Bruce Charlton's Notions

I find it very annoying when Christians fight among themselves - perhaps especially in this era - these End Times - when the Christian churches are shriveling and spiritually-eviscerated, and have joined-with the powers of evil dominate all the 'Western' nations, and nearly-all the major social and political institutions of the world. 

My evaluation is that real Christians are now rare, and are scattered across many denominations and churches - despite that individually all of the denominations and churches are net-corrupted by their convergence with significant policies of atheist-materialist-Leftism (as evidence by the Litmus Tests). 

In such a situation it is maddening to find to many Christians 'having a go at' each other - Western and Eastern Catholics sniping and snarking; Catholics denigrating Protestants from the rich well of historical grievances, and vice versa; both of these denigrating Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses; and all the church-obedient Christians excluding Christians who are unaffiliated. 

It is maddening but inevitable; for so long as each denomination, church, sect claims exclusivity as to salvation or theosis with respect to whatever it regards as vitally important. 

Such exclusivity seems almost impossible to avoid when each group has a complex and multiple set of self-definitions that are regarded as essential to being-a-Christian; or of being the kind of Christian that is at all worth being. 

Yet it is clear that the 'liberal' alternative - pursued for more than two centuries, of loosening and relaxing the criteria for 'being a Christian'; by permitting more and more latitude, by taking the old laws, rules and exclusions less-and-less seriously -  has been a colossal disaster. 

Liberal Christianity leads - not to a new and more comprehensive Christianity - but to a subordination of Christianity to politics: specifically to leftist politics. 

And leftist politics leads to destruction of churches, assimilation to evil, and the enlistment of self-identified Christians to the strategies and policies of Satan. 

What is needed is twofold. 

First; a Core Christianity, few and simple definitions by means of which a real Christian can discern the realness of others who claim to be Christian - whatever their denomination or church may be. 

And secondly a shift away from the primacy of churches and to the full responsibility of individuals as the basis of Christianity - i.e. Romantic Christianity. 

These factors can be distinguished, but are inseparable. It is the simple definitions of Core Christianity that enable Romantic Christianity to be tough, incisive and positive in content. And it is the personal responsibility of Romantic Christianity that enable Core Christianity to escape from the elaborate (and institutionally self-serving) claims of particular churches. 

Romantic Christianity without the clarity of Core Christianity would drift away from Christianity; Core Christianity without the individual responsibility of Romantic Christianity would never get off the ground; because each church would simply implement its own already-established, exclusive and excluding, definitions of Christianity. 

Put-together; Core and Romantic Christianity offer a way-out of the current impasse, and a way by which real Christians may be allied in their faith, across a wide range of churches and outside churches; while excluding those who are not Christian. 

To define Romanticism with precision has proved impossible - because it is a movement, a phase in human consciousness; but those who feel it will recognise it when we see it.  

To be included in this list, one must be both Romantic and Christian (and be someone whose work I personally respond-to):

William Blake
William Wordsworth
ST Coleridge

Then came several generations during which the Romantics were not Christian, and the Christians were not Romantic. Exceptions include George Macdonald and GK Chesterton, who link between the early Romantic Christians and the Inklings. Both of these I somewhat like, especially GKC - but I am unable to engage whole-heartedly.

Charles Williams
JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
Owen Barfield

William Arkle

Current representatives of whom I am aware include Jeremy Naydler, Terry Boardman, and the Albion Awakening bloggers: William Wildblood, John Fitzgerald and myself.

Comments:

The influence of Rudolf Steiner is evident; since although Anthroposophists are extremely rare in England - Barfield, Naydler and Boardman are all of that ilk. This is evidence that Romanticism fits most comfortably with heterodox Christianity - despite that Tolkien (Roman Catholic) and Lewis (Church of England) were orthodox in their practice. Indeed; Blake, Barfield (for much of his life), Arkle and most of the currently alive people - are (I believe) essentially unaffiliated Christians; whose religious and spiritual practice is mostly and in-principle individual rather than communal.

The Steiner link is also important because Germany (in the sense of the Central European German-speaking culture - including Austria and Switzerland, and some culturally-Germanic cities not nowadays in Germany) was the other great origin of Romanticism - with Herder, Goethe, Schiller etc. However until Steiner's 'conversion' in about 1898; the German Romantic literary tradition was not really Christian. An exception is Novalis - the father of Romantic Christianity in Germany.

It might also be argued that CG Jung (1875-1961) is also part of the German tradition of Romantic Christianity - although (as so often with Jung) his status as a Christian is ambiguous - overall, I would say that by the end of his life, Jung should indeed be regarded as a Christian.  

There are not many on this list; because I don't know of many Romantic Christians. It is a job still to be done, by each individual - since Romantic Christianity must be experiential (knowing 'about' it does not suffice).

However, I regard both Barfield and Arkle as having essentially done the necessary work and, uniquely, achieved Romantic Christianity: both in their theory and in their living.


Mainstream Christianity still tends to regard Traditionalism as a 'safe' path to salvation; and theosis as too 'risky' - and Romanticism is about theosis.

But for the Romantic Christian there is no 'safe' path in the modern world; and traditionalism has in fact become impossible (judged at the deepest level of motivation); as well as sub-optimally desirable. We feel that, in modern conditions, salvation requires theosis; so a purely salvation orientation can only be a kind of 'rescue' procedure.

Because ultimately Romanticism is not a 'reaction' against the Industrial Revolution, modernity and bureaucracy; rather, Romanticism is a positive path of divine destiny, concerned with human evolutionary-development of consciousness.


The aim of Romantic Christianity is (implicitly) to attain the divine form of cosnciousness (what Barfield termed Final Participation) as the primary goal of mortal life at this era of history. In different words: the aim is to restore the unity of Life - including the healing of the split between mind and matter, subjective and objective... to cure the malaise of alienation.

Romantic Christianity is both theoretical (metaphysical) and practical (experiential) - ideas and living both need to change; because otherwise the two aspects will be at contradictory, at war - and therefore unattainable in life.

The Romantic Christian demands that life be Christian - as its root and frame; and also demands that life (including Christianity) be Romantic - therefore it cannot accept the ultimate of primary necessity of System, organisation, institution, bureaucracy... these are all to be regarded as evils; even if, sometimes (in mortal life); expedient or even temoprarily-necessary evils - evils that challenge us to love, faith and hope; and to grow.

Love and creativity are the goal; with creativity as located in thinking, and thinking regarded as universal and primary. 

One fundamental idea of Romantic Christianity is that we took a wrong turning in the past and therefore need to recover and reconnect with lost things - another fundamental idea is that when this recovery and reconnection is achieved, we will develop to a future that is new and has never previously been experienced anywhere in the world.

So, Romantic Christianity has an element that is conservative, or even reactionary; and another element that is radical, or even progressive.

This can be seen in its antecedents: those writers from whom Romantic Christianity intends to pick up the torch and carry it forward. These include William Blake, ST Coleridge and Novalis - authors who looked back and were also innovators. Authors who were deeply Christian, and also unorthodox or heretical.

But their work was not taken up by society, and was perhaps incomplete - or, at least, their task and project was lacking in that self-conscious, explicit awareness which we modern people (it seems) require to be sufficiently convinced by an idea that we can powerfully be motivated by it.

In particular; it is part of the intuitive conviction that leads to Romantic Christianity, that the destined future must be - can only be - one that is consciously known and voluntarily chosen. That, indeed, the only free choice is a conscious choice - and this is, of course, necessarily the choice of a single person.

Such an ideal of free individualism has not been seen at any time or place in the past... nonetheless, the conviction is that nothing else will suffice, here-and-now. 


