Religions

In her excellent volume Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, Agnes Callard juxtaposes Socrates’s conclusion that the meaningfulness of life is a function of consistent critical inquiry into existence with Leo Tolstoy’s contrary insistence that existential meaning ensues from living life without constant interruptions of self-reflection. These two perspectives functionally identify the tension between whether individuals may linguistically express opinions on truth and meaning or must negotiate in some manner with an inescapable silence regarding how best to comprehend and communicate discrete interpretations of the significance and veracity of lived experience. This present article investigates that tension and how it depends on the poetic and apophatic characteristics of language to both Say and Unsay how meaning and truth may be conceived. Salient positions from Ludwig Wittgenstein and William Franke provide introductory material to set the context for a closer examination of the complementary hermeneutics of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the American poet Wallace Stevens. Both thinkers concur that properly analyzing meaning and truth requires a reliance on the creative imagination with its privileging of poetic language and its dependence on the humility of an incredulous faith in approximating an operative asymptotic approach to existential meaning.

The editors first met each other via email in early 2020 [...]

In this paper, I explore the complex relationship between Christianity and secularisation in Britain through the small, but illuminating, window of contemporary Christian worship songs. My focus is on Christian worship songs that utilise battle imagery. To explore changes in British Christianity over the last 30–40 years, I compare Songs of Fellowship with the most popular songs sung in British churches in May 2025. My findings reveal resonance between the shifts observed and key aspects of Charles Taylor’s analysis of secularisation. Therefore, my analysis suggests an ongoing impact of secularisation on Christianity in Britain, specifically evangelical charismatic churches, while also highlighting churches’ resistance to secularising trends. I also consider the roots of secularisation in Christianity and contend that the philosophical and phenomenological limitations of secularisation may be contributing to an increased interest in Christianity, particularly amongst young adults. There is, therefore, a paradoxical relationship between Christianity and secularisation in Britain, with each influencing (and, in some regards, inextricable from) the other. I conclude by considering theological and contextual dilemmas for churches using songs that utilise military metaphors, including how such lyrics may be perceived in a postcolonial context and at a time when concerns about violent expressions of Christian nationalism are a key topic in public debate.