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In my circles on twitter, the Mystical Christianity conversation is cropping up again. It tends to come around every few months, at least for the past year I've been on the site.
Tyler Alterman writes a long post on it that is mostly summed up here:
Now to broaden this outside of just Christianity, I'm curious what the Motte thinks of symbolism as a whole? I will admit my own path back to religion came via a symbolic pathway, although I believe it goes far deeper than this.
That being said, from my short time here it seems like most of the Christians on this site aren't that into symbolism, and tend to be more "rationalist" and materialist in their worldview. Again, might have a mistaken impression.
I know this is a rationalist offshoot forum so not sure I expect a ton of mystical/symbolic discussion, but I'm kind of surprised by how little there is given how many professed religious folks there are here. And I do think from a Culture War angle, that materialism is definitely losing steam (especially amongst the right) as we see more and more cracks form in the edifice of Expert Scientific Opinion(tm).
On a deeper note, the symbolic worldview is all about seeing the world through the language of God (or meaning if you prefer), in a way that helps people bind together and understand events in the same way. Right now we are in "darkness" symbolically because, well, nobody can interpret events the same way! I personally think a return to the symbolic is inevitable given how confused everything is at the moment, although the transition may not be smooth or easy.
I truly truly do not understand why these people don't just go be Catholic.
It's ancient, and mysterious (it's 2000 years old)
It has nearly unlimited "aura"; home to the most beautiful buildings and art on earth
There is unlimited amounts of "mysticism" if that's what you're looking for. Most churches hold something called "adoration" where they open the tabernacle and allow people to sit and pray in what they (we) consider the true presence of the body of Christ.
Continuing on the mysticism, there are things like The Rosary, and holy water.
If you want to try and get "Buddhism but Christian", you're in luck. We have prayer beads (the rosary), mantras (prayers), monks, ancient philosophy and meditation.
I don't even know how to properly address the "science" question that people seem to want to throw at religious people as a Catholic. There is nothing in Catholicism which is incompatible with wanting to pursue science and we Catholics would consider scientific inquiry a good thing. The big bang, evolution, whatever els, etc. these things are all not just "allowed" within the doctrine, but encouraged.
I think there's a weird thing happening where the new atheists did a good job of attacking the absurd claims of evangelical protestantism, but somehow lumped the Catholics in with them. I think people are waking up to this, but the contrarianism that led them to atheism to begin with doesn't let them just return to the obvious answer (the Catholic church). I think that's basically also why you see some of these people gravitating towards the Eastern Orthodox church. They can't just go be OG Christians, you see, they have to find this other offshoot thing so that they can maintain some sense that they were always right, and that the "real" church was hidden or something.
Just go be Catholic. It's annoying how obvious the answer to all of this is. There's nothing clever or surprising, it really just was the most obvious thing all along.
Well, mostly because "aw nah you're telling me all my fun stuff I can't do that anymore? I have to go to confession? I have to believe - or at least say I believe - that stuff for real?" Even if the majority of average Catholics don't know, don't believe, and don't live the religion, and even if you get a liberal priest who will tell you during RCIA "look, just cross your fingers and say 'yeah I believe this' but I don't expect you to really do so", you still have to sign up to "yes, Transubstantiation" and the rest of it. There are still The Rules. The pope is still the boss of you. You can't go wandering through the aisles putting a bit of this, a pinch of that, oh and let's have this thing here from the ranks of world religions to suit your tastes.
I've seen some examples of pick'n'mix taking the shiny mystical 'ooh look icons' part from other traditions within a particular Protestant denomination and it annoyed the heck out of me, because it was taking Serious Theology and playing dress-up with it. I'm not going to name any names because I'm not a member of that denomination but I'm not even Orthodox and I think you cannot just go "oh this is so mystic and foreign and quaint and not like traditional Western Christianity in its forms" and play dress-up with it.
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