This is an interesting take on faith today.
In short, modernity didn’t undermine the contents of religious belief. What modernity did was change the location of belief in the mind. Specifically, faith moved from the background to the foreground. From taken-for-granted to an object of choice.
And what this means is not that modernity has made faith unreasonable. But it does mean that faith is more fragile and unstable. As are all things in the foreground. The fact that faith is a choice means that faith can be revisited and the reasons behind that choice opened up to scrutiny. Further, we are constantly in contact with people making their own faith choices and can’t help but be affected by their reasons. No longer taken for granted, faith is always exposed to reflection and revisitation. When faith is a choice it needs to be reasserted, like all our other choices. It’s like waking up every morning and deciding what to wear. The choice is an everyday object in the mind. Thus, we need to keep choosing faith, over and over. And, like all things in the foreground, this take a lot of time and effort. Faith is now hard work. And some people, not surprisingly, just get tired.
In short, faith is going to feel different in modernity. It’s going to feel vulnerable and fragile. It’s going to be effortful. All this is simply saying that faith has moved from the background to the foreground.
via Experimental Theology: Faith, Doubt and Modernity.