The idea of going back and reconnecting with this Romantic Christian impulse was, I think, only itself made fully self-aware and explicit by Owen Barfield (in the essays collected in Romanticism Comes of Age, from 1944) - although he could perceive that it was solidly implied by the work of Rudolf Steiner.

But the possibilities for Romantic Christianity have changed over the past two hundred years, and indeed over the past decades. When it began, there was the possibility that the whole of a national culture (or a substantial segment of one) might take-up the project of Romantic Christianity - that, for example, England might do so.

To be more exact, that English culture might recognise the incoherence and insufficiency of the ruling assumptions of materialism (aka. positivism, scientism, reductionism) and reconnect with the embryonic spiritual and Christian tradition it had incrementally, and very fully, abandoned throughout the 19th century.

Such a large scale self-transformation now seems to be impossible; or at least the trends are contrary. So the hope of Romantic Christianity has narrowed to the individual. It is a project that operates one person at a time, one soul at a time.


This might seem trivial - except that (unlike for materialism) for Romantic Christianity each soul is immortal and of unbounded value.

By contrast, any and all worldly gains are bounded by the decay, sin and death that are intrinsic to this mortal world.

A culture, society or planet is evanescent; but a soul lasts forever.

I should first say that Romantic Christianity is for adults, for post-adolescents. It is, in other words, a product of the modern adult consciousness.

It is for all Western adults, because all modern Western adults are Romantic; and all may (if they want it) choose to accept the gifts of Jesus.  

But I need to say this because this means that Romantic Christianity is neither intended-as nor suitable-as a Christian way of bringing-up children - raising kids is still, essentially, pretty much the same as it was in the era of traditional Christianity. In other words, for pre-adolescents guidance must necessarily be external, and therefore a Christian environment is the key (home, school, church, books, 'media' etc).

But beyond adolescence lies the destiny of a Romantic consciousness, and the new thing needed is that this be a Christian consciousness.


One major concern about Romantic Christianity relates to morality - and in these times and this place, this means primarily sexual morality. Traditional Christianity was pretty clearly defined in relation to sexual morality; and mainstream modernity has as its (perhaps) core value the Sexual Revolution in its various dominating phases.

The Sexual Revolution is, of course, ever 'advancing' its scope (despite the contradictions) via advocating positively divorce, extramarital promiscuity, abortion, feminism, homosexuality, sadomasochism, transexualism and so on 'forward' toward paedophilia and I don't know what next - the stages of dominance of which define modern culture.

Traditional Christianity is clearly against the sexual revolution - on various grounds: for example the teachings of scripture, the authority of the church, the primacy of tradition, the rigorous implications of theology. Now, all of these grounds are 'external' - so Romantic Christianity requires that they must be validated by internal and intuitive understanding and assent.

The problem has often been that the Romantic impulse has, since the time of Lord Byron and Shelley, often been used as a reason to reject traditional sexual morality - by simply claiming that one does not find intuitive confirmation of 'conventional' morality; and that - on the contrary - inner conviction validates unfettered expression of one's own current lusts and desires.

This 'morally relativistic' way of reasoning has become 'official' over the past several years; so that the sexual revolution requires no greater validation than that claim that it would make some person or group unhappy, or simply unfulfilled (here and now) if they were prevented from doing some sexual thing that they currently very much want to do. If, that is, the 'thing' is currently approved-of by the mainstream sexual revolution at that particular point - and this has changed, and reversed, through recent history. For instance, 'Weinstein-type' promiscuous behaviour was strongly supported, positively-media-depicted, and leftist-advocated in the late 1960-70s, when 'hetero'-sex was officially regarded as merely a pleasurable type of physical exercise; not to be taken seriously.

This validation of extended sexuality began by being applied only to 'consenting adults in private' and was presented as toleration; but has swiftly been extended to public situations and to children of any age and it is now necessary that extending the sexual revolution (in officially approved direction) be actively and publicly embraced - and this positive attitude is compulsory. 


It certainly seems (to traditionalist Christians) as if Romantic Christianity is either sure to be distorted to rationalise the sexual revolution (as happens all the time among the mainstream churches, and by 'liberal' Christians'). But then, the fact is that anything can-be/ has-been/ is-being perverted to rationalise the sexual revolution - whenever the motivation to do so outweighs the desire for truth.

The way I think of it is that the intuitions of Romantic Christianity do not merely 'validate' the truth of sexual morality as it is (partially, with some distortions) represented by the various traditional Christianities (which situation would suggest that the intutions are not necessary, because we could take traditional moal codes as a short-cut to where we wanted, ultimately, to go). Instead, what happens is that by Christian intuition we are able to know for our-selves that sexual morality arises-from ultimate and universal reality.

We personally tap-into the very source of morality, in the nature-of-things - that is in God's creation. 


But this direct knowledge of ultimate sexual morality is Not in the traditional form of general laws and rules about collectives of people; instead (as Rudolf Steiner makes clear in Philosophy of Freedom).

What would be (can be) discovered is that morality is on the one hand absolutely specific to each situation, and also absolutely objective - there is always just one right thing to do, and one only.

And this we can know for-ourselves, and can only know for-ourselves - although equally the judgement of what we may say or do is open to the unique and direct evaluation on others who love us*.


*But only those who love us - because only such have the ability to know directly concerning our souls - by contrast, with other strangers and secondhand observers, they will merely be applying general principles to general situations.

  

Romantic Christianity could be considered that Christianity which regards directly-intuited understanding (or heart-thinking) as our primary knowledge... 

By which I mean an experience of understanding which is clear and conscious in the mind; therefore not primarily in words, symbols, concepts, principles, abstractions or any other indirect or representational medium. 

Thus, for a Romantic Christian - the fundamental basis of his Christianity is not in the reports of other people nor any kind of history; not in tradition or words; not in any external authority or person; nor in accounts of theological or philosophical reasoning. 

Instead, the basis is the experience of a positive, affirmative grasp and knowing; and it is this which needs to be applied to the 'secondary' sources of Christian knowledge that are described above. Our true faith, that sustains courage and supplies Hope, is to be derived from that which is primary. 

For example, the primary truth of a passage of scripture (or history, or commandment, or rule...) may be apprehended and known by experience in this primary way - by a process which is distinct both from 'reading the words' and distinct from the words-meanings being imposed-upon the mind by the act of reading. 

And when such a direct apprehension and understanding is lacking, then the scriptural passage (or whatever) should not be regarded as primary. 

In sum; Romantic Christianity is rooted in active and creative thinking; and the passive and absorptive is recognized as secondary. 

It also follows that the expression of Romantic Christianity can only be in the secondary forms; because the primary and intuitive, direct-knowing of the mind cannot wholly be captured or fully-communicated by any expression of it in words or any other medium. This is what makes it primary. 

What is relatively 'new' about Romantic Christianity - that 'Romantic' impulse that seemed to emerge incrementally only from about the middle 1700s in Europe, and later in other places to become dominant now (apparently) everywhere - is that the engagement needs to be both conscious and chosen. 

The possibility and effectiveness of a life passively-guided by true bit unconscious tradition, has dwindled; and has by now essentially disappeared among adults. Unconscious, spontaneous instinct is likewise both enfeebled and corrupted so as to become both impossible and undesirable. 

We are active, conscious, choosing Christians - or we are not Christians. 

Modern Man is in a new and unprecedented situation deriving from both his deficits and his capacities. Either he will choose consciously to base his fundamental (metaphysical) Christianity upon Romantic and experiential foundations; or else he will become assimilated to The World - which is (in 2021) atheistic, materialistic and (most importantly) subject to global demonic strategies. 

