccessful bids as an NDP candidate in federal elections, with his most noteworthy defeat coming in 1965 in the riding of Mount Royal—a loss that came at the hands of future Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. All of this is to say that Charles Taylor has long been an influential figure in the academic study of philosophy and politics, and a notable presence in Canadian public life. However, for much of his academic career, the topic of religion has been a subtle or implicit facet of Taylor’s programme, with religious or 1 Adam Begley, “The Mensch of Montreal,” Lingua Franca (May/June 1993), 39.