12/1/24

"Re-enchantment" with Rod Dreher

The great New Testament Scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright uses a vivid image in one of his books about how the rationalism of post-Enlightenment Modernity has affected spirituality.  With its insistence on elevating empirical and scientific knowledge to the highest (or even the only) reliable form of knowledge, dispensing with folk wisdom, intuitive, or spiritual forms of knowledge, Modernity was (spiritually speaking) like paving over a green field with concrete.  But, over time, the concrete starts to crack.  A hodge-podge of wildflowers and grass and weeds start to pop through.  

Wright points to various movements - Romanticism, Spiritualism (with its seances), and New Age spiritualities - as reactions to the smothering rationalism.  The spiritual realities - because they really are part of our life and experience - have a way of popping through the concrete.  The Charismatic movement in the churches, the rediscovery of the Mystics through the Spiritual Formation movement, and the resurgence of Traditionalist forms of piety (as with the appeal of the Latin Mass among many younger Roman Catholics) are all Christian expressions of this same "popping through" of the super-natural.  What the Rationalists dismissed as 'irrational' may actually be 'trans-rational' and have an unexpected staying power.

So, in recent decades, as scholars have noted the "paradigm shift" from Modernity into Post-modernity there has been an openness to re-evaluating and even reclaiming the spiritual and purpose-filled dimension to life that goes beyond empirical knowledge.  Nowadays many people are talking - openly and excitedly - about the "Re-enchantment" or "Re-sacralization" of our lives in this world. 

Here is one such conversation between news commentator Emily Jashinsky (of the 'Undercurrents' and 'Breaking Points' web-shows) and Eastern Orthodox Christian author and cultural critic (and personal friend) Rod Dreher about "Re-enchantment."  It is very much worth the watch.

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