As any longtime reader of this blog
knows I believe Christians need to do ministry in a way that takes into account
the 3Ds: Disestablishment, Decentralization, and Demographic Shift. I’ve been pointing
to this reality now for about 10 years, and
recently pointed to this dynamic in my Lenten Devotional.
I bring all this up because I think there is a fourth D, Disenchantment. The book that recently convinced me of this is Hunting Magic Eels by Richard Beck. This book essentially popularizes Andrew Root’s work on the Church and Secularism, which is an application of Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” to the life of the Church. What follows are some of Beck’s big ideas:
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Perception:
Citing the famous Selective Attention Test in which most people will literally miss the gorilla in the room if you tell them to focus on a moving ball, Beck affirms that what we seek is what we see. In this context, most folk don’t see God at work in the world, because we’re not looking for it. The narratives and habits of our secular society focus our attention elsewhere. And this makes belief unbelievable. Belief needs to be connected to some sort of experience, it needs to correspond to actual reality, otherwise it is a series of unproven propositions.
Beck
proposes that “Enchantment thrives when it is made visible.” That religious
beauty captures the attention. Icons, crosses, sacraments, are all visual
nudges that allow us to notice the gorilla in the room. These types of things
that retrain our perception Beck calls Enchantments.
The Reformation & the Enlightenment:
Beck argues that the present disenchanted way
of looking at the world, the secular focus, comes from two sources, the
Enlightenment and the Reformation.
The
Reformation was in some ways a religious parallel to the Renaissance, a return
to classical sources, including original languages, to determine meaning of
texts, namely the Bible, over and against relying on traditions and authority. Out
of this impulse, multiple reforms to the Roman Catholic Church were attempted,
and gave birth to a variety of Protestant Churches. Beck argues that the
Protestant Reformation shifted the focus of Christianity from the mystical
to the moral. Religion is now about one’s individual conscience (for
example Luther’s famed “I can not go against my conscience; here I stand, I can
do no other”) and being a good person, instead of continually engaging with enchantment.
The Enlightenment
was an intellectual movement and period of time where European thinkers responded
to the religious wars in Europe by turning from religion towards rationalism
and observation. The important thing Beck takes from this is that we still have
an enlightenment era fixation of that which can be scientifically measured,
to the detriment of our ability to focus on sacred meaning. Consequently,
goals and values are now seen as subjective things, instead of objective ones.
As a
student of the Enlightenment (My History degree focused on Voltaire and
Rousseau, two founding thinkers of the Enlightenment) and formed within one of
the traditions of the Reformation (I am Lutheran and have a Master of Divinity
from a Lutheran Seminary) I think Beck gave a fairly flat, not to mention a
little warped, reading of both eras, but he wasn’t looking to give a history
report, instead he was nodding at the origin of relevant things in the present.
A few things to tease out from his
assessment:
The Reformation shift from the
mystical to the moral means that if Christianity isn’t producing good people,
or if there is a better way to produce good people, it isn’t true.
Also, if the only things that
matter are measurable and we’ve determined that goals and values are subjective,
then the stuff of faith are simply matters of taste and determined by
whim.
Absent enchantment, all religion
boils down to a battery to power other things, be it a justification for a
moral vision or shibboleths for a political movement or the glue that holds an
ethnic group together. Humans become the only actors on the stage of life, God
is at best an object.
The best we can hope for, for
people living in a disenchanter world, Beck says, is that they notice the
absence of God and ache for God. “Notice the ache for God; if you can’t
believe in God, at least desire God.”
Enchantment:
Beck
laments the loss of enchanted:
time—namely sabbath and feast days,
space—places for pilgrimage, Churches that are religiously beautiful as
well as function as places to preach the word, sacraments, and thin places,
people—saints.
If we have no models of holiness, no place to experience the strangeness of
God, and we don’t have time to contemplate the goodness of the world around us,
no wonder we have a hard time believing holiness exists! A disenchanted church
can offer nothing more than abstract ideas.
