As a Christian in these times, it’s hard not to celebrate when we see cracks in the sidewalks of secularism. In recent decades, atheism and agnosticism have been widespread among society’s elites, yet a persistent spiritual openness endures among most Americans—even those claiming no religious affiliation—like stubborn weeds or grass peeking through pavement.

Should we see these shoots of reenchantment as hopeful signs of revival or as weeds that conceal deeper dangers?

Disenchantment and Reenchantment

This spiritual openness is cast as a reaction to “disenchantment,” a term first coined by the German sociologist Max Weber, who described how the modern world, once alive with sacramental mystery and spiritual presence, became “de-magicked”—a world reoriented around reason, efficiency, and secular rationality.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor would later describe disenchantment as the shift to a world understood entirely on its own terms—an immanent, self-sufficient order where the “buffered self” lives and acts without need for divine intervention.

According to this way of thinking, personal spirituality doesn’t have to be at odds with the common assumptions in a secular age, because people open to various pseudoreligions or spiritual practices typically search for meaning and purpose within the world, or within themselves. And it’s possible to do this, as Paul Kingsnorth points out, as an attempt to “divine our sacred values in a society that presumes our purpose in life to be self-creation in a borderless, post-natural world.”

This spiritual openness indicates an enduring hunger and the experiential dissatisfaction of living in a flattened-out, disenchanted world. And that’s good news for Christians. Today’s evangelistic conversations often won’t need to start with proving God’s existence or the possibility of miracles. For some, the reenchanted world of Christianity, in all its mystery, will appeal rather than repel. These developments are positive.

For some, the reenchanted world of Christianity, in all its mystery, will appeal rather than repel.

But how encouraged should we be about the varied spiritual practices emerging today? Is someone with a pantheistic worldview closer than a secular materialist to Christianity? Is a person better off grasping for something beyond this world—even if it’s a Wiccan’s fascination with spiritual powers or a neo-pagan’s openness to nature’s divine presence? Is someone more receptive to Christianity for believing the world is charged with the grandeur of the gods?

I’ve been thinking about these questions lately, and I’ve gone back and forth between positive and negative takes, depending on which factors are in view. I’d like to tease out some implications of this spiritual openness and clarify aspects we can be thankful for, while explaining areas of concern.

Paganism as Preparation for Christianity

To answer whether paganism might prepare someone for Christianity, we can start with the Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. Is a neo-pagan better off spiritually than a secularist?

At first glance, Lewis appears to answer positively: A pagan is indeed closer to Christianity than an atheist. In Lewis’s journey to faith, ancient pagan mythologies stirred deep longings, piercing through the windshield of naturalism and preparing the way for Christianity to shatter the glass altogether.

Amid people’s fears of England returning to paganism, Lewis’s evangelistic heart leaped:

For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is essentially the pre-Christian, or sub-Christian, religious man. The post-Christian man of our day differs from him as much as a divorcee differs from a virgin.

If secular materialism is fierce armor guarding someone from supernatural realities, paganism at least leaves chinks in the suit. An openness to something beyond this world is thus closer to Christianity than the rigid exclusion of all spiritual light—supernatural or natural.

“Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian,” Lewis wrote in 1955. “The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not.”

Yet it’s too simple to assume Lewis would uncritically celebrate the rise of a neo-paganism. When Lewis refers to paganism, he’s talking about the religious sort, with a capital P—the kind of pagan world imagined in Till We Have Faces, replete with temples, sacrifices, and priests. The neo-paganism of today more closely resembles what Michael Horton describes in Shaman and Sage as “spiritual but not religious”—a vague, unstructured supernaturalism reworked in modern times for an expressive-individualist world enthralled by influencer culture.

What’s more, for Lewis, the paganism that preceded Christianity was a historical phenomenon and is thus impossible to repeat. There’s no relapse, only reversion. Such reversion, according to one of Lewis’s great influences, G. K. Chesterton, is actually a sign of decadence.

