Secularism has produced from within itself a crisis of fragmentation and incoherence that is widespread today. Detailed readings of Spinoza and van Gogh describe the emergence of this crisis, which reconfigured understandings of traditional religious values can be efficacious without compromising the gains made by secularism.

Patrick Grant is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He has published widely on relationships amongst literature, religion and secularism. He has a special interest in literature of the English Renaissance, literary theory, and the literature and culture of modern Northern Ireland. He has published a series of books on the letters of Vincent van Gogh.