Sublime

He retired the belief that it was the pastor’s duty, particularly in the sermon, to prod the people into obedience. “Henry realized [that] the point was not to outline ‘correct’ doctrine but to motivate the audience psychologically.”18

the age of authenticity is the search for spirituality inside this immanent frame. Locked inside this cell, we look within ourselves for something more, for a way to re-enchant. In the age of authenticity, the “re” here can refer only to something like “reenact” rather than “return.”

from the land of Jordan

breed. In an impersonal world, “in-ness” can only go as far as cultural or natural categories. In-ness can have no nonmaterial quality, let alone be imagined as a way of the divine and human encountering.

All kinds of cultural rhythms and routines are, in fact, rituals that function as pedagogies of desire precisely because they tacitly and covertly train us to love a certain version of the kingdom, teach us to long for some rendition of the good life. These aren’t just things we do; they do something to us.

The age of authenticity asserted (as we discussed at length in volume 1) that everyone is free to define for themselves what it means to be human, and any religious or spiritual way of life with meaning needs to “speak to me.”

WHOSE HEART ISN’T prodigal? One of the gifts Augustine offers is a spirituality for realists. Conversion is not a “solution.” Conversion is not a magical transport home, some kind of Floo powder to heaven. Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel.

God doesn’t deliver us from the deformative habit-forming power of tactile rival liturgies by merely giving us a book. Instead, he invites us into a different embodied liturgy that not only is suffused by the biblical story but also, via those practices, inscribes the story into our hearts as our erotic calibration, bending the needle of our loves