Engaging Culture
Jason Cherry
Jul 7, 2025
Introduction
In the early twentieth century, Max Weber described the Western world as undergoing a process of “disenchantment.” How was the world to be explained? By scientism, rationalization, and impersonal causes rather than by spirits, gods, or divine purposes. The disenchanted world is explained by mastery rather than mystery; the mechanical rather than the personal; sociology rather than religion. God is not needed to explain how things happen in the world. Physical and human factors explain everything. In a disenchanted world, rain falls because of air pressure and condensation, not because God sends it in response to prayer. A pandemic is explained by virology and public health, not divine judgment. Human responsibility is shaped by material causes, not divine morality.¹
In recent years, Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age, argues that the world of the twenty-first century is not that of pure disenchantment. It is a “cross-pressured” world. There are competing visions in which belief in God has strong competition, making faith difficult. Just because people aren’t constrained by traditional religion doesn’t mean they embrace secularism. Many people seek meaning in a flood of new spiritual options such as astrology, wicca, crystals, eastern spirituality, psychedelic mysticism, personalized spirituality, and occultism. These are forms of “re-enchantment.” There is openness to the supernatural, a desire for a sense of mystery, and the search for transcendence.²
In an age weary of cold secularism, many are returning to enchantment. What should Christians think about this? Is this the budding of a revival? Is embracing enchantment the first step toward Christian conversion? As it stands now, the resurgent forms of enchantment are hollow imitations of the real. It is a reaction to the emptiness of the secular worldview. People long for meaning, mystery, and spiritual depth. Such longings for transcendence are part of the human condition (Eccl. 3:11) that should take people to Christ. But instead of groping their way toward God (Acts 17:22-34), people are crafting pseudo-spiritualities that, at best, mimic the Real. True enchantment is not found in mysticism without Christ, but in the cosmic drama of creation, fall, redemption, and glory, centered in the Incarnate Word who holds all things together.
Two Worlds
There is the immanent workaday world of nature and needs, science and satiety. Then there is the place beyond the workaday world where glory exists for no other reason than it is good. Both worlds belong to man as gifts if he will but receive them. People may receive the gift of the immanent world while lacking the faith to receive the whole of reality. Transcendence has not yet been awakened. Maybe they’ve listened to Vivaldi. But they haven’t heard him. Maybe they read Herbert. But they haven’t understood him. Maybe they stood in the Sistine Chapel. But they didn’t apprehend it.
Seeing is different from receiving. Since man is physical and spiritual, he has the ability to establish relations with worlds beyond his environment. For man to have a soul is not just that an immaterial reality is housed within a material body. It is for man to receive the totality of being. So, the condition of man is this: The human soul can connect not just to his environment but to The World, the world behind the world, namely, God’s world.
Transcendence is not a physical place. People aren’t forced to go there. The only way to go there is to want to go there. This is always true of an immaterial place that is intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Yet it’s a place that people can inhabit. What will you find? The beauty of Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Those catechized in the immanent frame lack beauty. They are more comfortable with fast food and TEMU. The brilliance of Rembrandt doesn’t hold an appeal like that of pop culture. The innate quality of human nature that resonates with beautiful things has been dulled. If that quality is light, then it has been darkened by the modern art museum and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” When someone gives themselves over to the ugly—pornography, social media, and abortion—they grow weak of hearing and slow of seeing.
Life is swallowed up (Ps. 124:3) by the busy and distracting excitement of the immanent world. Beauty becomes dull, goodness is confusing, and truth is a lie. Transcendent truth is beyond the human story. It constrains the actors, judges them, and supplies meaning. Proper interpretation of human experience is only possible for those who take up residency in the transcendent world. Truth that hails from the transcendent realm is different than the “truths” of modernity.
When someone occupies the immanent frame, that informs the way they think, feel, want, interpret, intuit, and fear. In the world of bureaucrats, Styrofoam, and cheap electronics; in the world of TikTok, click click, and quick fix, purpose is fleeting and freedom has no point beyond euthanasia and marijuana. And so people turn to enchantment to find meaning.
