Eastertide: Brief Thoughts and Resource Recommendations on Re-Enchantment

‘Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave’. - G.K. Chesterton

Apr 02, 2024

A Creeping Cultural Comeback

Christianity seems to be making an interesting kind of cultural comeback afforded by multiple facets of secular society and its discontents. These might be a coalescing of the cultural air of radical tolerance, the failure of the New Atheist movement, the gaping spiritual void felt by reality in a disenchanted world, a growing mistrust in governments and corporations or the institutions which currently hold societal power, and a mounting anxiety about what many feel to be an apocalyptic future.

No wonder people find themselves groping around for structure, tradition, and a more ancient way, whether through Christianity, Islam, indigenous wisdom and spirituality, or a religious-style embrace of conservative or liberal politics. Western culture has offered the novel opportunity to pursue an extreme form of individualism, one which can throw off societal expectations and norms in order to boundlessly self-fashion. But as it turns out, the limitless trailblazing of new identities can be a lonely and exhausting affair— some might even feel it to be oppressive.

Instead of collapsing into a kind of tribalism for the sake of ready-made identities (i.e. the anti-woke and woke culture wars in America) or conceding to despair, thinkers like pastor Mark Sayers perceive this unique cultural moment as one pregnant with possibility and renewal. Author and broadcaster Justin Briely perceives something like a ‘New Theist’ movement peaking around the corner.

A Way Forward: A Christian Re-Enchantment

According to G.K. Chesterton, ‘Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave’. The Easter story of resurrection and all of its beauty suggest the stubborn and regenerative power of Christianity throughout history. What could this rebirth or new surge in Christianity look like?

Some Christian camps have rallied around the term ‘re-enchantment’, which is in antithesis to Max Weber’s description of the modern world as ‘disenchanted’ or the rationalization and bureaucratization of society, in which traditional religious beliefs and values are replaced by scientific materialist explanations. Church life is subconsciously infiltrated by this worldview, with a declining sense of spiritual wonder, divine mystery, sacramental engagement, and organic community. Instead, churches have become more and more programmatic in structure, with sermons reminiscent of corporate PowerPoints or university lectures.

Re-enchantment means inviting people into an older way of being, towards the habits of the ancient man or the biblical people of old, whose worldview would be imbued with reverence, fear, and awe of the spiritual realm; whose life and calendar would be marked by rituals and rhythms that continually point him or her to worship of their Creator, as outlined by Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age. Re-enchantment is not the invitation to merely grapple with new information. Instead, it is a summoning to live into reality as it truly is— alive with unseen forces — remembering you are vulnerable to and a part of a cosmic narrative. While this concept has valid critiques, it might just be a powerful means of engaging those feeling unmoored in society at present, whether in or outside the church, by welcoming them into a transcendent story higher than themselves, one that is good, true, and beautiful.

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A Looming Shadow Side

While this cultural moment of unrest and transition could be ripe for rich spiritual awakenings as the humility and virtue of Christianity become ever more appealing, a dark shadow looms. This gradual upward trend of earnest interest in religion is one completely different from the drastic surge of sales for Trump’s new ‘God Bless the USA’ bibles. There is a need for reflection and caution as many leaders co-opt Christianity for nationalistic or conservative agendas in a disguised effort to preserve Western civilizational values— whose influence seems to be rapidly waning (i.e. falsely equating Christianity with democracy, free-market capitalism, social justice, or libertarian freedoms). Thankfully, Christianity is more dynamic and multi-faceted than this limited set of modern obsessions— not discounting that some of these forms of progress have been positive outgrowths of the Judeo-Christian heritage.

*A cave we passed in Scotland where Irish missionaries stayed.*

To end my brief reflections, which are really just the tip of the iceberg on a vast topic, here is an excerpt from Paul Kingsnorth’s essay, ‘A Wild Christianity.’ He encourages his readers to remember the ‘Cave Christians’ of Ireland who actively eschewed power, status, and comfort and withdrew to the wild to experience God, eventually returning to society—enchanted, one might say—with fresh and pertinent wisdom.

‘When the last empire collapsed, the Christians of Europe weren’t trying to build, let alone defend, some construction called “Christendom” … They were just trying to do the humblest and the only thing: to worship the true God, and to strip away everything that interfered with that worship. They took to the deserts to follow Christ and to battle the Enemy. Their work was theosis. They had crucified themselves as instructed. What emerged as a result, and what it turned into—well, that wasn’t up to them.
In a time when the temptation is always toward culture war rather than inner war, I think we could learn something from our spiritual ancestors… Why, after all, were the cave Christians so sought after? Because they were not like other people. Something had been granted to them, something had been earned, in their long retreats from the world. They had touched the hem. After years in the tombs or the caverns or the woods, their very unworldliness became, paradoxically, just what the world needed…
But I feel like I am being firmly pointed, day after day, back toward the green desert that forms my Christian inheritance, toward that “ardent and active solitude.” Back to the song that is sung quietly through the land by its maker, the song that is in the stream running, in the mist wreathing the crags, the growling of the rooks, the thunder over the mountains. Back to the caves, to the skelligs, to the deserts green and brown, to stretch out my arms crossfigel and recite the great prayer of St. Patrick’s Breastplate: “The light of the sun, the radiance of the moon, the splendor of fire, the speed of lightning, the swiftness of wind, the depth of the sea . . .” I feel that in another time of crisis and confusion we need to go back to our roots, both literal and spiritual… To seek out a wild Christianity, which will see us praying for hours in the sea as the otters play around us. To understand—to remember—that the Earth and the world are not the same thing.

Resource Recommendations

The Re-Enchanting Podcast: Hosted by Justin Briely and Bell Tindel, specifically recommend this episode with Martin Shaw on myth, narrative, and story-telling
The Surprising Rebirth of the Belief in God: This series, also hosted by Justin Briely, outlines the various thinkers driving the revived interest in Christianity, specifically those academic voices from outside the church who are coming close.
Rebuilders: A podcast with Mark Sayers, a pastor in Melbourne, Australia, who specialises in explaining global trends, their historical origins, how they are shaping our world today, and how they might just point to renewal.