LIVING IN WONDER:
Finding Mystery and Wonder in a
Secular Age
By Rod Dreher
Zondervan Books. 272 pages. £20
ISBN 978 1 399 807 869
A new book by Rod Dreher is a notable event. A socially and theologically conservative Christian, Dreher is one of the most insightful and provocative cultural critics in the public square. In his latest book he faces the challenge of a disenchanted world and the desperate need to recover enchantment.
By enchantment Dreher means ‘that we live and move and have our being in the presence of God – not just the idea of God, but the God who is as near to us as the air we breathe, the light we see, and the solid ground on which we walk’. It is a world in which people feel the transcendent God to be immanent and are aware that there is more to reality than the natural world. In short, this world is sacramental in nature.
But in the West that world no longer exists. Dreher describes the disenchanted wasteland of the West as ‘a world in which belief in God is declining, and doubt in the existence of ultimate significance drives the masses toward hedonism, consumerism, or other forms of nihilism’. At points in the book Dreher paints a very dark picture, particularly in relation to the occult. As seen in debates on sexuality which, at heart, is a modern form of Gnosticism in which body is separated from the self and denigrated with devastating consequences.
Dreher shows how we have got to this point, blaming developments, even if not intended, in the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, capitalism, and information technology. I disagree with Dreher’s assessment of the Reformation. The world of Luther, Bunyan or Edwards was not disenchanted. But whatever their contribution and whatever benefits these developments brought us – and Dreher acknowledges there are many -– we are left today with a disenchanted world. We may not agree entirely with the details of Dreher’s diagnosis, but I think all small ‘o’ orthodox Christians can agree that there is a problem.
What can be done?
So, what can be done? We must recover enchantment. In explaining how that can happen, Dreher advances his case with stories about himself and others as well as proposals of what we can do.
Fundamentally, we must cultivate a sense of wonder so that we see the splendour of the Triune God suffused in the world He created and sustains. Insightfully, Dreher emphasises the significance of beauty as well as truth. In this, how we practice our Christianity is essential. But at this point there are problems for orthodox Protestants and to a lesser extent Roman Catholics. For Dreher is big ‘O’ Orthodox and while he says that the book is not an apologetic for Orthodoxy it does come across that way.
He thinks that Western Christianity in both its Catholic and Protestant forms is too rationalistic and that Orthodoxy with its more mystical and liturgical approach to encountering divine reality is the better way. Many of the people he highlights are Orthodox Christians, often converts like himself, including the three profiled in the last chapters – Martin Shaw, Paul Kingsnorth and Jonathan Pagneau (interestingly raised as the son of an evangelical Baptist pastor in Quebec).
There is much we can learn as Protestants from Orthodoxy. Many of its prayers and much of its liturgy are wonderful. There is a lot more Scripture in an Orthodox service than most free-church services. Indeed, it is the sense of wonder in Orthodoxy that is so appealing to many disillusioned Protestants as well as its claim of institutional continuity back to the apostles. In a crazy world, Orthodoxy looks like a haven.
But there are problems such as iconography, its exclusivity (no salvation outside of any particular branch of Orthodoxy), the place of Mary, and more. But while enthusiastically advancing the case for Orthodoxy, Dreher does not really understand orthodox Protestantism. While he has some awareness of Reformed Christianity, the Protestantism Dreher seems to have in mind is the worst sort of American megachurch evangelicalism which compared to Orthodoxy comes off badly.
Something important to say
Having said that, Dreher has something important to say to conservative, evangelical Reformed Protestants like most readers of en. He mentions a convert to Orthodoxy named Jonah who described his first experience of the liturgy of the Orthodox Church as ‘a calm, abiding sense of being connected with something enduring, wise, and solid’. Is that the experience of a non-Christian or even a Christian coming into our church services? To be honest, so much in church services can be banal and not least in the way they are led. Where is the beauty of worship? Where is the awesome and wonder-filled sense of the immanent presence of a transcendently glorious God? For that to be the case does not require that we adopt high liturgy or become Orthodox, but we need to take seriously how our services are planned and conducted.
And those of us who preach must remember that we are not merely teaching the Bible, but that we are coming from the council of the Lord with His word that people must hear so that they will know Him whom to know is eternal life. Is the God and the gospel we preach too intellectualised? Public worship with preaching at its heart should be occasions when people encounter the living God. In a disenchanted world people will find enchantment in churches where there is such public worship. The warning that Protestants must take away from this book is that if people don’t find wonder in our churches they will look elsewhere.