The Romantic Christian can thus be of any denomination or none, in his practice of Christianity - according to the guidance of his experiential discernments. 

But the Romantic Christian must always be in a process of rooting his faith in the personal and experiential - and this is the fact which enables him to discern and adhere to the good and Godly among the great mass of evil and Satanic influences that increasingly permeate and dominate the world of public discourse (including all the 'Christian' churches).    

Note: The above was stimulated by brooding upon a marvelous and inspiring talk by Archbishop Vigano - where the Abp seems strongly to imply the need for individual discernment, yet does not explain or state it explicitly. My belief is that such matters require detailed discussion. In the past - there were internal mechanisms to deal with top-down problems; but now the evil is active, globally applied and enforced (with the coordinated aid of the secular powers: finance, government, corporations, media etc) and the corruption extends through a majority of middle and lower hierarchy and through the 'masses' and the RCC laity. Unless discernment is conscious and consciously regarded as primary, it will not suffice to combat the an onslaught of evil. 

The idea of Romantic Christianity is that we must and should move forward to a new era of consciousness - because consciousness is necessary for free agency.

We can be free only when we are conscious; insofar as the unconscious affects us without our awareness then we are not free.

So secular modernity is impossible, because it is not Christian hence basically false - and evil because it is by nature and intent totalitarian (Ahrimanic); mainstream Romanticism is impossible because it is not Christian, and aims-at the unconscious, instinctive, unfree, not-grown-up (Luciferic); traditional Christianity is impossible because it relies upon the objective efficacy of words, rituals, symbols, institutions that have become subjective and ineffective. And, anyway, we cannot go back to traditional Christianity because human evolution is developmental (thus irreversible - like an adolescent cannot become a child).  

The fact that secular modernity, Romanticism and Christianity are all impossible does not, of course, prove that Romantic Christianity is possible - nor does it prove that Rom Christ would be desirable. The possibility and desirability of Romantic Christianity are firmly conjectural.

We should therefore be clear that there can be no publicly compelling proof that Romantic Christianity is what we must and ought-to have. So, in principle, we can only be Romantic Christians on the basis of 'evidence' that is personal individual, and - in that sense - 'subjective'.

However, Romantic Christianity includes the assertion that genuine subjectivity (intuition from of the real and divine self) is also objective, universal and eternal (objective, that is, within constraints of our perspective, experience and capability). True subjectivity is real objectivity.

In sum; to be a Romantic Christian is a matter of primary personal conviction. Either you have this, or you do not. If you don't have it, no evidence can convince you; if do have it, no evidence can disprove your conviction.

And such conviction can only be attained by consciously seeking it, and can only be apprehended by consciously knowing it and freely embracing it.

And if such is achieved; there is no more to be done with respect to proofs and evidence. One then Just Is a Romantic Christian; and our task and destiny then becomes (as I began by saying) incrementally to become conscious of all that is unconscious; to freely choose that which is spontaneously, intrinsically, naturally true.

Romantic Christianity can be seen as in terms of a micro- and macro- level of experiencing reality.

Romantic refers to the micro, moment to moment, daily experiencing of our own personal life. The great impulse towards romanticism is alienation - that experience of life as shallow, mundane, impersonal, meaningless, uninvolving, irrelevant...

Stuff like bureaucracy, the mass media, the world of organisations and corporations; the bleak oppression of modern cities, modernist art and architecture. Feeling dead inside, cut-off from life.

We seek a Romantic cure for alienation. We seek involvement, participation - we want to be in-life, involved-by life, part-of life.

And this is a micro business; we are Not talking about big schemes and general plans - we crave this as soon as we wake up, here-and-now and whenever we think about it, and all kinds of situations.

By contrast, normal, mainstream, classical Christianity typically references the macro-scale, the Big Picture - it is about the overall nature and organisation of reality; creation, orders of being. The nature and relations of God, Christ, angels and men.

Christianity is about meaning and purpose; how things cohere and where they are going - and how we each fit-into the evolving pattern.

Without Romanticism, macro-Christianity is too remote, abstract and generalised to satisfy our micro-needs - it is analogous to politics without psychology; material without mind.

And without Christianity, Romanticism is disconnected from that which makes it really-real - it becomes just a matter of momentary and subjective 'states of mind'; with no conception of where these states of mind are going, or why states of mind have any value.

Conversely; Christians are prone to suppose that the Big Picture is all that really matters - that following Jesus is wholly about salvation, and not-at-all about theosis (i.e. aiming to become more divine during mortal life).

But the Fourth Gospel shows us that the Big Picture is only of value when personally and actively loved, affiliated-to, trusted, had-faith-in. The specific and unique individual - his experience, learning, choices; is an indispensable component of the Christian scheme - a part of The Universe.

Of course, ultimately the division into micro and macro, and the distinction between Romanticism and Christianity is artificial - since both are perspectives, ways of knowing the same indivisible one-ness.

However, I have often observed a tendency for rejection of one or the other - for the Romantic to reject the need-for and reality-of the Big Picture (to regard Christianity as getting-in-the-way, blocking enlightenment); for Christians to regard a Romantic yearning for 'participation' as merely a snare and a sin (better done-without).

But I am convinced that both are not only beneficial but necessary; and that any attempt to grasp one without the other will fail. Romantic Christianity is not just desirable, but necessary.

From what I perceive, 2016 is indeed unfolding to be the year of reckoning which some have predicted - perhaps best understood as the year of choice; and more exactly the year of branching choices.

Starting from the triumphant domination of secular Leftism, it looks as if looks as if more and more of the Establishment are defecting from the programme - or are on the verge of doing-so, and as if the ruling cabal is afraid - very afraid - of a major backlash. Hence the global conspiracy of evil is trying to strike prematurely with their long-prepared plan of a mega-destructive World War III (starting in the Middle East); before the lower-level Establishment and the population of the West have been brought behind the idea.

The choices of 2016 can be seen as a branching system. Early choices are worth having - but only if the choices follow through (reasonably swiftly) will they do any more than somewhat delay the plan for comprehensive destruction of Good.

The first choice is:

Secular Leftism versus Not-secular Leftism

This is about as far as we have currently reached - a negative reaction against the prevailing trends.

Then there is a choice between:

Cynical nihilism versus Spiritual Awakening

Cynical nihilism is negative - and the Cynical Nihilist decides merely to operate on the basis of his gut-feelings, which he regards as subjective - so it is merely a kind of systematic selfishness. This is better than secular Leftism, because not actively suicidal - but CN is unstable and severely suboptimal. Spiritual awakening is therefore the way forward.

But spiritual awakening has happened before - eg. in the mid 1960s - and it is likely to be poisoned at source by the (Leftist) Sexual Revolution unless it leads to religion. So the next choice is either to retain the sexual revolution - leading to New Age spirituality or to reject the sexual revolution, which leads to religion (of one sort or another):

New Age Spirituality versus Religion

We know from experience the New Age spirituality leads nowhere, so Religion is the way forward. The next step is to 'choose your religion'. For Westerners this means Christianity of something-else:

Not-Christianity versus Christianity

If Christianity is chosen, at this point it refers to real Christianity, not Liberal Christianity - which is merely secular Leftism with some Christian top-dressing.

The re-adoption of Christianity by the West would be a major step in the right direction - but it would essentially be a 'rewind'; hence the question arises: would it be enough to prevent secular Leftism returning, just as it did in the past? I don't think so.

