The Enchanted/Disenchanted Divide in Our Churches
In light of Monday's post about enchantment and disenchantment I wanted to return to a topic I've written about before and have described to many audiences in sharing about Hunting Magic Eels. Specifically, the enchanted versus disenchanted divide is one of the biggest, yet least talked about, divisions in our churches.
In most of the faith communities I've spent time with over the years, there are two churches in the same building, two congregations sitting in the same pews. One church is the enchanted church, the church that believes in miracles, petitionary prayer, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and spiritual warfare.
The other church is the disenchanted church, that church that doubts miracles, God answering prayer, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the reality of Satan and demons.
Wherever you go to church, odds are you are worshiping with two congregations, the enchanted and the disenchanted. And in my experience, these groups hardly talk to each other because they find the other group strange and weird.
Here are two examples of this divide I've encountered in my church.
Like a lot of churches, our church had to make some budgetary adjustments after COVID. During these conversations the enchanted/disenchanted divide emerged among our leaders. On the one side where the leaders who approached our fiscal issues in a wholly disenchanted way. The Excel spreadsheet was front and center and the tools we used to address the issue were the tools of corporate finance and accounting. But on the other side were the more enchanted leaders. Fiscal issues were to be addressed with spiritual and miraculous means. The issue wasn't money, the issue was faith. We handle financial shortfalls by getting on our knees in prayer, asking the Lord to act.
Of course, we can do both. And we did both. But imaginations tend to gravitate toward one solution or the other. What is going to save us? Prudent budgetary cuts or the Lord God Almighty?
A second example concerns praying over those about to undergo a medical procedure. Many prayers are miracle-adjacent. We pray for the doctors, the surgeons, and all the medical personnel and procedures. We ask God to be involved in all of that human and technological activity. Others, though, just cut right to the chase. The prayer skips the medicine and petitions God directly for full healing, right then and right there. The petition is literally for a miracle.
Again, we can pray for both. And we do pray for both. But imaginations tend to gravitate toward one solution or the other. What is going to save us? Medicine or a miracle?
The examples abound, and I expect you have your own stories to share. Like I said, the enchanted versus disenchanted divide is one of the biggest, yet least talked about, divisions in our churches.
Enchantment will color life in a way that makes life sometime more exciting, more magical, and yet for many of us, the "let's get real" has saved us from poverty or making poor decisions. We have to be practical and guide the ship to safe waters. Some of us have had tragedies and found that prayer was unanswered, being abandoned to figure things out. Maybe abandoned is the wrong word.. its just the way this world was created and we are seeing things for what they are. I often find, in my life, that many of the more magical thinking folks that I know have had others in their life that take care of the practical matters.. so they are then able to create the magical world without going down. Of course, one can do both... and many do. My fundamentalist mother is one of those. They pray and believe God guides them every minute of the day while being careful to pay the bills and be responsible. For me, its not easy to embrace magical thinking when my experience shows me otherwise... but thank you for pointing out this divide. It helps explain and can help me be more tolerant.
This resonates with me. Led me to ironically face God in petitionary prayer (thus I must still having a glimmer of enchantment within my being) but I found myself telling him I USED to have faith, I USED to feel enchantment. I USED to think he cared. I USED to think he was the Deliverer. But, years of answered prayers, broken dreams and life getting even more horrible, crueler, bewildering over the last few months has led to a faded hope that I will see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living.
This is my truth.
This article has helped clarify things for me. Maybe facing this reality is the first step to Jesus actively stepping in to lift me up and carry me back safely to the other side of the fence. But, I question whether God actually intervenes now. I question whether he actually can. I don’t question his existence, but I do question his direct involvement in our lives. I think perhaps he just leaves us to it…