Thank you for this review. I started reading Living In Wonder, but it seemed like it was leading in directions I didn’t really want to go. I am in my mid-seventies, so while I grew up (and grew old) thoroughly immersed in modernity, I still had links to the pre-modern world. I was raised in a traditional Lutheran church, with a liturgy that included the Gloria Patri and the Te Deum. I honed my reading skills on fairy tales and (highly edited) Greek myths. I read Tolkien, starting in high school, and added Lewis in college. On social media someone asked the question, "What is your favorite book by Lewis?" I would have to say, The Discarded Image is my personal favorite. I think it would be very easy for me to lose myself in enchantment, but as Paul wrote, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18) I need the grounding of my Calvinist presbyterian church so that I may endure to the end.
Philosophy really isn't my field, but it seems like these writers may be taking nominalism/realism with with respect to universals and confusing or conflating it with other things.
I noticed another one of these called ‘The Languages of Rivers and Stars’ by Seth Lewis with an enthusiastic review by Alistair Begg whom I rate very much. But not going to read the book. It reminded me too much of one about thankfulness by a Canadian lady.
I was a bit disturbed to hear that orthodox believers don’t believe in original sin. It was on a tour in Romania at an Orthodox Church.
I like Lewis and Tolkien’s and have an eclectic Christian church background. I followed RD for a while but in the end had reservations about Dreher.
It seems to me in my walk with God, that often silence is the answer and just plain faithfulness in prayer, Bible reading and church attendance is the way to healing. Fellowship and shared service as well. Nature, travel and life brings joy. Liturgy can be healing. But there is no one method. God in Christ meets us where we are. We have to walk through the pain.
I'm a big Dreher fan, but he sometimes doesn't 'get' evangelicals completely.
They way he weaves storytelling and narrative theological discovery together reminds me in some ways of the late great Catherine Marshall -- though I am not sure if he'd like that association.
Matthew C. Bingham's new "A Heart Aflame' (Crossway) is an engaging counterpoint to the ongoing mysticism conversation.
I've definitely seen this trend in the "re-enchantment" discourse of focusing on supernatural/paranormal/fortean phenomenon to push back against reductive materialism. It looks like Dreher is continuing this trend with several of the stories you mention above. Having been a wiccan for a time during my sojourn in the enemies camp I'm really concerned about this emphasis. The quickest way we get mass demonic deception is to have a generation so hungry for an "enchanted" world that they take any supernatural activity as a guide to truth. When all one want's is magic in the world demons start pulling rabbits out of hats. I think the real way to re-enchantment is emphasizing the sacred in the mundane. That we need to help people see God at work through his word, his sacraments, and his church. To remind them that when they commune with brothers and sisters in Christ they stand on holy ground, and that those in Christ are united to the Father through the Holy Spirit. He is in us and we stand before his throne every waking moment. That's enchanting.
If we rely on the "smells and bells" of enchantment to sustain our religion, how will we survive the 400 years of silence before the Bright and Morning Star appears? Every word. Every promise. May we wait patiently for the Consolation of Israel sustained by the unshakable promise.
There is a lot of buzz about enchantment these days. Buzz worries me.
I wonder if you have heard of Lilias Trotter. A Victorian lady who spent 40 years with in Algeria reaching out to Muslims. Write lots but was an amazing artist whom Ruskin said of, that she could have been the greatest English woman painter ever. She chose Jesus over art. Lots of publications but never lost her love of painting and drawing and saw the Lord in creation in an amazing way. Her ‘A Blossom in the Desert ‘ title taken from her love for a daisy brought to her one day is just lovely.
Rod Dreher is asking the right question—but keeps answering it with mood or mystique dressed up as direction.
Yes, something vital has dimmed. But feeling the absence of enchantment isn’t the same as knowing what will restore it. Charles Taylor reminds us: our age isn’t empty—it’s saturated. Meaning isn’t missing; it’s overloaded, competing, noisy.
Dreher writes as if beauty must point somewhere, or it’s lost. But beauty doesn’t need to explain itself to be true. Enchantment isn’t something we recover. It’s something we discover—in spite of, and sometimes because of, all the noise about “godless modernity.”
We don’t need to mystify our way out. We need habits that hold, silence that isn’t projection, and a theology that endures even when God goes quiet.
Dreher is sincere. But sincerity can mislead—especially when it confuses intensity with clarity and decibels with depth.
That kind of confusion once lived on the Left Bank. Now it rents in Budapest.
