The Death of Mysticism

As the countdown continues (now down to fourteen hours and some change), I find myself less and less inclined to do work, and more and more inclined to write. Plus, since my wrist is back in working order, it doesn't hurt me to type... and so I have no excuse. I've been meaning to write a post about religion for some time now, and the topic of G-Money's musings have created a convenient window. (Side note: what would I do without the musings of G-Money? How many of these posts owe their genesis to his ideas? Screw the hat-tip; I tip my whole head.)

One of G-Money's associates -- a seminarian, I believe -- asked him to comment on why people don't attend church as often as, I don't know, they should or used to or some other subjective measure of attendance. The Chairman makes a number of interesting points which you can catch up on by following the link above, and I'd like to add to that by articulating an opinion that I've been nursing for several years.

Christianity in America is dying because it demands too little of its followers.

Christianity by its very nature is a passive religion, and the Protestant denominations (or, really, sects, but let's not get into that right now) are particularly passive. Here's why: you make one act of contrition -- whether, as a Catholic, you confess or, as a Protestant, you simply desire forgiveness -- and forgiveness is yours. Perhaps you are baptized; if so, that's another choice. But after you, as a Christian, have made these two choices, you are completely free of responsibility and can go about your business. As a believer, all that is required of you is to be a decent person (see G-Money's remarks about Western society being based on people being good), and, perhaps, that you come to church. Christianity -- particularly at this moment -- asks absolutely nothing of its followers that they shouldn't be doing anyway.

This makes Christianity attractive to some, and the promise of "salvation" is no doubt an alluring one, but since the process of becoming a Christian is so easy -- almost as easy as saying a magic word -- it is impossible to derive a deeper, more spiritual satisfaction with the faith. This is convenient for hundreds of thousands of suburban Americans who just want a social club that doesn't necessarily involve golf, but numbers don't lie: Christianity, which demands nothing, is losing vast numbers of faithful every year while Islam, which demands everything, has been steadily growing in the US since the Seventies.

The difference is mysticism. The same impulse in Christianity that gave rise to the much needed changes of the Reformation has now succeeded in completely stripping American Christianity of any sense of mystery, of wonder, and of the sacred. People crave mystery in their lives; they want their religion to have secrets that are not accessible to all. Could the success of so poorly-written a book as The Da Vinci Code be attributed to anything else? Americans want their Christianity to be obscure, to make them believe that not all is know-able. Kevin Smith's Buddy Jesus (although clearly satirical and deeply hilarious) typifies what has happened to Christianity in America; when Jesus is your friend, his Church loses the ability to act authoritatively.

I'm not saying that Vatican II needs to be revoked and Mel Gibson needs to be made Pope. I'm not saying that Protestantism needs to be less fuzzy and more stern. The Evangelicals to whom G-Money refers are plenty stern, and if it's a Latin mass you crave, look no further than St. Agnes in Minneapolis.

Think about this, though: if you are Jewish and you want to achieve a deeper understanding of your faith, you can study the caballah; through a sort of mystic numerology, the Torah will then reveal to you various secrets and truths. If you are Muslim and you want to achieve a deeper understanding of your faith, you can study Sufism; through movement and intense ritual purification, you will gain the knowledge of secret and extremely esoteric wisdom. If you are an American Christian and you want to achieve a deeper understanding of your faith, you can... do what? Go on a retreat? Become Catholic and make a pilgrimage (to someplace outside of the US)? Take your watch off and go back to being a teenager so you can "go through" something like TEC? All of those things try for mysticism and miss entirely.

As long as Christianity in the US continues to "reach out" and be more accessible, it will continue to shrink. People need something that goes beyond the slavish underpinnings of the faith that can speak to them in an eternal, ethereal, and mysterious way, because the teachings of the Bible are out of touch with a modern society. Mysticism allows the common man to behold the infinite, while current American Christianity allows the common man to behold the church.