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The word to use here is perhaps affective piety, and I agree. I think affective piety is essential and we kind of just forgot how to do it. I would distinguish this from mysticism, because mysticism usually means a novel and mysterious activity, but affective piety goes all the way back to the earliest Christian stuff we have. Indeed affective piety actually precedes all other kinds of devotion! When Ignatius in 140ad writes
He is engaging in affective piety. This is an almost romantic love being expressed for His Lord, the fallen Bridegroom. The only ones really doing this today are evangelicals but IMO not very tastefully as their feelings don’t sound authentic or deep (worst music in the world). Affective piety is closely related to the imaginal, as when Paul says
He is imagining Christ as a victorious general entering a city, with himself as a captive enemy (these were lead behind the triumphant general in bondage). He imagines his knowledge as an incense of sorts. Incredibly visceral image.
I would see it as a dialectic between the necessary and the fun, the ought and the awesome. Affective, imaginal, dramatic piety is fun. A Heavenly Father is fun. Praying importunately in everyday language is fun. Powerful angels are fun. Evading a prowling Satan is fun, which is why people play the game Alien. Rigid worship and boring readings are not fun. Christ came to make righteousness as engaging as possible, filled with rewards and intrigue and friends and etc. Some people say that, if God commands something, you have to do it, and fun doesn’t factor in. And I would accuse them of not understanding how fallen human nature is. We actually require rewards and engaging features in order to bring ourselves to do anything. Christ didn’t say “do this because I said so”, but promised reward and glory and fun and ease and etc. In those areas of life where people are forced or obligated to do everything, they often become malicious and evil. Like head chefs and surgeons. Not very pleasant to be a slave.
For modern Christianity to thrive and bring in the lost leftist sheep, they have to restore all the old fun features that have been deprecated over time. You can have both evangelical-ish singing and dancing (hopefully more tastefully), and solemn Catholic-ish masses with dread-inducing music, because these are both engaging. The one sin is if you don’t make it interesting enough. And Leftists especially would be drawn to the Pity-dimension and Affective-dimension for sure
Re: the historical claim, I don’t believe the Protestant Reformation was motivated by mysticism. Once Rome lost influence over Protestant nations, it was easier for new cults to develop unheeded, and many of these were mystical and traveled to America. But that is an accidental byproduct of the Reformation, because Rome was better at destroying these cults early. Per Wiki, the Reformers downplayed mysticism while the Counter-Reformers actually encouraged mysticism.
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