One autumn night in Hungary, a distraught young American exchange student walked up to Rod Dreher and anxiously plucked his sleeve. “I’m a conservative evangelical and have been all my life,” the young man said. “But I’m dying. I mean, I’m like a fish lying on a riverbank, gasping for air. I believe it all, but I am desperate for a sense of enchantment.” Then he said, “I’d like you to tell me about Orthodoxy.”
---
I think Dreher's right that there can be a real sterility in some forms of evangelicalism or a brain-on-a-stick flatness in something like my own Reformed tradition, but what it also misses is that those very same things can be present in a high liturgical tradition by someone who's gone through the motions a million times and is on checked out autopilot. There are people raised liturgically who find they can finally breathe in something very informal or even slapdash and vice versa. It's not really an argument either way for the truth of either system, or really even its merits for the Church since what's more culturally congruent in one society is alien to another.
---
While he's certainly not someone cold-blooded in disposition, the by repute sterile and austere New England Puritans had a deeply enchanted and philosophical figure in Jonathan Edwards. His writings on the "flying spider" to the Royal Society are definitely remarkable:
"Edwards draws two theological conclusions from observing spiders. First, God not only provides for “all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects.” To Edwards, it looked like the spiders were having fun flying from place to place. Second, God manages the amounts of creatures on earth for the greater good: “The wisdom of the Creator is also admirable in so nicely and mathematically adjusting their plastic nature, that notwithstanding their destruction by this means and the multitudes that are eaten by birds, that they do not decrease and so by little and little come to nothing.”
Obviously, one example has limited value, but I think it does highlight how wonder would work in someone otherwise taking quite a different approach.
John of the Cross used the expression “dark night of the soul” explicitly to refer to a phase of spiritual development where the prayerful CANNOT “cling to what they know even amid God’s absolute silence”. That IS the dark night.
Thank you for this review. I started reading Living In Wonder, but it seemed like it was leading in directions I didn’t really want to go. I am in my mid-seventies, so while I grew up (and grew old) thoroughly immersed in modernity, I still had links to the pre-modern world. I was raised in a traditional Lutheran church, with a liturgy that included the Gloria Patri and the Te Deum. I honed my reading skills on fairy tales and (highly edited) Greek myths. I read Tolkien, starting in high school, and added Lewis in college. On social media someone asked the question, "What is your favorite book by Lewis?" I would have to say, The Discarded Image is my personal favorite. I think it would be very easy for me to lose myself in enchantment, but as Paul wrote, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18) I need the grounding of my Calvinist presbyterian church so that I may endure to the end.
The Discarded Image is such an amazing book.
I always appreciate your reviews, Bethel.
You mention it in passing, but how likely do you think it is that efforts like Dreher's will end up promoting panentheism?
It seems like a fine line between "see[ing] God’s grandeur in a wild rabbit" and seeing God in a wild rabbit.
On another note (somewhat tangential): Have you seen Christian writers blaming everything, not on Descartes, but on William of Ockham?
A couple of examples are https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/11/the-catastrophe-of-nominalism/ and https://heidelblog.net/2015/12/the-cruelty-of-nominalism/
Philosophy really isn't my field, but it seems like these writers may be taking nominalism/realism with with respect to universals and confusing or conflating it with other things.
I noticed another one of these called ‘The Languages of Rivers and Stars’ by Seth Lewis with an enthusiastic review by Alistair Begg whom I rate very much. But not going to read the book. It reminded me too much of one about thankfulness by a Canadian lady.
I was a bit disturbed to hear that orthodox believers don’t believe in original sin. It was on a tour in Romania at an Orthodox Church.
I like Lewis and Tolkien’s and have an eclectic Christian church background. I followed RD for a while but in the end had reservations about Dreher.
It seems to me in my walk with God, that often silence is the answer and just plain faithfulness in prayer, Bible reading and church attendance is the way to healing. Fellowship and shared service as well. Nature, travel and life brings joy. Liturgy can be healing. But there is no one method. God in Christ meets us where we are. We have to walk through the pain.
Good stuff. Thank you.
I'm a big Dreher fan, but he sometimes doesn't 'get' evangelicals completely.
They way he weaves storytelling and narrative theological discovery together reminds me in some ways of the late great Catherine Marshall -- though I am not sure if he'd like that association.
Matthew C. Bingham's new "A Heart Aflame' (Crossway) is an engaging counterpoint to the ongoing mysticism conversation.