As an
analogy for what disenchantment has been doing to western society Beck points
to the experience of retirement; retirement often leads to a deep loss
of identity and meaning. People often drift after retirement. Retirement is a
radical reordering of time (when do you have to get up for work, weekends have
a different meaning), space (work is no longer a place you go), and people (a
bunch of people are no longer your fellow employees, that relationship I gone).
The disenchantment of the world feels like a collective retirement from God.
4 Styles of Enchantment:
As a way
to re-invest our attention, so that we can again see the sacred, Beck offers
four examples of Enchanted Christianity.
Liturgical Enchantment: Much of this style of
enchantment comes from Beck’s experience of Roman Catholicism (he was the lone
protestant in his Catholic grade school). Marking time with a liturgical
calendar re-enchants time, the sacraments make matter matter, and
there is an artistic beauty to Catholic Churches that reaches beyond the
glorified auditorium that Beck experienced as Protestant sanctuaries.
Contemplative Enchantment: Contemplative Christianity
tries to live ordinary life, but aware of the presence of God, or to say it
another way, it seeks to find the presence of God in the world as it is. Habits
can either enchant or disenchant the world, so contemplatives practice the
later. For example, using the Ignatian Examine, or naming “Roses and Thorns”
from the day, to reflect on where God was at work that day; another holy
habit is to pray before taking an action, be it small or large.
Charismatic Enchantment: The third type of
enchantment Beck points to is found in the Charismatic and/or Pentecostal movement
of Christianity. The focus of this type of enchantment understands faith as a romance,
refusing to amputate the heart during worship. There is an assumption that God
is going to act. When God is the main actor it leaves humans in a posture of receptivity—waiting
for God, encourages a hermeneutic of gratitude—wow, God continually is doing
good things in my life, and leads practitioners to testify—hey everyone,
this is what God has done for me!
Celtic Enchantment: The final place Beck goes for enchantment
is the sort of Christianity that flourished in the British Isles from 430-870CE,
Celtic Christianity. He points to reverence toward “Thin Places”—where heaven
and earth seem to be closer to one another, the practice of Holy Poetry,
a particular fusion of fasting and hard work, and an emphasis on Sacred
Friendships, as all unique enchantments offered by Celtic Christianity.
How might we Reenchant our world?:
Richard
Beck’s book planted many seeds in my soul and mind. Here are a few things that
have started to sprout.
1.
When engaging with the secular world we need to be
careful never to offer the faith as a battery for this cause or that.
2.
We ought to
be bolder in naming the ache, both for ourselves and when we are sharing our
faith with others.
3.
Holy time can capture the imagination. Sabbath
is a time good for nothing, celebrating particular saints opens up past ways of
being faithful, and marking time with the Christian calendar places our life in
the rhythm of the story of God we confess with our lips.
4.
Closing a day reflecting on highs and lows
(roses and thorns) and reflection on what God might have been up to is surely a
wholesome practice.
5.
Breaking down some of the charismatic ways of
being Christian to their essence: Pathos and sharing the faith, feels a lot
more faithful and accessible than the essentials many practicing Charismatic
Christians I’ve met focus on.
6.
There was something especially beautiful about the
Celtic idea of Holy Friendship. In a society with an epidemic of loneliness,
truly this is good news!
A Lutheran Enchantment?:
One final thought, in Luther’s explanation
of the Lord’s Prayer he describes the first four petitions, parts of the
prayer, as being about our perception of God’s work in the world.
-God’s name is Holy, we pray so that it may be holy
in and among us.
-God’s kingdom comes, we pray that it comes to us.
-God’s will is done, we ask that it comes to and
among us.
-Everyone receives daily bread, we ask that we might
recognize it.
Luther too,
in a way, is teaching us to notice: notice Holiness in our engagement with
scripture and the way we live our life, notice God’s kingdom in our way of
trusting, notice God’s will when we are kept steadfast in the faith in the face
of other powers, notice all that makes this world good and very good and giving
thanks for it.
I think there is something more to this last point, maybe a uniquely Lutheran contemplative prayer, a new framing of Luther’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer?
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