Evangelization and Imagination

“The modern world suffers from a disease of the imagination.” Dr. John Senior

In all that the Church does, including evangelization, she seeks to engage the human person. More accurately, our activities are generally directed to engaging a specific aspect or quality of the human person.  Catechesis, for example, primarily seeks to nourish the intellect. Certain types of music are meant to primarily engage the emotions. 

In recent times the Church has focused on three aspects of the human person; the intellect, the will and the emotions.   There has been a great emphasis on catechesis to help form people intellectually, service projects and mission trips to strengthen the will, and music and retreats that seek to stir the emotions. The engagement of the intellect, the will and the emotions are a good and necessary part of what the Church needs to do to fulfill her task. 

Yet in spite of all the great catechetical programs available, the numerous service opportunities offered, and the wide selection of lively music available to us, the rates of the practice of the faith continues to plummet at an alarming rate, especially among teens and young adults. 

We also hear that the way out of our current crisis is to continue what we are doing and just simply do more of it.  The answer to our problems will be found in more catechesis, more service opportunities, more Praise and Worship music.  The answer will be found in pouring more resources and adding more people to the ranks of catechists, mission trip leaders and song leaders at our Teen Masses.  More people and activities will result in more people more committed to their Catholic faith.  Yet, there is no evidence that this is really helping.  

Without denying the place of orthodox catechesis, service opportunities and the value of emotional experiences, I would contend that there is a better response to our modern crisis of faith.  While engaging the intellect, will and emotions are important, there is another faculty of the human person that is even more crucial in developing a deep and abiding faith – the imagination.  

The imagination, which is a faculty of the human mind, is a great and powerful gift that helps us in our relationship to God.  One of the contentions of this post, and possibly other ones if people are interested, is that imagination is a key but also neglected faculty of the human person that helps lead people to an experience of God.    

This idea is rooted in the thought of Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890), one of the greatest thinkers in modern times.  Newman, himself a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism, lived at a time when science began to hold a monopoly on its claimed ability to discern truth.  While Newman was not anti-scientific, he prophetically realized that as the scientific method of discerning the truth was to grow in power, other ways of discovering the truth, through literature or theology for example, would come to lose their positions of authority.  Over time, Newman rightly predicted, if left unchallenged, the scientific method would come to monopolize the discovery of truth, leaving everything else to be considered only opinion or feeling. 

 As I said, Newman was not anti-scientific.  Like any good Catholic thinker, he held to the proposition that truth cannot contradict truth. While never denying the rightful place of science, or seeking to limit its freedom in its own sphere, Newman sought to protect other ways of coming to know the truth; including truth arrived at through the imagination.   Newman realized that if one way of coming to know the truth was over-emphasized, then other ways of coming to knowledge of the truth would lose their authority.   In an age where the scientific method reigned, other ways of knowledge lost their power.

Today, the power of the scientific truth rules supreme, especially over against matters of faith.  Questions of faith can only remain at the personal level (and therefore should be left out of the classroom) because, as it is mistakenly claimed, they can only be answered through personal opinion or feelings.   Profession of faith in God, in Jesus as the Son of God, holds the same position in the minds of many as someone who believes in a flying spaghetti monster.   

For those of us involved in ministry to higher education, this is our daily reality.  Newman is not only a patron of campus ministry; he is also a prophet.   What Newman foresaw in the nineteenth century has now come to full fruition in the twenty-first.  The results have been devastating, not just to the Catholic faith, but to the human person.  We minister to people who, as a result of this monopoly of scientific truth, are paralyzed by fear and anxiety, struggle to truly know that God exists and lacks the joy that comes through a true encounter with Him.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the crisis of faith we are experiencing today is not just a crisis of intellect, will or emotions.   We cannot catechize, serve or emote our way out.  Following Newman, the way out of our crisis requires us to engage the entire person, including the faculty of the imagination.