A Book Review of Living in Wonder
A Brief Review of Rod Dreher’s
Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. 2024, Zondervan
by Weslie Odom
Pastor, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Morristown, MN
One of the great benefits of the Christian faith is that the child of God has opened eyes to see reality for what it is. This means not only that he knows himself as a sinner redeemed by Christ’s atoning sacrifice and God as merciful and unendingly gracious, but also that he recognizes all of creation as God’s own work, which includes the existence of an unseen realm that has been from the beginning. Though it is a basic principle of Christianity found, for example, in the Nicene Creed’s tenet that God, the Father Almighty, is the maker of all things “visible and invisible,” this unseen realm isn’t a topic discussed as frequently or clearly as other aspects of the faith are. Ironically, as many pastors, this one included, would attest, questions about this invisible realm are often at the forefront of the minds of the faithful and frequently come up in conversation: “What does the Bible say about aliens?” “What about angels and demons?” “What about ghosts?” Beyond the spur of the moment questions in Bible class, there are podcasts hosted by Christians dedicated to questions of the abnormal and unseen throughout history such as the excellent, “The Haunted Cosmos” (https://www.thehauntedcosmos.com/ ) and episodes covering similar topics from podcasts likely more familiar to Gottesdienst readers such as “Word Fitly Spoken” and “A Brief History of Power.” Questions about the unseen realm have also received quite a bit of attention in the academic world in recent decades centered around the ideas of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment, most notably with Charles Taylor’s excellent, A Secular Age (http://bit.ly/4hzsOec) and Marshall Sahlins’ The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity (https://dub.sh/IQxXJKo).
Rod Dreher’s latest book, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024), is an entry into this broader discussion that fits somewhere between podcasts and academic works in terms of accessibility. One of the goals of the book seems to be popularizing the terminology of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment[1] understood as, “learning to open our eyes to the reality of the world of spirit and how it interacts with matter.” (3) Dreher contends that this mode of thinking was standard among Christians of earlier ages, but for the majority of “Westerners” this has changed because, to use a term coined by Harvard anthropologist Joe Henrich, they’re now W.E.I.R.D.: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. As a consequence, many Christians profess the truth of signs, wonders, and miracles, but don’t live their lives as if they believe such things actually occur. Christianity, then, from Dreher’s perspective, has become merely a source of morality and ethics.
Though there might be quibbles with terminology here and there, it’s hard to disagree, generally, with many of Dreher’s assertions in the opening chapters as he diagnoses what he sees as the ailment of many modern Christians: they don’t see the world for what it really is. It is full of, “mystery and wonder, order, purpose, meaning…a means of connecting to the infinite, the existence of sacred spaces, miracles…” (15). The book is filled with interesting stories covering a wide variety of topics such as demonic encounters, angelic encounters, demon possession, UFOs, aliens (demons again), magic, LSD, and encounters with what Dreher would say is some aspect of the Divine. Along with these are fascinating recollections of interactions with the unseen realm by some surprising individuals such as Marshall McLuhan. Interspersed are Dreher’s thoughts on how these stories and recollections prove that the world is much more than what is able to be seen and touched and that God Himself desires to interact with mankind in and through this unseen realm. In the later sections of the book, Dreher proposes several means by which one can become “re-enchanted” with the world, which include regular and specific prayers and being intently focused how and where God is acting in the world.
No one can read everything and not everything is worth reading anyways. Dreher is influential enough in broad swaths of the Christian world, that it is worth having a rough idea of what he’s putting out. From time-to-time, Dreher’s Substack (https://roddreher.substack.com/) can be insightful. His previous book, Live Not By Lies, was moving and even inspiring in many parts, but the average person will most likely know Dreher from his bestselling book, The Benedict Option. So, is this latest book worth the time and money?
Though many of the topics addressed in the book are of particular interest to me, especially the later sections on beauty and aesthetics, the book is difficult to read for several reasons. First, and most glaringly, the book needs another run through with an editor. Several long sections are stories stacked on top of one another with merely, “Here’s another example” as the only transition. Similarly, the chapters fit together more like a series of related articles bound in print than a book with a cohesive structure. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s jarring in several cases. Secondly, Dreher roughly generalizes “the Reformation” for being at fault for much has gone wrong in “disenchanting” Christianity. It does not require a degree in the history of the church to provide some nuance regarding what “the Reformation” was at various times and in various places, yet this is absent. Further, Protestants in general and, in more than one case, Lutherans in particular are purported to have less-than-ideal spiritual disciplines for the work of “re-enchantment.” This is especially laughable when one of the deficiencies is supposed to be Lutheran sacramental piety. At best, Dreher expresses a lack of clarity or at worst a surprising ignorance, of the differences in fidelity to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions amongst the various Lutheran bodies in the United States. The latter would be surprising indeed considering Dreher’s fairly extensive interview history on Issues, Etc. (a search for “Dreher” returns over 40 hits, most of which are one-on-one interviews).
These shortcomings alone make this a frustrating and distracting reading, but it’s Dreher’s acceptance of nearly every mysterious experience that elicits a “peaceful, easy feeling,” as from God gives serious pause for concern. Skepticism that at least some of these experiences could be from demonic forces is anticipated and brushed aside by Dreher. The general sense is that there’s a glorious and profound reality knowable only through interaction with some nebulous “other.” The elephant in the room which is never addressed is, where does this leave the revelation of the Word of God? The Bible is hardly mentioned in this book except to remind the reader that it contains miracles and demons, that the 23rd Psalm is beautiful, and for Dreher to “confess” what he calls his “quasi-apocalyptic vision” that relates to Revelation 5:5 [a story wisely left for the end of the book]. Overall, the book is cloudy where it should be clear and convinced where it should be wary, which is a detriment to what I agree with Dreher is an incredibly important topic. Living In Wonder is interesting in many regards, but the lack of theological precision in what is explicitly a spiritual book leaves this one squarely in the “Do Not Recommend” pile.
[1] Dreher quotes heftily from Charles Taylor’s, A Secular Age in the first chapter. Taylor, by his own admission, is working from the opposite end of Max Weber’s writings on disenchantment.