The next step is the most controversial - because there is a choice between one or many churches of Actually Existing Christianity - which is the world of the existing denominations, each of which claims (more-or-less) exclusivity and New Christianity - which does not exist and never has existed even conceptually except among a few specific individuals.

Traditional Christianity versus Evolution of a New Christianity

The evolution of a New Christianity would probably evolve from one or more of the existing churches - but not be exactly the same as any of them currently are; nor would it be any kind of Liberalisation or assimilation to secular norms.

New Christianity would be (would need to be) a correction of those flaws in past Christianity which were exploited by secular Leftism - and would indeed be a restoration of a Christianity closer to the intention of Christ and more in-line with the nature and purposes of God.

That, I believe, is the destined way ahead - that is what Christianity was supposed to do way back around 1800 at the start of the Industrial Revolution and the first outburst of Romanticism - the kind envisaged by the likes of the poets Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

So, with New Christianity I am talking about Romantic Christianity.

So the final destination of 2016 would need to be

Romantic Christianity 

Which comes at the end of a many branched path of choices - so the chances of us getting to that destination seem remote; and anything less will - I believe - fail to suffice.

Nonetheless, any steps along that path would be very welcome - and we are currently seeing the first step being taken by ever more people.

We therefore now have a real chance; albeit a slim chance.

Romantic Christianity made a brilliant start with Novalis, William Blake and ST Coleridge - and then nothing-much for many decades until Rudolf Steiner became (strange sort of) Christian in about 1898; to be followed by Owen Barfield and William Arkle in later generations - and there is William Wildblood and myself among current writers. But there have never been many Romantic Christians...

Why so rare, and what went wrong with the intermediate generations? Of course there were plenty of Romantics - but among them hardly any Christians; indeed most of them were either atheists or spiritual anything-but Christians.

A pre-eminent example was Ralph Waldo Emerson; who was an arch-Romantic and who began as a Unitarian minister - Unitarians being, at that time, like Emerson, Christians on-the-way-out. He ended-up as a kind of deist, flavoured with what he had gathered of Hinduism and Sufism.

Emerson was known for his elevation of the intuitive, epiphanic, 'moment' of insight to the highest possible valuation; like most Romantics, he required that all knowledge be derived from direct personal experience. SO why did Emerson not do the same for Christianity as he did for everything else? Why did he not develop a Romantic Christianity built from the kind of direct intuitive insights that fuelled the rest of his wide-ranging creativity? This will be answered below.

My guess is that Emerson accepted the evaluation of most Churches that Christianity must be derived from external authority - or else it is not Christianity. Catholics demand that the individual conform to the teaching of the Church authorities, or the traditions of the lineally descended ancient Church. Protestants demand conformity to the canonical scriptures of the Bible.

But what unites all churches is the assumption that whatever Christianity is, it is located outside the individual. The insistence is that Christianity does not come from within - not from individual experience, not from personal intuition.

Ultimately the task for the individual is to conform to external authority. The church judges the individual. 

If this is true; then Romanticism and Christianity are incompatible. So, how did Novalis, Blake and Coleridge come to believe that they had developed a Christianity based on their inner knowledge? It is mostly a matter of their basic and ultimate assumptions, of metaphysical assumptions. These authors believed that the individual could have direct knowledge of Christianity without it being derived from any intermediary at all; not rooted in church authority, without canonical scripture, traditional, philosophical theology or anything else.

Or, at least, and in conformity to Romanticism; that this direct form of personal knowing should serve to evaluate all other knowledge claims. So the individual judges the church; and may (like Blake, Steiner and Arkle) dispense with all churches - although Coleridge and Barfield were both, in later life,' communicating' (communion-taking) members of the Church of England.

We can see, then, why Emerson did not remain a Christian - because he apparently accepted the assertion that a real Christian must be under the authority of a church. (The only dispute was about which church/es it was correct to regard as really Christian.) It seems that, for Emerson, anyone who claimed to be a Christian outside of a church, was not really a Christian.

But there may be more to it than this - because Emerson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus; therefore real Christians were in error. Emerson's idea of deity was abstract - 'The Over Soul' - and therefore infinitely different-from a Man. The only union of Man with deity, therefore, was for Man to surrender his self and 'melt-into' the infinitude of deity.

So Emerson was a hopeless case! Ultimately, he did not want what Jesus offered; and preferred what Eastern religions offered. And what applies to Emerson, also applies to many other Romantics since. Some Romantics are materialist; but among those who are spiritual - it has mostly been an Eastern spirituality; which ultimately regards the individual self and our mortal world as temporary illusions.

This is the source of the paradox by which Emerson valued the moment of insight above all; yet ultimately he regarded each epiphany as evanescent, soon to be lost in time - and therefore worthless.

Other Christians have had strong Romantic impulses, but retained the conviction that the individual judgement must be subordinated to church authority - GK Chesterton is an example. Chesterton regarded the 'catholic' church (at first the Anglo Catholic wing of the Church of England; then in his late middle age, the Roman Catholic church) as the source of knowledge, of truth. For Chesterton Romanticism was the proper attitude each individual ought to adopt towards this truth.

For Chesterton, therefore, the individual did not have direct and personal intuitive access to knowledge; except for the knowledge that the church was true. The only primary knowledge was that the church was the only source of knowledge. 

Something similar could be said for CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They were Romantics and also Christians - but their Romanticism was secondary to their Christianity - and was at most understood to be a good and proper (perhaps even necessary) attitude towards their Christianity. The Romantic intuition was not, for them, a primary source of knowledge: that was revelation as communicated by  their churches.

This is why Romantic Christians - by a strict definition - have been so rare. Most Romantics were not Christians, but among those that were; Romanticism is regarded as an attitude but not as a source of knowledge.

It was the great contribution of Owen Barfield - posthumous disciple of Steiner, best friend of CS Lewis, and fellow Inkling with Tolkien - to clarify and emphasise this vital distinction.

The can be a conflict between creativity and Christianity - in the sense that being a Christian can be experienced as a constraint and inhibition on creative work. 

This has been experienced especially since the Romantic Era (from the late 1700s) - and some of those geniuses (and others) who were most deeply committed to their creative work (whether in arts or sciences) made 'a religion' from their creative work - took it with the utmost seriousness and made great sacrifices. 

In the 20th century, indeed, it became usual for the greatest creative geniuses to be raised as Christians (or sometimes as Jews) and then to reject Christianity in favour of a kind of 'Genius as Hero' ideology. 

Creativity and Christianity began to be seen as antagonists - since if a genius put his work first it seemed to mean putting Christianity second, which is not to be a Christian at all... 

Yet it was Christianity that sustained the greatest works of genius. And being raised in a religion seems all-but vital to serious creative work; so that when society became thoroughly atheist - creative genius all-but disappeared and is by now undiscerned, disvalued and even suppressed. 

This because without a basis in 'the transcendental'; creativity becomes subordinated to expediency - careerism, money or status seeking etc. 

It seems that unless a genius 'understands' his work to be contributing to divine creation (and this 'understanding is usually implicit) - then he will not give that work the effort and priority which the highest achievement requires. 

So the relationship between Christianity and creativity has become complex. This is because very few people have been raised as serious Christians over the past few generations; spontaneous, un-conscious Christianity is a thing of the past. 

As of 2021 serious Christians are, in effect, adult converts - because in a secular society even serious cradle Christians will need to make at least one (often more) renewed conscious commitments to their faith.  

To be a creative person and to convert to Christianity as an adult can be a significant challenge to creativity. Because when an adult converts he is (nearly always) converting to a particular church or denomination; with a complex framework of rules and expectations. 

