Richard Rohr: As far as I’m concerned, secularism is a child of Christianity. The incarnation, which is our great trumpcard, that God entered the material world and took on the form of the human. That sets the stage for what we now call secularism.

Stephen Crittenden: The implication being that the material world is good.

Richard Rohr: That’s right, that this is the locus, the hiding place of God and the revealing place of God. Now after saying that, I’d be the first to say that you can get trapped inside of secularism with any loss of transcendence, with any loss of true wholeness, the big picture, the whole picture, which Jesus would call the reign of God. But I still agree with you that at its core, secularism is our child. We created it, and now just as you said, I mean I meet scientists – I’m working a lot with the convergence between religion and science – I meet scientists who are much more humble before mystery, much more willing to work with mystery and in awe of mystery and in love with mystery than most clergymen I know. And many of these scientists would call themselves secular in various forms. But they’re very generative people for the life of the world, for the sickness of the world, for the health of God’s people, much more than many of us religious and clergy who simply are preoccupied with self-maintenance and self-protection. And the world is starting to see this, that just because you wear the shingle ‘Christian’, it doesn’t really mean you’re a generative person, a life-giving person, which in terms of the fruits of the spirit, are the real indicators of whether the spirit is operating in you, through you, with you. I think that’s the impasse that managed religion is coming to, that it realised, or it’s starting to realise, or the world’s starting to realise, that we thought we could manage the nature of love. We could decide and compartmentalise who gets the love and who doesn’t get the love. And that’s not the very nature of love, love cannot be managed, certainly not God’s love. And the silliness of religion, when it thinks it can do that, is becoming rather obvious.