Chesterton, like Lewis, could speak sympathetically of paganism’s ability to channel natural religious impulses toward awe, wonder, and nature’s mysteries. But for both men, paganism remains incomplete.

While Christianity comes not to abolish but to fulfill genuine spiritual intuitions, returning to nature worship or pagan practices represents a societal regression into childhood. Even if we acknowledge the presence of truth in various spiritualities, there’s something pitiful and pathetic about watching a grown civilization abandon Christianity’s definitive revelation for the stumbling spirituality of the toddler.

Christian Perspectives: Anticipation or Danger?

Early Christians adopted different postures toward Greco-Roman polytheism. For some, as with later writings from Lewis and Chesterton, paganism in the past anticipated fuller Christian revelation—seeds destined to bloom fully in the gospel. Others associated paganism with demonic influences—the “powers” and “principalities” Christ defeated in his death and resurrection (Eph. 6:12).

Both groups agreed that the world was teeming with real spiritual beings and that certain practices could have genuine spiritual effects. Some Christians emphasized paganism’s anticipatory elements, others its dangerous, deceptive power.

Believe, Ross Douthat’s case for religion against irreligion, captures both aspects. Douthat recognizes the reality of spiritual peril, and that’s why he prefers a secular observer to gravitate toward major world religions, not to today’s do-it-yourself spiritualities. He places religions on a continuum from less true to more true. For Douthat, any major religion is better than irreligion or individualistic spirituality. Even if one never reaches the fullest truth (which for Douthat is Roman Catholicism), one still progresses by aligning with cosmic purpose and pleasing God in some measure.

Douthat’s principle, inspired in part by the character of Emeth in the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia, is clear:

If some kind of God exists and ordered the universe for human beings, then even a false or flawed religion will probably contain intimations of that reality, signposts for the discerning pilgrim, some kind of call to higher things—such that a sincere desire to find and know the truth can fail to reach truth’s fullness and still find its reward.

Most evangelicals would agree that some religions may be closer to the truth than others. But you won’t find us recommending other faiths, for several reasons. First, the post–Vatican II Catholic consensus on the possibility of salvation apart from faith in Christ is the fruit of extrabiblical speculation. Second, who’s to say demonic powers aren’t active in other religions, suppressing truth in unrighteousness—even if they appear morally upright?

Third, how would we know how to plot various religions on a spectrum of “less true” to “more true”? And if someone adheres to a religion that is, in one sense, closer to Christian doctrine, does this mean an adherent to that faith will be more receptive to the gospel? What if the opposite is the case? Is a Mormon closer than a naturalist to true Christianity? Perhaps in terms of doctrine, but not if we’re considering the likelihood of conversion.

Douthat believes someone is better off conforming to whatever is good in his or her own tradition rather than going it alone or dabbling in spiritualist practices apart from religious structure (even if he cheers for Catholic Christianity as the final and full revelation).

But we’re left with the conundrum of how an adherent to another religious tradition would be able to discern what’s good and must be conformed to, or what’s bad and must be rejected, without some standard or measuring stick. That’s where we need the Scriptures as the norm—the supreme authority of God’s written revelation—to guide and shape our understanding so we can discern truth and falsehood, wherever it appears.

We need the Scriptures as the norm to guide and shape our understanding so we can discern truth and falsehood, wherever it appears.

Douthat’s approach only makes sense if you see humanity on a kind of spiritual ascent—from natural to supernatural religions, from lower to higher forms of worship. As an evangelical, I want to stress God’s descent into the mess of human existence and the exclusivity of divine revelation, next to which all other religions (regardless of how low or high their forms of worship) pale in comparison.

Seen in this light, religious observance, even if marked by faint echoes of truth, is an expression of humanity reaching up toward God, in a Babel-like project of grasping heaven. By contrast, the biblical storyline’s finale shows the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, the final and forever representation of God’s gracious descent to be with us.

Cautious Cheer for Reenchantment

So where does that leave us regarding spiritual openness and curiosity about various religions? Should we cheer? Should we moan? Should we shrug?