Converts are held to a higher standard than cradle church members - and are usually required to make vows and promises of a rigorous and binding nature. 

So the creative Man who becomes a Christian typically finds himself having made a serious commitment to work from-within a detailed and rigorous framework of constraints and expectations. 

This framework of Christian (denominational) practice, doctrine, theology and authority may well interfere with his established creative practices. He may feel his thinking repeatedly bumping-against boundaries - to cross which would seem to take him beyond orthodoxy and obedience. 

He may well feel himself creatively confined - and, at the extreme, may feel safe only when repeating that which has been said before; ringing changes rather than being truly original... 

Consequently, his work may lose its spontaneity, distinctiveness, energy and flow -  it may become second rate, derivative, un-creative.   

I interpret this from the perspective of the changing nature of human consciousness; and that Romanticism ought to usher-in a new way of being Christian that is ultimately based on shared motivation and alignment of creative work, rather than an explicit and external framework of rules. 

The creative Christian (ideally) ought to be working-from, rather than working-towards; working-from the basis of sharing the Christian priority of love. Creating is something that should come from a base of commitment; rather than something that operates inside a framework. 

The hope of Heaven is based upon a commitment to live eternally by love, in Heaven; and to embrace the transformation that is resurrection which makes this possible for Men.

So the Romantic understanding of Heaven is a place where love overflows into creating - a place where our 'work' is co-creating with God; as was the case with primary divine creation when it was the love of God was the cause of Creation in the first place.

 

In other words; Romantic Christianity aims to make genuine, innate and endogenous personal creativity one important way of being a good Christian, a taste of Heaven itself - rather than an incipient source of conflict. 

And this 'works' by aiming at a harmony derived from a basis in love rather than from a set of rule. 

As so often, the loving family provides the best analogy (which is, indeed, more than analogy!); because the family is supposed to attain harmony not primarily by adherence to a framework of practices and rules; but instead from the mutual love of its members. 

Family members are aligned by having the same aims (so they are pointing in the same direction) and then by mutual concern for the other members: a fluid kind of adjustment which is experienced as the voluntary desire to remain in harmony and to help other members in their own loving and creative endeavors.

If creativity is understood in this fashion; then it is indeed optimal from the creative perspective. Instead of Christianity being felt as constraint, it instead provides meaning. 

After all, real creativity is not solipsistic, it is done for the creator alone. Creativity must ultimately be be for others; it needs an 'audience' who will understand, appreciate and use the creative work. 

Romantic Christianity looks towards a world in which everyone is a creator and also audience; and where creator and audience are united by the divine purpose and harmonized in their work by their commitment to love. 

Sir Walter Scott's dates were 1771-1832 - much the same as the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). But if Coleridge stands as an example of how our spiritual life in the West could (and should) have gone towards a fully-integrated Romanic Christianity; Scott is representative of what actually happened to the British culture at large. 

Scott was a very devout Christian - a Presbyterian as a child and Episcopalian as an adult. And he was also a great Romantic - whose influence (both via long narrative poems and dozens of novels; also his widely-read collection of Border Ballads) was international and lasting. 

But the Christianity and Romanticism were kept rigorously separate. It is startling to read in the account of the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, how Scotts assumptions were entirely and unconsciously dedicated to 'explaining away' all the supernatural and prophetic elements of the poem and the author's life. The hypothesis that True Thomas really was a prophet, or really had some kind of an encounter with elves, is not even entertained. 

Scott was, in this respect, entirely an 'Enlightenment' rationalist. And he embodied the duality, the schism, between Christianity and the romantic, which has persisted since - until Christianity has dwindled to very little public significance. 

I mean that magic, mysticism, enchantment, animism and all such - are rationalized and explained away; being both excluded-from, and regarded as hostile-to, Christianity. 

By such maneuvers, Christian life began to be regarded rationally, objectively, sealed off from the whole range of human experience - and became ever more wholly external. The romantic, which was about intense personal experience and gave life meaning at a micro level, was regarded as merely fictional - and psychological. 

A serious Christian like Scott might also be a romantic, but on the assumption that the romantic element was merely a kind of entertainment, a commercial exercise, or an historical document; without reality or relevance for the serious things of life.  

Later - the two split even further apart; so that the archetypal romantic became anti-Christian (as with Byron, or the New Age) and the serious Christians anti-romantic (as with those modern evangelicals who regard Tolkien and CS Lewis as literally demonic). 

The split between Christianity and romanticism is a version of the split between objective and subjective: for serious Christians the faith became 'objective' - i.e. external, public, logical, something to be 'followed' - while Romanticism was merely subjective, and to be explained-away. 

And for those who believed in Romanticism, there was an attempt at thoroughgoing subjectivism/ relativism and living by instinct - which explained-away Christianity along with science and all other attempts at objectivity.  

Consequently, Romanticism and Christianity both became partial and ineffectual. Church Christianity is now almost wholly secular and bureaucratic; Romanticism is quasi-therapeutic, commercial and recreational.

There might be some unconscious integration of the two; for instance, one suspects that Scott had a 'real' interest in the supernatural - that at some level his interest in Thomas the Rhymer was based on the possibility that the supernatural elements might somehow be true... 

But lacking any conscious and explicit acknowledgment and theorization of such an integration; 'modern Man' (since Scott's time) cannot achieve any effective reuniting of inner life. 

It was the project of Rudolf Steiner and then Owen Barfield to provide a conscious and explicit theoretical basis for healing the the subjective-objective, Romantic-Christian split. This, they largely achieved - and our task now is to put the theories into action in our own everyday lives. 

In Romantic Christianity and in Life - the most important thing to be romantic about is metaphysics. What we need, above all, is a Romantic Metaphysics.

What I mean by this is that our fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of Reality, ought to be such that we feel Romantic about them; they should appeal to our imagination, we should love our metaphysics, know it from experience to be beautiful and wonderful. And this is, of course, something that we can only discover for ourselves, from living (intensely) with these beliefs, from using these beliefs in practice in a way that is whole-hearted.

From my experience, since becoming a Christian, finding Romantic Metaphysics is a path which may not lead to the destination immediately. For me it was (broadly speaking) a case of 'third time lucky'.

Firstly I embraced the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics of the traditional Roman Catholic church. I found the process of understanding this to be very exciting and romantic; but once I had understood it (hylomorphism, etc.) then I began to find it dry and abstract - and I could not be whole-hearted about the fundamental assumptions that underlay the system of thinking. The fact is that I regarded these assumptions as arbitrary, and did not love them.

Next I became a Platonist - in association with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This, I found much more Romantic (I already knew quite a bit about Platonism, and had felt drawn to it). The whole idea of the liturgy, the idea of the Orthodox society (Byzantium, Holy Russia) had much to appeal. So this swept me along for several months.

But as I took on board the fundamental assumptions, as I came to understand - I began to feel the infinite gulf between the ideal world of forms which was God's Heaven - and this actual mortal life. The Orthodox ideal of ascetic monasticism, was - even if perfectly realised - merely a pale copy of what was wanted. Indeed, there was no real necessity to mortal life; it would surely have been better to have been born into Heaven - or, as second best, to die and get there ASAP.

Platonism is anti this-mortal-life - its Romanticism is not actual, but displaced to another ideal world, time, place, situation...

Furthermore, the actuality of being Eastern Orthodox in the context of a modern atheistic materialistic Leftist society; with Orthodox churches that were designed for expatriates from other nations, meant that in practice is was just a different kind of church to attend. The daily private practice was not Romantic - but felt bogus and pretentious, and did not yield imaginative fruit. Modern Orthodox life was a very pale imitation of the Byzantine ideal; but even that life had seemed a tragic and unsatisfactory imitation of the abstract timeless perfection of the Heavenly reality.

