Being more of a Frenchman, I hate to admit that Sohrab Ahmari turned me on to this short book. But that he did. The title is promising – I expected it to be a sustained discussion of how prayer can be wielded to disarm the powers and principalities of the world, but it only focuses on prayer for one chapter before Jean Daniélou moves to consider technology, art, and other religions in the world.
Across the West, Christianity is in decline. Some welcome this change – a smaller Church means a purer Church (this might be most indicative of H. Richard Niebuhr’s “Christ against culture” paradigm). Even Pope Benedict XVI, writing in 1969, prophesied that “From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh, more or less from the beginning… As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.” This is not to say that this is what Benedict XVI wanted, but it is the future reality he expected.
Daniélou laments the loss of Christendom. In his view, even a “thin” Christendom provides the crucial exposure necessary to sustain religious faith:
Experience shows that it is practically impossible for any but the militant Christian to persevere in a milieu which offers him no support. Think of the many who attend service in their villages but cease to go once they live in a town. Are we then to speak of sociological Christianity and conclude that it is better to be rid of Christians such as these? It would be entirely wrong of us to do so. The Christianity of these Christians can be real, while yet not personal enough to prevail against the current. Such Christians have need of an environment that will help them. There can be no mass Christianity outside Christendom.
Those who want a smaller, purer Church actually only want a company of elite saints. These saints can be rigorously formed in Christianity intellectually and practically, yet still be divorced from the world. Modern monastics will have little to do with banking, teaching, plumbing, selling, and farming. Daniélou contends,
is it not essential that the Church be everywhere present as an institution in her teaching and her sacraments so that all may come to her and take from her what they can? Otherwise, is there not a danger of turning Christianity into a sect and a religion of intellectuals?
Daniélou recognizes the value of even thin Christendom:
Religion as a fact supposes an environment in which it can develop. There are two dimensions in religion which ought always to be considered as complementary. When religion becomes a purely social fact, we fall victims to a sociological Christianity which consists of certain gestures, practices, and traditions; and this is totally insufficient. Sociological Christianity ought always to be tending to transform itself into personal Christianity; religious practices ought always to be tending towards prayer, the interior attitude tending always to correspond to the external gesture. But the opposite is equally true. There cannot be a personal Christianity unless there is a social Christianity. If personal religious life is to be able to flourish, it must have a certain minimum of help from outside, for without this it is normally impossible for the majority of men.
This point must be stressed, because some people today tend to dismiss the idea of sociological Christianity. They usually do so under the illusion that this is a matter of keeping to particular sociological forms of Christianity which are tied to outmoded forms of civilization. (This could in fact be happening in some traditionalist countries, where a sociological context helps to maintain religious life, but at the same time acts as a brake on the development of humanity.) No, what is important is that, with an eye to the future, we take account of the fact that certain sociological conditions have to be realized if the life of prayer is to be accessible to all and sundry. If we fail to do this and detach spirituality from its collective context, we shall be neglecting reality. It is against such a dissociation as this that we ought to react.
This advocacy of even a thin Christendom is the most important theme of Prayer as a Political Problem, and the book’s first thirty-ish pages are the most vital. Daniélou does not share the pessimism of those longing for a mythical medieval Christian paradise. Instead, he asserts this:
The Church takes the world seriously. By that I mean that man and man’s growth are matters on which the Church has a positive view. The Church takes the world seriously because the world is the creation, that is to say the work of God, and because it would be a very odd thing for men to find bad what God finds good. Men are often more squeamish than God, and more easily scandalized. They take exceptions to violence, although violence is one of the ways in which life bursts forth. There is violence in the animal kingdom, and it is inevitable that there should be violence in the development of the city of men. They are shocked by sexuality; yet God has chosen to put there, at the very root as it were of the living being, that which in the human person will blossom into the marvel of truly personal love. God is not shocked by any part of all these riches of life; and it is to this creation that men have to give their assent.
God has called human beings to be stewards of Creation and this inevitably results in progress and dynamism. The same minds that can conceive weapons of mass destruction can also work towards a cure for cancer or multiple sclerosis. There may be fronts where orthodox Christians lose the culture war, but one can also look towards ecumenism and multiculturalism as important gains the Holy Spirit has inspired to bring the Church closer together so that “they may all be one” (John 17:21). As Daniélou points out,
we need to take particular note of the fact that God has made to man a gift of this creation. He has done this so that men can make an inventory of its riches and use them for their own development. God has made a world in which progress, and particularly technical progress, is an authentic aspect of the creation he wanted to have. That is why the Church must first of all tell Christians, and indeed all people, that this world has to be accepted as it is, in all its aspects. The Christian must not turn aside and sulk, preferring always what is past and finding fault with what is present. Such behaviour shows a lack of respect for that which God himself has willed. What God asks of us is to live in this world, to make ourselves part of it. The Vatican Council has said firmly that this acceptance of the world of today in its full reality is something authentically Christian.
Christians must live in the world, but they can do so tactfully and in ways that allow them to share the Gospel.
Daniélou favorably cites Teilhard de Chardin throughout the book as he champions Christendom’s sanctifying influence over civilization. De Chardin, a Jesuit priest, theologian, and scientist, is one of the most contested figures of twentieth century Catholicism, drawing censure from his ecclesiastical superiors during his own day, but also admiration from other figures as well, including the theologian Henri de Lubac and Pope Francis. Daniélou also acknowledges the importance of Christianity being expressed in the Majority World in ways amenable to these diverse cultures (i.e. the Catholic missiological concept of inculturation, whereby the gospel is translated and contextualized into a new receiving culture in understandable ways). Daniélou’s book is a concise and accessible theological analysis of mid-twentieth century western culture.
Alex Strohschein is an avid reader and librarian who has an MA (History of Christianity) from Regent College. In his spare time he enjoys cooking, writing, and listening to the music of Mark Heard, Bill Mallonee, and Pierce Pettis.