Eastern Orthodox writer Rod Dreher, in Living in Wonder, considers both the positive and negative elements of our cultural turn toward the supernatural and the question of reenchantment. Dreher urges Christians to reclaim the shared inheritance of paganism and Christianity: a sacramental view that sees creation saturated with spiritual meaning and power. In this limited sense, paganism is an ally against disenchantment—the materialist suppression of spiritual significance.

But it’s an uneasy alliance. In part because Christianity brought its own kind of disenchantment—sweeping away the pagan world’s grim superstitions and vivid pantheon to make room for the worship of the one true, incarnate, triune God. And because the project of reenchantment opens doors not only to Christianity but also to the dark enchantment of the occult. Joy Marie Clarkson makes this point: “There is real danger in seeking out enchantment for the sake of enchantment, danger that we may stumble on a magic we can’t control; in seeking to enchant we may find ourselves bewitched.” She’s right.

According to the Scriptures, the real world resembles neither the disenchanted world of the materialist nor the enchanted superstitions of ancient folk religions. The light of Christianity outshines both those ways of seeing the world. Enchantment, yes, but in a Christian key. Thus, the story of Boniface: He takes an axe to the tree dedicated to the worship of Thor and declares there is no god there, while acknowledging the presence and power of demons when people’s hearts succumb to false worship.

Dreher encourages Christians to be more attuned to God’s work in the world, to acknowledge real and significant spiritual forces, and to not shy away from miracles and healings and exorcisms. Or as Clarkson says, “Whatever meaning and spiritual potency was in the world remains in it. It is only the quality of our attention that has changed.”

Some people adopt “spirituality” as if it’s just a lifestyle option or form of entertainment, because it’s cool to act like you have a spiritual side. But many who walk down this path will encounter spiritual forces out there that go beyond the inner psychology of “feeling spiritual.” People are likely to be surprised when their personal spirituality involves personal spirits.

“False notions about God, false sensations, misguided attempts to achieve visions or certain spiritual states without trusted guidance,” writes Kingsnorth, “all of these can be used by the ‘powers and principalities’ of this world, in St. Paul’s famous phrasing, to lead the unwary away from truth and towards falsehood.”

So, yes, we can be encouraged by the turn of some of our secular friends who long for a more enchanted world. But we must take the spiritual realities of our own faith seriously if we have any hope of combating the spiritual darkness unleashed when unclean spirits and powers are summoned. Seeking enchantment outside a clearly and uniquely Christian path, Dreher says, will result in people being “inevitably drawn into the demonic.”

Christ as the Only Secure Foundation

It’s wise to be hopeful and cautious rather than uncritically enthusiastic about neo-paganism and renewed enchantment. Experiencing the world as enchanted isn’t inherently Christian. It’s entirely possible to sense supernatural realities without submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord.

Many Christians rightly celebrate secularism’s decline—its cold, rationalist facade collapsing under humanity’s hunger for spiritual depth. People intuitively grasp that reality is spiritually porous, charged with supernatural meaning. Yet our celebration must be tinged with a realistic appraisal of just what such reenchantment means. An enchanted cosmos without Christ remains dangerously vulnerable.

An enchanted cosmos without Christ remains dangerously vulnerable.

Cultural openness to the spiritual world may be useful as common ground in spiritual conversations. But such openness isn’t exclusively positive. Weeds, not just grass, are coming up through the cracks in the secular sidewalk. And weeds present challenges as well as opportunities. Alan Noble is right:

Today we have a disenchanting role to play in reminding the world that their idols are mute. But we also have an obligation to see the world as created by God, as governed by God’s providence, as peopled by humans made in God’s image, as filled with real beauty. The world is not mute because it testifies to the goodness of the Creator.

So, yes, let’s cheer on the cracks in the materialist pavement. And let’s celebrate the common ground we find in people yearning for a spiritual world. But let’s keep our eyes open to the insufficiency of reenchantment and remain aware that open doors let in darkness, not just light.