Practicing Christians, Practical Atheists: How Cultural Liturgies and Everyday Social Practices Shape the Christian Life
Davignon, Phil. Practicing Christians, Practical Atheists: How Cultural Liturgies and Everyday Social Practices Shape the Christian Life. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2023. Pp. 140. $22.00.
Practicing Christians, Practical Atheists: How Cultural Liturgies and Everyday Social Practices Shape the Christian Life builds upon the important work of Charles Taylor and James K. A. Smith, further informed by Pope John Paul II and Catholic theologian David Schindler, to offer a “comprehensive assessment of how modern forms of culture—embedded in thin (everyday) and thick (cultural liturgies) social practices—influence Christians who are striving to live faithfully in today’s age” (xvi).
Union University sociologist Davignon outlines a four-part argument in the Introduction that reveals the purpose and direction of the volume:
1. This book grounds its analysis on John Paul II’s theological assessment of modern culture, which he criticized as a “culture of death.”
2. This book employs sociological theories of culture to reveal how culture shapes people’s dispositions, behavior, and vision of reality within the social practices of everyday life.
3. This book provides a clear vision of how modern society and culture are secularizing.
4. This book highlights the challenge of discipleship and formation in the modern age. (xvii-xviii)
The best summary of Davignon’s aim is found at the end of the Introduction:
“Being a Christian involves more than believing in God and attending church but coming to embody the dispositions and virtues of the Christian life. What sort of social and cultural infrastructure is needed to sustain such a life? Resisting the deforming influence of the culture of death will require the creation and revival of institutions and practices that offer the kind of daily, embodied formation necessary for life in Christ (chapter 8)” (xviii).
The opening chapter is worth the price of the book and serves as the keystone for the remaining chapters that address areas of life. Thus, I will deal with it more closely here. Davignon begins with an insightful diagnosis of the relationship between religion, culture, and secularization. While relying on insights from Charles Taylor, Davignon insists that Taylor’s diagnosis remains limited “because he prioritizes the role of ideas by emphasizing the fact that people cannot attain religious certainty when they live within an ‘immanent frame’” (8). The Christian faith, Davignon argues, “is more than maintaining beliefs, attending church, or generic transformation, despite a lack of certainty….at the heart of the Christian life is what Scripture refers to as metanoia—the grace-empowered transformation and renewal of one’s mind and heart by turning away from sin” (8). As such, he calls us to understand our religious faith as virtue formation not merely beliefs and activities.
Davignon then addresses “The Culture of Death and Practical Atheism” by inviting Pope John Paul II and David L. Schindler into the conversation. Leaning on Schindler’s holistic and sacramental view of reality, Davignon reminds the reader that “the goal of life is ‘to see all of reality as made in the image of the trinitarian God revealed in Jesus Christ, hence the image of the Logos who is (eucharistic) love; that we thereby help to draw out of creation, out of every last fiber of every being in the cosmos, its meaning or order as a creature destined, in and though this love, to glorify the Father’” (15).
With this wide-angle approach, Davignon rightly rejects any notion of religious neutrality in cultural expression or human activity, insisting that “When God is pushed to the margins, the desires and autonomy of individuals become the basis of social order. This does not produce a society that is religiously neutral, but one that promotes a vision of human life that is often at adds with a Christian vision of goodness” (16).
This links to John Paul II’s description of modern society as a “culture of death,” the root of which is a “loss of contact with God’s wise design.” Drawing further from John Paul II, Davignon writes, “When people lose their sense of God they begin ‘living as if God did not exist,’ as their ‘quality of life is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions—interpersonal, spiritual and religious—of existence’” (17). This is why the “most serious threat to Christianity in the modern age is not overt atheism, but practical atheism; Christians living as if God does not exist” (19).
Chapters two through five, then, consider Education, Work, Consumption, Leisure, and Rest, with a close eye toward how the current “culture of death” promotes values and practices that form people toward sin and away from Christian virtue and goodness. As an educator who writes and teaches on work and vocation, as well as serving as a pastor, I found these chapters insightful and engaging, offering a fresh perspective on familiar conversations and cultural critiques.
Specifically, in chapter four on “Consumption,” Davignon’s Table 1 compares “The Eucharist vs. Anti-Eucharistic Consumer Culture” (61) is powerful side-by-side display of how culture opposes and deforms what the Eucharist promotes in God’s people. Additionally, in Chapter five, “Leisure and Rest” Davignon recommends the monastic practice of “stability” to combat acedia (sloth). In a culture where relocation is easy and shallow spirituality is prevalent “…Christians must recognize the wisdom of rooting in a specific place, with specific people, allowing them to slowly cultivate a prayerful attentiveness to God and others that would not be possible if they continually flee to more desirable circumstances” (77).
Chapter six summarizes chapters two through five and demonstrates how even the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love can become counterfeit virtues in a culture of death. Chapters seven and eight close the volume by offering an assessment and approach to evangelism and discipleship, with chapter eight focusing especially on “The True Politics of the Church.” By “politics” Davignon is referring to the “community” of believers, the “body politic” of Christians governed first by the Kingdom of God and do well to unite around the vision and hope of that Kingdom. This critical point is resonant with Luke Bretherton’s Christ and the Common Life (Eerdmans, 2022). Engagement with Bretherton would strengthen the chapter. While admitting there is “no utopian solution” (119), Davignon calls Christians to reject the “disembedded and disembodied” mode of existence, embrace a congregation life and community “that is founded on the kinds of daily practices that can form Christians in embodied dispositions to offset the secularizing tendencies of modern life” (120-121), and live a life that is fundamentally “for” the world as God intended.
By way of brief reflection, the greatest strength of Davignon’s book is less its brand-new insights into modern culture, and more its fresh synthesis and analysis from a thoughtful Christian sociological perspective on everyday life. I found the opening chapter to be the strongest and most thought provoking as it underscored the seriousness of “practical atheism” at a level I had not previously considered. As professor and pastor, Davignon’s work will ring loud and long in my ears, and will doubtless appear in my teaching, preaching, and writing for years to come.
Benjamin T. Quinn
Associate Professor of Theology and History of Ideas , Associate Director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture | Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary / The College at Southeastern