Re-enchanting The Christian Imagination & Church

The Hidden Country Essay Series: Essay Two for 2025

Introduction

This essay marks the first step in crafting my lecture for this year’s Re-enchanting the World Conference, to be held amidst the wooded hills of Logan, West Virginia, at the Chief Logan Lodge & Conference Center. For those inclined to join us in person, a reservation may be secured here.

But before we explore the way forward, we must justify the journey itself. Why speak of re-enchantment at all? Why summon the imagination to the task of renewing what seems, to many, like a hopelessly fragmented world?

The answer lies in a malaise that has long settled over the West, a condition many have named “disenchantment.” By this term, we mean not only the loss of wonder but the estrangement of the spiritual from the material, a rupture most clearly articulated in the Enlightenment's severing of nature from supernature. Immanuel Kant and his successors proposed a view of the world in which all that is sacred, all that speaks of transcendence, was banished to a far-off realm—a separate, unknowable "beyond."¹ What we inherited from this shift is what I shall call enlightenment super-nominalism, the view that the spiritual and material are no longer intertwined but exist as disjointed categories, their unity dismissed as myth or fancy.

“Enlightenment super-nominalism" refers to the philosophical shift, rooted in pre-Enlightenment nominalism, which posited a disconnection between forms or ideals and the material world. This trajectory culminated in Immanuel Kant's separation of nature and supernature—arguing that the transcendent realm is unknowable and distinct from the material. By uniting 'Enlightenment' and 'nominalism,' the term encapsulates the historical and intellectual lineage that fractured the unity of the spiritual and the material, leading to a worldview where sacred meaning is detached from the physical cosmos.

And so, the cosmos once known as a living cathedral, resounding with the echoes of eternity, has become instead a sterile and silent machine. It is not simply that we no longer see the world as enchanted; it is that we no longer believe such a world is possible. Disenchantment, as a word, seems to suggest the breaking of a spell, as if we have awakened from a dream and now see the world as it truly is— flat, inert, and lifeless.

Yet I contend this framing is itself a part of the problem.

What if we are not “disenchanted” in the sense of waking from illusion as enlightened people, but rather the victims of a darker enchantment? What if we are under a spell that masks the world’s true nature, casting a spell of dreariness over creation, blinding us to the glory that is there still? We are not disenchanted, as if freed from the magical. We are enchanted by a sorcery of sterility—a spell whose effect is to render the cosmos dull and lifeless, convincing us that this dim view is all there is.

C.S. Lewis spoke of this evil enchantment in his sermon titled The Weight of Glory. He said:

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.” ²

The result of this enchantment is catastrophic. When Lewis says that all of our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on the earth, what he’s referring to is the enlightenment super-nominalism that ruptures the natural and supernatural. The church is no longer a gateway to heaven but an institutional relic. The cosmos is no longer a theater for God’s glory filled with heavenly beings, but a void. And we, as inheritors of this grim worldview, find ourselves cut off from the deeper rhythms of reality, unable to hear the music of the spheres or to discern the radiant presence of God within all things.

And so, our task is not merely to speak of enchantment but to awaken to it—to break the false spell and recover the truth of the world as it was meant to be: brimming with the grandeur of God, drawing us upward, further up and further in, into the heavenlies.

The question now becomes how do we break this enchantment that blinds us to the radiant truth? The answer is in Lewis. As he reminds us, "Remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them," and we are in desperate need of the strongest spell imaginable to awaken us from the evil enchantment of worldliness that has bound us for so long.

Re-enchanting The Christian Imagination

The journey must begin, as we have already noted, with the imagination. In our earlier session, we explored the vital role of the Christian imagination and how mediums such as fiction, poetry, and art serve to, in the words of Samuel Coleridge, "remove the film of familiarity" from our eyes, allowing us to see the world anew. ³

The imagination is vital, for it is the organ through which we perceive and envision the unseen. Calvin spoke of the sensus divinitatis—a sense of divinity through which we perceive the divine and transcendent. This sense, much like the imagination, serves as a faculty for grasping the unseen, enabling us to discern traces of God’s glory woven into the world and to reach beyond the material toward the eternal. This is precisely why there is a battle for the imagination in our age. Consider why companies like Disney reimagine the fairy tales of old, weaving subtle twists and spins into their retellings. If you can capture the imagination of a generation, you can shape how they see the world—what they deem good, true, and beautiful—and, in turn, influence the very framework of their beliefs and values.

And this brings us back to Lewis—and further still to Tolkien. To "remembering our fairy tales." Fairy tales are not the frivolous, childish things we’ve been led to believe. As Tolkien wrote in his essay On Fairy-Stories, they are far more than mere escapism; they are a means of escape into reality. Fairy tales remind us of truths too grand to grasp in plain prose. ⁴ They point us to the eternal, restoring the wonder and longing that modernity seeks to suppress.

This is beautifully illustrated in the fairy tales woven by Tolkien and Lewis. In Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, we are reminded that there is a world beyond the wardrobe—a realm unseen but no less real. ⁵ It is a world brimming with seas and castles, kings and queens, witches and lions. These stories awaken us to the truth that there is more beyond the veil of the ordinary—a reality teeming with meaning and wonder.

The Bible itself reveals this unseen realm: a world not only inhabited by spiritual beings but also by the saints—the sons of Adam in Christ, ruling and reigning with Him. It is a world where horses and chariots carry God’s armies, where mansions await, where heavenly armories are prepared, and where thrones testify to divine authority. A truly good fairy story serves as a reminder of these realities, teaching us that everything here participates in its eternal, perfected ideal there. These tales point us toward the deeper truth that this world is not all there is—it is but a shadow of the greater, eternal glory yet to be revealed.

In Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, we are reminded of a Creator who brought the world into existence through song, weaving the fabric of reality with divine music. In this tale, He creates spiritual beings, the Valar and Maiar, who serve as stewards of creation, each with dominion over certain aspects of the world. ⁶ It is a vision that reflects the harmony and purpose imbued in the cosmos by its Maker.

This echoes the Great Story—the Bible—where God speaks the world into existence, and His Word brings forth light, order, and life. As the foundations of the earth were laid, the sons of God, the heavenly host, sang for joy (Job 38:7). Both Tolkien’s myth and Scripture remind us that creation is not a sterile mechanism but a living, harmonious symphony, filled with spiritual beings who magnify the Creator’s glory.

Ultimately, all these stories are reflections of the Great Story—the true and eternal narrative. They remind us that the world is a place of wonder, alive with enchantment and charged with a sublime beauty that stirs the soul. As G.K. Chesterton observed, if the world is infused with magic, there must surely be a Magician; if it is adorned with beauty, there must be an Artist who crafted it. For magic and beauty do not arise from nothing—they flow from the hand of the Creator, whose glory shines through all that He has made. ⁷