I've definitely seen this trend in the "re-enchantment" discourse of focusing on supernatural/paranormal/fortean phenomenon to push back against reductive materialism. It looks like Dreher is continuing this trend with several of the stories you mention above. Having been a wiccan for a time during my sojourn in the enemies camp I'm really concerned about this emphasis. The quickest way we get mass demonic deception is to have a generation so hungry for an "enchanted" world that they take any supernatural activity as a guide to truth. When all one want's is magic in the world demons start pulling rabbits out of hats. I think the real way to re-enchantment is emphasizing the sacred in the mundane. That we need to help people see God at work through his word, his sacraments, and his church. To remind them that when they commune with brothers and sisters in Christ they stand on holy ground, and that those in Christ are united to the Father through the Holy Spirit. He is in us and we stand before his throne every waking moment. That's enchanting.
If we rely on the "smells and bells" of enchantment to sustain our religion, how will we survive the 400 years of silence before the Bright and Morning Star appears? Every word. Every promise. May we wait patiently for the Consolation of Israel sustained by the unshakable promise.
There is a lot of buzz about enchantment these days. Buzz worries me.
I wonder if you have heard of Lilias Trotter. A Victorian lady who spent 40 years with in Algeria reaching out to Muslims. Write lots but was an amazing artist whom Ruskin said of, that she could have been the greatest English woman painter ever. She chose Jesus over art. Lots of publications but never lost her love of painting and drawing and saw the Lord in creation in an amazing way. Her ‘A Blossom in the Desert ‘ title taken from her love for a daisy brought to her one day is just lovely.
Rod Dreher is asking the right question—but keeps answering it with mood or mystique dressed up as direction.
Yes, something vital has dimmed. But feeling the absence of enchantment isn’t the same as knowing what will restore it. Charles Taylor reminds us: our age isn’t empty—it’s saturated. Meaning isn’t missing; it’s overloaded, competing, noisy.
Dreher writes as if beauty must point somewhere, or it’s lost. But beauty doesn’t need to explain itself to be true. Enchantment isn’t something we recover. It’s something we discover—in spite of, and sometimes because of, all the noise about “godless modernity.”
We don’t need to mystify our way out. We need habits that hold, silence that isn’t projection, and a theology that endures even when God goes quiet.
Dreher is sincere. But sincerity can mislead—especially when it confuses intensity with clarity and decibels with depth.
That kind of confusion once lived on the Left Bank. Now it rents in Budapest.
One autumn night in Hungary, a distraught young American exchange student walked up to Rod Dreher and anxiously plucked his sleeve. “I’m a conservative evangelical and have been all my life,” the young man said. “But I’m dying. I mean, I’m like a fish lying on a riverbank, gasping for air. I believe it all, but I am desperate for a sense of enchantment.” Then he said, “I’d like you to tell me about Orthodoxy.”
---
I think Dreher's right that there can be a real sterility in some forms of evangelicalism or a brain-on-a-stick flatness in something like my own Reformed tradition, but what it also misses is that those very same things can be present in a high liturgical tradition by someone who's gone through the motions a million times and is on checked out autopilot. There are people raised liturgically who find they can finally breathe in something very informal or even slapdash and vice versa. It's not really an argument either way for the truth of either system, or really even its merits for the Church since what's more culturally congruent in one society is alien to another.
---
While he's certainly not someone cold-blooded in disposition, the by repute sterile and austere New England Puritans had a deeply enchanted and philosophical figure in Jonathan Edwards. His writings on the "flying spider" to the Royal Society are definitely remarkable:
https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/jonathan-edwards-and-the-flying-spiders
"Edwards draws two theological conclusions from observing spiders. First, God not only provides for “all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects.” To Edwards, it looked like the spiders were having fun flying from place to place. Second, God manages the amounts of creatures on earth for the greater good: “The wisdom of the Creator is also admirable in so nicely and mathematically adjusting their plastic nature, that notwithstanding their destruction by this means and the multitudes that are eaten by birds, that they do not decrease and so by little and little come to nothing.”
Obviously, one example has limited value, but I think it does highlight how wonder would work in someone otherwise taking quite a different approach.
Thanks as always for your writing and reviews.
John of the Cross used the expression “dark night of the soul” explicitly to refer to a phase of spiritual development where the prayerful CANNOT “cling to what they know even amid God’s absolute silence”. That IS the dark night.