by motives of power and profit is creatively to appropriate the Christian
humanist tradition. For this reason, Christian humanism is a central idea
in Emil Brunner’s Gifford Lectures of 1947–8,^33 and, as Jürgen Moltmann
has argued, a Christian vision of humanity is vital for our industrial society.
Theological anthropology remains important in light of our increased scien-
tific ability to intervene in human reproduction and other modern social
issues.^34
From the Catholic side, Vatican II has provided an important push for the
idea of Christian humanism by recovering the incarnation as the theological
centre of theology. During the last decades, a number of official Catholic
documents have stressed the importance of‘Christian humanism’as a vehicle
of Christian social teaching and, indeed, as‘a Christian philosophy of cul-
ture’.^35 Fundamentally, humanism wishes to explore what it means to be
human and what the grounds are for humanflourishing. The brief history
of humanism above has shown us that contrary to a common, prevailing
misconception, the words‘Christian’and‘humanism’ are not essentially
contradictory. They only continue to appear so because in popular culture
humanism remains associated with secularism, especially because Western
culture is still heavily influenced by what Charles Taylor has dubbed the
‘subtraction narrative’of secularization, according to which human progress
andflourishing require the diminishing of religion. While the ideology of
secularism driving this narrative has contributed to our collective modern
social imaginary, Taylor carefully distinguishes secularism as an ideology from
the more general secular cultural framework or‘immanent frame’that marks
our current secular age.^36
The immanent frame designates the de facto conditions under which
arguments for transcendent, i.e. religious sources of humanflourishing have
to be made in a secular age. Religions can no longer simply assume that most
people believe in the supernatural. The immanent frame, in short, describes
the dominant social imaginary or cultural climate within which we have to
argue metaphysical and religious claims. For Taylor, the decision whether this
immanent frame is wholly closed or remains open to transcendence differen-
tiates secularismfrom secularity. Among secularists, at least, the prevailing
(^33) See Emil Brunner,Christianity and Civilization, 2 vols, The Gifford Lectures 1947– 8
(New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1948–9).
(^34) See Jürgen Moltmann,‘Humanism in the Industrial Society’,inMan: Christian Anthro-
pology in the Conflicts of the Present, trans. John Sturdy (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1974),
22 – 41.
(^35) For instance Paul VI,Populorum progressio, §42; the‘Compendium of the Social Doctrine
of the Church’gives its introduction the title‘an integral and solidary humanism’,defining the
social teaching of the Catholic Church as such; Benedict XVI,Caritas in veritate, §16.
(^36) Charles Taylor,A Secular Age(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 539ff.;
see also Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen (eds), Introduction
inRethinking Secularism(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 10.
10 Jens Zimmermann