Romanticism led me into Orthodoxy, and then it led me out again.

My third, and with modifications (eg. from Barfield and Arkle) so-far-final Romantic embrace was Mormon metaphysics.

The difference here was that my Romantic feeling of attraction grew as I discovered more, and as I lived with my earlier imaginations. I took a while before I distinguished between the Mormon metaphysics - for which I felt a spontaneous Romantic love; and the actualities of Mormon religious life in modern Britain - which overall did not attract me.

(There is, I discovered, no actually existing church or denomination or formal religious practice that attracts me Romantically and imaginatively. Therefore, by my Romantic principles, there is none to which I can (or should) commit myself. But the metaphysics of Mormon Christianity has not just proved durable in my life, but has led to a renewing stream of further Romantic intuitions and insights.)

So eventually - the process took about five years - I found a solid ground of Romantic metaphysics to underpin and clarify my Christianity. To recap, the process involved a thoroughgoing and persistent Romanticism; making the Romantic choice then persisting with Romantic evaluations in a serious and exploratory way; until I found solid ground upon-which imagination could stand, and from-which imagination could draw further nourishment on an (apparently) permanent basis.

As an alternative way of conceptualising Romantic Christianity, from that summarised earlier today; there is an approach based on the modern condition and the need for a direct and personal (unmediated) kind of Christianity.

The modern condition is that the Christian tradition is distorted and destroyed, and over-complexified, and layered-upon by so much disinformation; all to such an extent that a typical individual has no way of discovering (short of a prolonged and strenuous quest) what Christianity actually is.

In effect - actual, detectable, accessible Christianity might as well not exist for all the help it is to becoming a Christian. Indeed, it is likely that the culturally dominant 'Christianity' does a great deal more harm than good, in terms of understanding real Christianity.

Assuming (as I do) that this actual world is well 'designed' by God for its purpose - is indeed 'tailored' to the specific needs of you and I and each other person - then the possibility arises that modern Man must become a Christian primarily from his own personal experience. And that God has made this possible for everyone.

In other words, that the kind of Christian we are called to become, is the kind of Christian that a person might become in response to a very simple personal yearning having a direct encounter with the divine.

For Christians, this encounter needs to be one that will lead us to love, believe and follow Jesus through (biological) death and into everlasting Heavenly life beyond.

This means that we ought to be able to learn this from some kind of directly experienced encounter with reality - this encounter would need to be sufficient in and of itself, because the likelihood is that any cultural Christianity would not help, but on the contrary would confuse or contradict it.

This would also mean that the direct experience of knowledge of Jesus would need to be self-validating. (Because culture would not validate it, there could be no cultural 'evidence' for our experience - thus the experience would need to stand-alone and without further 'proof').

This, then, is another 'definition' of Romantic Christianity: that Christianity which any individual could attain to for himself and unaided.

It used to be assumed (taken for granted) among Christians, that the coming of Jesus Christ made the world a better place in some ultimate sense; and that conversion of a person or nation to being Christian did much the same. 

But I regard it as a fact that - spiritually - the world now is much worse than was the world 2000 years ago; because there has never before been so much (and top-down, official, propagandized, mandatory) inversion of true values. 

I regard Christianity as essentially about the next world, not this-world; so its effects on this-world are secondary to changes in attitudes and expectations consequent upon the desire for salvation. It is the desire for salvation - and also the expectation - that constitute the main societal effect of Christianity; and this main effect has manifested very differently among Christians of different types, times and places.  

Standing where we are, in 2023 and in The West; we find a world that has not just turned away from Christianity, but turned against it. 

Like it or not; the societal agendas of Christianity (and the other religions) have been subverted, corrupted... and are now largely subordinated-to, indeed assimilated-into, an international leftist, atheist, materialist ideology. 

A Christian now stands largely alone, or with a handful of companions; in a world where institutions (including churches) are actively net-evil - or else in present danger of becoming-so. 

The fact of Christianity's failure to make the world a better place ought not to surprise anyone whose faith is rooted in the Fourth Gospel - but that has not been the basis of Christianity (which, in practice, is rooted in the Synoptic Gospels, the Epistles, or church theology and tradition). 

When it became a church-focused, church-mediated, religion; Christianity almost-inevitably became primarily social. The church agenda was more often mainly up-front about this-wordly behaviour; and only much more secondarily and remotely about resurrection and Heaven. 

Indeed, Christianity has often become millennialist in its nature; and focused upon this-world being saved and redeemed by a second coming of Jesus Christ - implicitly acknowledging that Jesus only half-succeeded in his mission, and needed to come-back in order to finish the job. 

This, as I say, was partly a consequence of the expectation that Christianity implied that the world - this mortal world - would become a better place: indeed a perfect place. The coming of Jesus from heaven to Earth was taken to mean that a process had-been initiated by which the Earth would (by some combination of gradual and radical change) become Heaven. 

Well, as I said above; not only has this not (yet?) happened after 2000 years - but (IMO) this-world is further from Heaven, than ever before in the history of Mankind. Realistically, therefore, Christianity is now an individual-level religion - essentially 'about' the spiritual relationship between the individual Christian and Jesus Christ... Or else (if society is regarded the index of success) Christianity is a failure, and looks set to become worse. 

Another aspect of the two millennium span since the time of Jesus Christ is that Men have changed from being immersed in their group identities, to being very-much individuals. Insofar as modern Men have group identities, these are chosen (and often changed). 

In the past, Men lived essentially as part of various groups they were born-into or socialized-into; much of their behaviour was spontaneous and driven by unconscious group factors; and their choices were merely amounted to 'take it or leave it', and were very much buried in those identities. 

Indeed, this immersive unconsciousness is probably why a church based Christianity was inevitable 2K years ago. It simply did not make sense (it was not a matter of awareness) to Men of that era, that an individual could and did exist primarily apart from the groups into-which he has been born... And therefore (because he has-chosen) that each Man's religion just-is now his own responsibility. 

Nowadays, this alienated individualist state (sometimes termed alienation) has gone from being the subject of vast comment and discussion, to being simply taken for granted and unavoidable.  

So; these are two great conclusions that I draw from the past 2000 years: 

First that Christianity is not primarily about the world, but about each individual Christian; and second that nowadays (like it or not) we experience ourselves primarily as individuals. 

I said these seem like 'facts' to me; but of course that isn't really accurate: I see them as assumptions that are unavoidable when I am honest with myself.  

And this forms the basis, my foundation, of that way of being a Christian that I (and a few others) term Romantic Christianity. 

The word Ingwaz seems a useful term, that I invented a few years ago, but haven't much used for emphasising that Romanticism is not a static-state of things; but a be-ing, a develop-ing, a perpetual becom-ing.

Ingwaz could be translated as 'process', or that word used instead - but I find that word to be too abstract and to have too many misleading connotations derived from physics. (Also there have been and are 'process theologies of Christianity that are Not what I mean.)

To be a Romantic is to engage in Ingway with respect to reality; that is, one rejects the objective and systematic account of external reality as primary; and begins the business of 're-imagining' it in personal experience.

But Ingwaz is not a means to an end but the end in itself; it does not aim at any final point because it is the participation in divine creation; and creation has no end. So, when applied to Christianity, Ingwaz is the grappling with given aspects - such as scripture, doctrine, creeds, institutions, morals; in order to appropriate them to the distinctive, here-and-now, living individual experience of the Christian.

