CANON GRAEME WINTERTON
THE ENCHANTED WORLD VIEW HOLY TRINITY KEW ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY - 24TH. AUGUST 2014
The current edition of the Melbourne Anglican carries extensive reporting of the 2014 Adelaide General Synod . Of particular concern were the findings of the Church’s Viability & Structures Task Force. It reports that the Anglican Church is at a crossroad for nearly all of the 23 dioceses are experiencing significant challenges about their future. The Western Church has a problem! Most people wonder why we Christians bother. ‘After all,’ they say, ‘ everything you believe and practise comes from another time and is of no relevance in today’s secular pluralist world.’ If our parishes are serious about being authentic places of vibrant spiritual life and effective witness which make a difference in the lives of the people of their communities then it is of critical importance for us to understand why people wonder why we bother, why people consider church life is unimportant and why faith and its practise is considered by most as being irrelevant. THE CONTEXT OF BELIEF We need to commence by asking this question: ‘Why was it that in our Western society, it was virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, the 1500’s when our prayer book was introduced, while in 2014 many find it not only easy, but even unthinkable to do any thing else but not to believe?’ Many Christians wonder why the world is so very different now and why people find it easier not to believe. Charles Taylor in his book “A Secular Age” explains why this is so. He argues that over the span of five hundred years we have passed from a view of the world that was "enchanted" to one that is "disenchanted". NATURAL SPHERE What Charles Taylor means is that the enchanted world of our predecessors combined the natural world with God’s divine purpose and action or they combined the natural world with intervention of dark spiritual forces. They mixed and fused it to the extent that natural and personal disasters as well as prosperity and progress were viewed as acts of God or acts of the devil. For example: an earthquake, a tsunami, the plague and the like were seen as God’s judgement for sin and wickedness. On the other hand such events could be understood as an act of the devil seeking to destroy God’s purposes and taking it out on good people who were in the way of satanic purpose. The world view of that time most often interpreted progress in areas that we would call scientific research and development, (say in the fields of agriculture and medicine ) as the work of witchcraft or demons or were attributed to the hand of God. The distinctions between sin and sickness and health and holiness were often blurred. In other words, that which makes one person holy was often the same force that made one physically or mentally ill. People who were involved in actions which were well outside explanation and understanding were most often persecuted or canonised as saints in the times of enchantment. (Many of the Saints fall within this category.) SOCIAL SPHERE But that is not all. In the enchanted world the fusion also extended to the social sphere where the authority structure of government, law, and ethical moral standards were understood to have been established by God and were therefore divinely sanctioned. (It was foolish and dangerous to question or act against authority.) Page 1