The Turn to Enchantment
The recent turn to enchantment reflects the hunger of the spiritual appetite. Profound curiosity in supernatural things, however, has taken people to a pantheon of spirituality that explores the possibility of mermaids, gnomes, reincarnation, fairies, and ghouls. Others prefer their spirituality to be more self-involved. This ‘spirituality of the mirror’ traces back to the nineteenth century when Hegel taught about the formation of the self via encountering “the other.” Later thinkers, such as Alexandre Kojève (a Russian émigré), simplified Hegel’s thought toward a self-created, self-asserting individual. The spiritually starved atheists of the mid-twentieth century found re-enchantment by exploring the self and freedom, essentially making human beings the center of everything.³
NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers provides a more recent example. Rodgers claims to have undergone a spiritual transformation using psychedelics, especially ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant brew. He frames these experiences in terms of inner awakening, self-love, and freedom. It offers a mystical experience and awe without moral repentance or worship of God. Rodgers's journey, similar to that of Rainn Wilson,⁴ is emblematic of a larger trend of people wanting real spiritual experiences without the demands or authority of the Living God.⁵
Some forms of re-enchantment are not just misguided; they can be demonic, even if seekers don’t intend it to be that way. Reaching the limits of human capacity, rather than believing in demons, is the precondition for entry into a potentially demon-dominated re-enchantment. It is when people sense their dependency, their lack of control, and their need that they seek aid from the spirits of the universe. When someone’s patience with soul-numbing materialism runs thin, they become open not only to spirits pervading everything but also to intimate interaction between the spiritual and the human. To bleary moderns, this enchanted world is a welcome reprieve from the meaningless modern milieu, blinding them from the terrifying malevolence of enchantment without Christ.⁶
Enchantment without Christ is shadow enchantment. It is irritation rather than inspiration. It can describe the desolation and degeneration of the hollow man who fills his days with hollow things. This hollow man is an expert in amusement. He can put entertainment into his eyeballs at 1.5 speed. He can hop online and travel the world of ideas, from faked moon landings to injustice 9000 miles away. Whether at home or the coffee shop, whether in the car or the classroom, he has a magnificent concentration on the smallest of matters for the smallest amount of time. He’s not capable of conducting long arguments, even though he sees and hears everything, all the time, right now. The hollow man absorbs a million bits of information not with a bang but with a whimper.
C.S. Lewis argued that disenchanted people can’t become truly Christian again unless they first become pagan. Lewis says, “Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian,” meaning, the Christian and pagan both have a sense of wonder, myth, and moral seriousness. They each speak a different language than the disenchanted person who is skeptical about the supernatural, the sacred, or the moral order. Using Lewis’ categories, the trendy movement toward re-enchantment has risen above post-Christian secularism but is still below biblical Christianity, which means it’s outdated to claim paganism is outdated. But it’s still permissible to claim Christ’s resurrection is cock-and-bull, which means re-enchantment clips the wings needed to fly to the highest truth.⁷
Conclusion
Not everything that throws a wrench into the gears of scientific naturalism is true. Getting tired of societal stupidity is not a reformation. The enchanted man, in contrast to the hollow man, can sense something is amiss. But because he has not received the resurrection of Christ, he has not found the rich repose of inspiration. Only irritation. The secret we all seek is not in aliens nor demons; neither in mere wonder nor self-distraction, nor in any and all openness to supernaturalism. All this enchantment will end in dolor unless the body and soul is turned to Christ. Not only will Christ help you remember you are alive; not only will Christ feed the need for something more than materialism; not only will Christ create room for the unfathomable; He will also make you whole.
So, while the move to enchantment is an interesting addition to our secular wasteland, it is not a revival. The new conversational tone is an improvement, but it misses the Deepest Reality. It never touches the Deepest Philosophy. At its best, it produces in people the general need to cover themselves with fig leaves. They know that the objects of heaven and earth combine into a story. But shadow enchantment misses the Key Character of the story and our relation to Him.
We live lives of pious pride, vulgar vengeance, and uncharitable contempt, which means there is moral significance when the Mighty is merciful. But the Almighty’s mercy is not merely sparing people their due punishment. The Father’s mercy is a warm sun on a chilly day. The Spirit’s gifts are a cup of water in a desert place. The Son’s goodness is the Shepherd’s Hand on the fretful lamb. That’s why enchantment without Christ misses the mark. Our immediate surroundings must be disturbed; they must be broken in upon. The dome must be pierced. Our limited experiences must be regenerated into the world of the higher plane. The only way to live beyond the emotional and physical sensations is to ride the coattails of the Ascended Christ to glory. This doesn’t eliminate hunger or thirst. It creates a new hunger; a new thirst, that is not that of the body but the soul, and is not satisfied by bread or water, but is satisfied by the Living Bread and the Living Water. What is this satisfaction? To celebrate the goodness and wonders of God and sing Gloria: Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam, Glory: We Give You Thanks for Your Great Glory.
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of the books The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.
Other Articles
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/collection/evangelising-the-godfearers
https://trinityreformedkirk.com/collection/this-world-and-the-next
Footnotes
¹ Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946).
² Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
³ Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Allan Bloom, trans. James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969).
⁴ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soul-boom/id1736322125
⁵ https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/aaron-rodgers-ayahuasca-documentary?utm_source=chatgpt.com
⁶ https://firstthings.com/thinking-twice-about-re-enchantment/
⁷ C. S. Lewis, De Descriptione Temporum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).