To be Good, Ingwaz must - of course- be well-motivated; in brief it must be motivated by the desire for truth, beauty and virtue. It must Not, therefore, be motivated by (for example) the desire to adapt Christianity to one's own sexual or political desires, or to the desire for power or pleasure.

But this means that it is an error to look for any fixed and final statement from Ingwaz. It is to be judged on whether the practitioner is succeeding in vitalizing Christianity - firstly in himself, secondly in the reader or onlooker. 

This can be illustrated with poetry. For example William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell is engaged in Ingwaz. e.g.

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plough.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloak.

Blake is engaged in an argument with himself, is hammering out partial statements from inner insights. He is making Christianity live for himself as he composes, for us as we read (assuming we are able to appreciate his work).

So long as we are satisfied with Blake's intent; to then extract dogmatic statements from Blake, and to evaluate him in terms of Christian orthodoxy is both crazy and ultimately self-destructive of real Christianity.

By my understanding, such attitudes from Christians have been a partial but significant cause of the demise of Christianity in the West; since they drive-out net-well-motivated creative Christians, often and tempt them into apostasy. 


If we take Ingwaz as a correct description of Romanticism, we can find Romantic Christianity in some unlikely places; such as the early poetry of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid - who is better known as a highly political and materialist writer, a Communist and Scottish Nationalist who advocated permanent revolution; and who said many hostile things against Christianity generally, and specifically the Scottish Free Kirk brand of his upbringing.

But in his first three volumes of Scots language lyrics of 1925-7 - Sangshaw, Penny Wheep and the epic A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle; which contain by-far his best work - MacD engages in Ingwaz applied to Christianity in most of the most powerful poems and sections.

In a little-known longer-poem from Sangshaw; MacDiarmid engages in an extraordinary, beautiful and inspiring 'cosmic' exploration of God, death and creation. I lack the patience to type in the whole poem, but here are a few stanzas (I've translated a few key words in [square brackets]:

I was as blithe to be alive [happy]
As ony man could be, 
And felt as gin the haill braid warl' [whole broad world]
Were made yince-yirn for me. [especially]

I wot I kept my senses keen, 
I wot I used them weel. 
As God felt when he made the warl'
I aye socht to feel. ...

O I wist it was a bonny warl'
That lies forenenst a' men, [over against all]
But it's naething but a shaddaw-show
To the warl' that I saw then. ...

Wae's me that thocht I kent the warl' [knew]
Wae's me that made a God, 
My senses five and their millions mair
Were like bones beneauth a sod. 

For the world is like a flourishing tree, 
And God is like the sun; 
But they or I to either lie, 
Like deid folk in the grun'. [dead, ground]

There are all kinds of ways that this poem could be criticised from an orthodox Christian position, not least for collapsing the distinction between God's creation and that of a man; the world especially made for the poet; the general pantheistic feel etc. It might be assumed that the 'shadow show' reference was a positive statement of Platonism. The idea that Heaven and Hell are (merely) perspectives on mortal life is also put forward...

Well, this is the crux of what confronts us, here and now and for the past two centuries plus.

Are we to take our deepest convictions from outside, from that dead materialist external world which is what modern Man experiences outside of his own subjectivity? Or are we to make a new synthesis of inner and outer, each for himself, from our own thinking and based on intuition (that is, God within each of us - present because we are his literal children)?

If we are to live by experience in the real world that is God's creation; I believe that we need to engage in Ingwaz, as applied to all aspects of Christianity that we personally find essential; in sequence, perpetually.


Sadly, MacDiarmid was corrupted away from this, by his radicalism and the usual modern combination of sexual and political revolution. The reason was probably that his motives had always been too mixed, and various temptations were too much to resist and were not repented.

McD discarded Christianity as conflicting with sex (and alcoholic intoxication and continual cultural conflict, advocated as sources of vitality) and Communism (advocated on the basis of Lenin and Stalin being more realistic saviours than Christ); and embraced earthly and mortal utopianism as a goal... while simultaneously (paradoxically) asserting that ultimately things would never become any better... while continuing to assert a kind of anti-rational mysticism, but one that was metaphysically without foundation. 

Well, such is life. But there are several artists, writers, philosophers and other culturally creative persons who went through a phase of Romantic Christianity en route to becoming (usually) mainstream materialist Leftists of one or another flavour. JK Rowling is perhaps the best current example.

Yet, their work is available for us to benefit from, if we wish.

Romanticism is very important, indeed inevitable.

Most people regard Romanticism as a reaction to the industrial revolution, or to Enlightenment rationalism - but I regard it as coming from within: as a development of human consciousness. And, as such, part of God's plan for Man.

From the middle 1700s there were early signs (especially in Britain and Germany) of a new consciousness. The invention of the novel by Samuel Richardson, and its rapid and runaway success is a clear example. Romanticism emerged among poets, painters, philosophers, musicians - it was a cultural phenomenon and it has never gone away.

However, most Romanticism is bad, harmful, evil tending; and was and is opposed by traditionalist religious Christians.

A classic story is of a miserable, alienated young man growing up in some kind of strict (often hypocritical) Christian background, enmeshed in 'right wing' attitudes; who seeks more 'life' in terms of extramarital sex (of whatever kind), drugs, crime, and/or radical/ revolutionary politics. Another kind of romanticism favours paganism, and contrasts its naturalness, spontaneity, happiness with the wretchedness of sin-obsessed, negativistic and legalistic Christian churches.

There are many thousands of such stories among novels, movies, TV programmes etc., and new ones emerge all the time. Romanticism of this sort is found in art illustrations, rock and pop music, fashion... just everywhere. This is mainstream Romanticism: typified by sex-politics-intoxication and anti-Christian themes and attitudes.

It is so popular precisely because 'Romanticism taps-into this changed human consciousness; yet it is also a failure. On the one hand mainstream Romanticism cannot be defeated by traditional Christianity because it addresses a need which will not go away; and against it tradition is merely endorsing a life of unavoidable alienation and misery, of boredom and despair. And, anyway, since Romanticism (properly understood) is divinely-driven, Christians should love and embrace it; not fear and fight it.

Yet 250 years and thousands of examples of experience shows us that this mainstream Romanticism is a failure. It leads nowhere better than disillusion or death. It has proved to be helpless against the rise and rise of bureaucracy, and even (via 'transhumanism') feeds-into the advanced plan to make people into robots in a totalitarian machine.

It is this reasoning  that lies behind my advocacy of Romantic Christianity - the principles, in two words - are the inevitability of Romanticism and the truth of Christianity.

Without Christianity, Romanticism is merely psychotherapy by another name, and psychotherapy doesn't work. But without Romanticism Christianity will be undesirable.

Put the two together, however, and we get the best of both worlds: Romanticism rooted in truth, meaning, purpose and the reality of relationships with a loving God and each other; a hope-full Christianity that successfully addresses alienation and despair, and potentially motivates, energises and en-courages us.

The sexual revolution currently does sterling work in maintaining the totalitarian bureaucracy; mainly as a fantasy, but also as an actuality (being bound-up with travel and intoxication, the other great fantasy self-manipulations).

This is another reason why Romantic Christianity is what-we-need. When Christianity is bureaucratic, it is just like 'work' - which people hate (even as they clamour for ever more of it). In contrast, Romantic Christianity is individual - each must 'do it' for himself; because no current institution or group will be encouraging him.

Indeed, whenever some modern group does appear to be encouraging this, it is invariably a fake or a deception - as with the 1960s counterculture embrace of William Blake. What was actually on offer then (and now) was Blake minus Christ, which made a decisive and deadly difference.

