Illustrating the studies on religiosity, Dr. Sohrabi Far said: religiosity has dramatically changed in modern world and analyzing these changes is considered to be of the most significant issues in studying the religion.

He added: Among all thinkers who have theorized in this regard, Charles Taylor, a great social philosopher, has concentrated on studying the origins of modernity. Through all these researches, he has studied the consequences of modernity for religiosity. During this session, we will have a critical analysis on his view.

Regarding currents of thought during the last five centuries in Latin Christianity, he said: Many social events have occurred in the West or Latin Christianity during the last five centuries; among the most important ones, religious reformist movement, intellectualism, new order, and the idea of originality can be named.

Based on their main ideas, each of these currents have proved effective on Western thought and these effects are so great that Taylor describes them as “changing the condition of belief”.

Stating that these changes have brought about various consequences for religiosity, he added: among the most significant ones we can refer to selective religion, individual religion, human-oriented interpretations of religion, religion fluctuations, reviving some original religious teachings and independence of spirituality.

Having given a short introduction of Taylor’s views, Mr. Sohrabi Far presented his critique of them.

Explaining the most important critiques of Taylor’s views, he said: speaking of religion, religiosity and consequences of modernity, what kind of religion and religiosity does Taylor have in mind? It is needless to say that there are various forms of religiosity and not all of them encounter modernity in the same way. The other critique of Taylor’s views according to Sohrabi Far is inefficiency of Taylor’s twofold idea of religious/ non-religious.