I'm increasingly convinced that this is true.
The modern consumerist bureaucratic world is achingly banal, and I'm saying that as someone who likes a lot of it. Personally, I find a lot of beauty in ordinary things. One of my favourite places in Dublin (or anywhere) is a fountain in a suburban indoor shopping centre. I even think the morning commute has a sort of grandeur. ("Men my brothers, men the workers, ever seeking something new...")
But there's only so far the beauty of the ordinary can extend. McDonald's is not beautiful, except insofar as anywhere is beautiful. Starbucks is not beautiful. Tesco is not beautiful. Corporate offices are not beautiful. Indeed, all these places are ugly and soul-sapping.
It's not just physical environments that lack beauty in our modern world. It's the public realm, where people increasingly meet as consumers and atomised individuals-- without a shared history, faith, ideology, culture, political struggle, etc.
Personally, I very often feel I am suffocating in contemporary society-- suffocating spiritually, culturally, aesthetically.
There are many possible paths to re-enchantment, and I think we should make use of them all (except those that are actually evil), but I'm convinced that Christianity is the royal road.
I'm a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and the Creeds are true. However, I also believe Christianity has great stores of social and cultural wealth, which even agnostics, atheists, and generalized theists or deists can appreciate. (As expressed in Larkin's great poem, "Church going".)
Even somebody invoking the name of Jesus Christ, in a serious way, seems to create a new atmosphere, a richer and heightened atmosphere. I understand why there is a Feast of the Holy Name.
Christianity has so many resources to achieve re-enchantment: the Mass (and other religious services), prayer, devotions such as the rosary, saints' days, feasts and fasts, Scripture, devotional art, pilgrimages, the sign of the cross, religious history, hymns, iconography, etc.
The greatest thing about these is that they can pervade everyday life, even the most banal parts of it.
Other religions can also help to re-enchant modern life. A city street is transformed by the presence of the Jehovah's Witnesses selling the Watchtower magazine or Hare Krishnas singing their mantras. I have a great deal of respect for that in itself.
But since I believe Christianity is true, I want the re-enchantment of modern society to come from Christianity.
I agree with you. Yet I find a lot of Christian forms very alienating and even banal. I think Bruce Charlton's statement that we are each as a Christian on a quest may be the best way through the Christian alienation and banality, the best way to re-enchant the bad.
ReplyDeleteI remember that disenchantment seemed to happen and grow within Christian nations so Christianity itself can't be the antidote. So for me it's Christianity and 'something else' that is required. Not just Christianity. That something else could be genius, like the creative genius of Chesterton that was added. But the something else could be a new spirituality, like Franciscan or Dominican, etc, but something that is primed for the challenges of the age.
"I remember that disenchantment seemed to happen and grow within Christian nations so Christianity itself can't be the antidote." I think it would be truer to say it grew within secularising and secularised Christian societies.
DeleteI suppose banality is subjective to some degree. I do think there is a role for creativity and new forms, though. And perhaps a new spirituality will arise for our times. If it's not here already, somewhere!