Or sometimes there is Christianity without Romanticism - which sometimes entails a passive, externally-applied pseudo-Romanticism; internal conformity to a pre-determined and externally-defined 'mass Romanticism'.

Of course, Romantic Christianity is not for the masses but only for geniuses - which may sound to be of minority interest only... since not many people consider themselves to be geniuses; whther actual or potential. Yet - when understood - genius is seen to be the thinking of the real self; and everybody has a real self and everybody can think from it - potentially. So we ought all to conisder ourselves potential geniuses, and becoming such to be our destiny...

Because the creativity of genius is Not in remarkable and admired discoveries or artworks; but in direct participation with created reality, which is the consequence of thinking from the real self.

And direct participation in the ongoing work of creation can happen only when the awakening real self is aligned with the divine - so it is always Good.

But at the same time difficult.

On the other hand, we can't be prevented from doing it; ultimately we can only prevent our-selves.

Which means stopping-preventing-ourselves - which prevention is the prevailing situation.

And this active stopping is the most radical and personally transformative act that can be imagined (: better than the 50 year-old sexual revolution - which has Very Obviously Failed...).

We have, in The West, experienced a couple of centuries of high level critique and rejection of Christianity - perhaps most famously/ influentially by Nietzsche, who blamed in-practice Christianity for that attitude of passivity, guilt, self-hatred, and covert suicide that now dominates The West (even though it is several generations since Christianity was excluded from all significant public discourse in The West). 

The implication is that either we go back to pre-modern 'traditional' Christianity - along with everything that might entail such as monarchy, top-down rule by the church, agrarian societies etc. 

Or else we re-make the philosophy of Christianity - which entails making a distinction between actual Christianity and all traditional attempts to describe, explain, instantiate and implement it. It means re-examining the assumptions of that Greek-Roman philosophy within-which traditional Christianity is explained. It means re-examining the assumption that Christianity be church-led and church-controlled. Re-examining the usually historical understanding of Christianity; the several assumptions underling the assertion of of the primacy of scripture; and very idea of tradition itself...

In other words; the choices are traditional Christianity (in some version or another) and re-making the medieval world; or else Romantic Christianity (in one form or another) and using this as the basis of an unknown and unknowable future. 

But if we conclude that the traditional path is both (overall) undesirable and (actually) impossible* - then there is only one choice: Romantic Christianity. 

*I shall not attempt to persuade anybody of this; but I tried for several years to think through the implications - honestly - and found the project to be literally impossible; as well as harmful to embark upon. This despite my being perfectly clear that the Medieval Traditional world was objectively better - more God-aligned, more good, more motivated to be in accord with divine creation than is the world in 2021. Much better. Until you understand how these two convictions (better - and also bad/ impossible) are simultaneously possible, then you do not understand the point I am making (whether or not you agree with it is another matter!)

[Jeremy]: Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical, and less prosaic, if you like.

From The Notion Club Papers, by JRR Tolkien.

It is often said that nostalgia is merely a selective memory of the past "seen through rose-tinted spectacles"; but that ignores the sometimes different quality of the past, which is captured in the quotation above. 

In other words, we mythologize our past - and the past of our tribe, culture, nation - not by leaving-out the bad stuff, but because the past actually was "more poetical, less prosaic". 

For instance; when I look back on my education, my working years, or my engagement with literature and music; I perceive a trajectory from the somewhat mythic and poetic to the historical and mundane, which was substantially to do with how I experienced life - and not just a product of the retrospectoscope through which I view them. 

And those periods of my life when, for whatever reason, my life lacked this mytho-poetic quality, lacked "shapeliness"; I both knew at the time, and recall it now. In other words, I am not nostalgic for the mundane times - no matter how 'worldly-successful' or 'pleasurable' they may have been or seemed at the time. 

And I have read enough first-person contemporary accounts of the past (memoirs, diaries, letters etc) to realize that things seemed different then from how they seem to us now. 

Regular readers will be familiar with my favoured explanation of the development of Man's consciousness as understood by Rudolf Steiner and (especially) Owen Barfield; such that both our individual development and the development of (at least Western) societies has been affected by a divine-purposive change in Men's consciousness (both individually, and on average through time).

The past has a different - more mythical and poetic - quality, because we ourselves, or past men, had a different relationship with each other and the world; such that there was not then the same boundary as we now experience between us and them, inner and outer, subjective and objective, the individual and his culture or environment. Nor the same boundary between Men on the one hand, and animals, plants and landscape. 

Then we were - to a significant extent - immersed-in all these other things and reality was different for us-as-we-were-then differently from us-as-we-are-now. And it is this immersion that distinguishes myth from history. 

I am one of those people who regard this matter as of central importance to my life, and life-in-general; and who desire to live again in a more poetic and mythic way.

In other words, I am A Romantic - and have been since my early teens (although there have been significant phases when I fought this trait of mine as strenuously as I knew how). 

It was, indeed, this Romanticism that kept me away from the truth of Christianity for so long; because Christianity-as-is does not (or does not adequately) address this problem of Romanticism - indeed, some Christian Churches and theologies make matters even worse from the point of view of draining the 'magic' from life and history.  

And it is this which drove me to seek, discover, and co-create this Romantic Christianity which I - and a few others - are expounding. Of course I regard Romantic Christianity as True-er and Superior-to other ways of Christianity - but I would not have had the long term drive to seek/ discover/ create Romantic Christianity if it had not been for the intractable trait of Romanticism in myself; and my dissatisfaction with any world-view, religion or ideology that denied it. 

In response to some e-mail communications from Alan Roebuck (of The Orthosphere blog) I will here try to provide a concise summary of my core reason for being a Romantic Christian; and, in the process (and speaking for myself), an attempted definition of what Romantic Christianity might be. 

My underpinning conviction is that God is the creator of reality, and is loving of each and every man and woman in the same qualitative way as the most ideal parents in an ideal family. 

(i.e. God the creator is our Loving Father and Mother.)

The purpose behind creation is that Men be given the chance to become as God in divine stature (i.e. in love and creative power). The hope that as many as possible mortal Men will choose to become resurrected and immortal Men, and choose to dwell with God in Heaven as a loving divine family; working with God on eternal his divine creating. 

Romantic Christianity is based on the conviction that such a God would never leave any of his children bereft of sufficient guidance and motivation for them to make that choice of resurrected life eternal and to live on earth such as to become more divine in that eternal life.

This principle of "None Left Bereft" implies, negatively, that sufficient guidance would not be allowed to depend on a particular child-of-God's access to a particular church, a particular book (The Bible), particular traditions, or any other of the specifics of human mortal life. 

All of these sources of guidance are too uncertain, not universally available; and too open to both corruption, distortion and misunderstanding. Therefore: God would not rely-upon such mechanisms. 

Positively; it therefore seems certain to me that God has created this world and our lives such that we all have direct access to the knowledge - the guidance and motivation - which we need for salvation and theosis.  

Direct access means direct divine guidance from God ('direct' meaning 'mind to mind', not depending on language; that guidance will 'appear in our thinking' -i.e. 'intuition'); and this external guidance is in addition to the fact that - as sons and daughters of God - we all have a divine self; a core divine nature that enables us to receive and understand this directly-transmitted guidance. 

My understanding of Romantic Christianity is that it is based on a conviction that this direct divine guidance (supplemented by that which is divine in each Man) ought-to-be the basis of every Man's Christianity as of 2021 (although this was not always true in the past, in some places). 

I could continue explaining - but I shall keep it brief; and I think there is probably enough there.