Yearning for a Given Christian World Instead of Living in Creation
I get the sense that the romantic aspect of Romantic Christianity causes much confusion and consternation among co-religionists. For most, the adjective cancels out the noun it modifies.
Other modifiers – Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox, Traditional, Liberal – are broadly accepted and comprehended as describing words meant to provide further details about Christianity, but the addition of Romantic before Christianity strikes most Christians as incongruous and inconsistent.
Mention romanticism and most people envision something fanciful and unreal, an approach and attitude prone to fantasizing or idealizing. This applies to the romantic approach to Christianity, which involves the active choice to develop consciousness, creatively participate in Creation, and fulfill God's divine plan. It's enough to make most Christians cry heresy or run for the exits.
The reaction is somewhat understandable considering Romanticism's failure to overcome alienation by vivifying Christianity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Romantic impulse attempted but ultimately fell short and succumbed to materialism. Romanticism has never entirely disappeared, but its faint residue has often been misinterpreted or misapplied.
For conventional Christians, fusing Romanticism with Christianity is the epitome of misinterpretation and misapplication. They insist that the last thing Christianity need is romanticism. After all, it already has its 2000-year tradition, its authority, its scripture, its doctrines, its dogmata, and its churches.
If Christianity needs anything at all, it is faithful and obedient followers of the 2000-year tradition and everything contained within it.
The 2000-year tradition and all it encompasses is undeniably real and true, but are contemporary Christians true to the 2000-year tradition, or are they estranged and alienated from it?
Does their participation in the 2000-year tradition emanate robustly and meaningfully from the internal, or is it mostly a matter of conforming passively to the external?
Put another way, do Christians participate in a Christianity of givenness or a Christianity of creativity?
If Christianity is to have any future, it must become creative once again. If it remains in its current state of givenness, the larger given world will eclipse it.
The only way Christianity can become creative again is to romanticize itself and the world.
Ask Christians what they dream of and most will tell you that they dream of living in a given Christian world. Most are blind to the created world they live in; even blinder to the created world that lives in them.
The first step in this time and place is to look within. The divine calling to overcome the given world and continue God's Creation is there, waiting to be discovered.
bruce g charlton
A good 'defense' of the 'romantic' term.
I personally got it (proximately) from the book Romantic Religion by RJ Reilly, which is about the Inklings Tolkien, Lewis, Williams and Barfield - and represented what I most wanted from Christianity, and what I think Christianity most needed.
Because, if we take a step back and acknowledge that - for use here-and-now - the term Romantic 'has problems' - then so also does the term 'Christianity'. Either alone is inadequate for our needs, and will be a distorting and potentially malign influence
(Yes! Christianity too - as we see from the state of the mainstream Churches. Christianity without Romanticism has failed.)
It is only when Romanticism and Christianity are put together that we get what we need.
@ Bruce - "It is only when Romanticism and Christianity are put together that we get what we need."
Yes, I share that conviction. Romanticism on its own is a non-starter in today's world; Christianity on its own has been faltering for at least two centuries.
Rui Artur
There are interesting etymological and cultural dimensions to this term, which make it paradoxical. It seems to me that the Romanticism you and Bruce speak of, and which I largely agree with, is more Celtic than Roman. And yet 'Romantic' comes from Romance, which comes from Roman. It seems Celtic not only in its modern manifestation (the Inklings, etc), but also in its spirit and in its history - what we know of Celtic Christianity was much more 'creation-centered', freer... one would say 'Romantic' in the modern sense.
@ Rui Artur - When I speak of Romanticism, I am primarily focusing on a movement in consciousness that occurred toward the end of the eighteenth-century. This movement in consciousness had many of the "ingredients" needed to overcome the alienation and gradual weakening of faith that had been building through the centuries. As you no doubt know, Romanticism quickly veered off into materialism and hedonism.
Romanticizing Christianity involves internalizing it to the point that one knows Christianity to be true and takes personal responsibility for it, regardless of external factors.This is what makes it "creation-centered and freer". It provides a living, striving motivation that energizes and encourages a direction away from alienation and despair. If that fits your interpretation of Celtic Christianity, then fine; as long we understand that we are not speaking about another form of "organized, external" Christianity, historical or otherwise.
JMSmith
In addition to creativity we could use some help from the Holy Spirit. Romanticism advocated opening the soul to non-rational influences, but as time advanced, more and more of what came through that opening was demonic and perverse. In the case of "creative" Christianity, a great deal of what it "creates" is childish kitsch. I agree that we cannot simply hunker down and fondle old wineskins, but creativity that is not aided by the Holy Spirit will end up expressing the Id, or worse.
@ JM - I agree. Romanticism on its own is likely to cause more harm than good. However, the same could be said for many contemporary forms of Christianity. As Bruce notes above, both are required, with the right motivations, of course.
As I see it, the Holy Spirit plays a necessary and, I believe, manifest role in the Romantic Christian approach, which advocates opening the soul to the Holy Spirit. Berdyaev went as far as to refer to his final epoch of Christian consciousness as the Religion of the Holy Spirit. He even claimed the Religion of the Spirit would be quite different from the Christianity we know, but saw this as fulfillment rather than replacement.
The creativity I'm getting at involves art but is not limited to it. Creativity is an internal process at first - the active choice to meet the Holy Spirit within; a choice that leads to an inner transformation. External creativity, comes later, when the Holy Spirit agrees to co-operate and co-create with the individual; when the Holy Spirit within the individual enlivens the heart, and the heart in turn enlivens the world. And if the creativity fails to manifest expressly in mortal life, it will certainly be accessible in life everlasting.
There is great danger in freedom and creativity, no doubt about it,. Both require courage and daring. They also require the right motivation, honesty, and repentance. But there is no "safe" path in Christianity anymore. In this sense, I believe RC to be a risk well-worth taking.