By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today
For Christians, evangelization is our way of being in the world. Like parenting, evangelization is a learned activity. We emerge from initial fits and starts, falls and failures, offensives and defensives, and make our way into the vocation. Evangelization is no mean task. It is a learned, creative, relational one that unfolds in the context of our modern, post-Christian culture.
It was once the case that we lived in an enchanted world. In that view of the universe around us, spirits roamed about, angels moved the planetary bodies, earthquakes were foreboding signs from the gods; the natural world could be read like tea leaves for divine meaning. Then came the Enlightenment and scientific advancements of the last centuries. We benefit from many advances in this period: from hand soap to X-rays to air bags. Our many advances should not be overlooked. However, the miracles of science in this period were accompanied by a dogmatic fidelity to science to the exclusion of other forms of knowing. That exclusionary posture threw the “baby” of genuine religious insight out with the bathwater of religious superstition. Yes, get rid of that bathwater, but it needs to be replaced with something. In this age, as others have observed (e.g. Charles Taylor), the world is no longer enchanted. We are in need of a new enchantment. Here are two examples.
First, in a letter penned to his goddaughter, affixed as a prefatory note to “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” C.S. Lewis wrote the following: “My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”
Here’s a second example. Over the holidays I rediscovered a beloved hymn from childhood. The day before visiting extended family, I found the sheet music online and practiced a few lines on the piano. The next day, in the midst of the festivities, I began to play. A mere three notes in, my brother who was walking up the stairs stopped in his tracks, turned around and came to the piano. A euphoric experience, as he put it, unfolded for him.
As with Lewis and my brother, the enchantment we need is not to be found elsewhere, in a land or sphere foreign to ourselves. It is to be found within — a belief in fairy tales and music and care for one another driven by a patience that can be measured in seasons of life.
We need to re-enchant the world or, rather, discover the ways in which it is already enchanted. We cannot go back to the world as it was once enchanted. We also need to be mindful that we not generate a new world borne of our personal nostalgia. It can be painful, but if my personal preference does not effectively communicate the joy of the Gospel to others, then I need to find a new way of expressing that joy. We must do nothing less than sound the music in the hearts of those we know. We must begin somewhere, even if we don’t have it all figured out in advance. Sometimes all it takes is three simple notes.
(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)
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