Participation in Romantic Christianity

I have found Owen Barfield's concept of "participation" - as expounded in Saving the Appearances - to be a deep and fertile insight - a gift that keeps giving, and demanding! 

This affected me so strongly because I had already recognized "alienation" as the distinctive problem of modern Man (and, especially, of me personally); and the driven-need to "cure" (or, in practice, temporarily alleviate or forget) felt-alienation, to be a core and increasing motivator of human life in our current civilization.   

In particular; I have found it necessary repeatedly to explore the relationship between participation and Christianity - having become aware that a great deal of mainstream Christianity is strongly alienating - in just in practice, but also in theory (which makes the defect incurable, without theological change).

It is important to realize that participation is the truth and reality of creation. It is not an optional extra, not merely a psychological feeling; but participation is intrinsic and unavoidable. 

Yet we modern Men are mostly unaware of the actuality of our own participation - and have erected an incoherent pretence of an external objectivity, something that supposedly exists without our consciousness, and to which we must conform - like it or not. 

So our task, as alienated modern Men, is not really to "seek participation" as such (although that is a shorthand for the process) - because participation Just Is - but to seek consciousness of the reality of our own ongoing participation. 

Mainstream Christianity often encourages participation of certain types, in specified circumstances...

For example, during prayer the person praying is encouraged to participate in a two-way and mutual communication. Something similar applies to participation in Holy Communion; or any other of the sacred rituals. 

On the other hand; the context of prayer is presented as happening in a context of objective and external fact - and something in which participation has no role. Thus; if a prayer is directed at God, then according to mainstream theology this is not a participating relationship, because God is infinitely "other", without any necessary role for human (or other) consciousness. 

The Christian is told the nature of God, creation, reality - how things work; what is appropriate ritual and symbol; what is real scripture and what it means etc... and the Christian's job is first and foremost and mandatorily to accept these "factual" (unparticipated) descriptions. 

Only after A Lot of objective, external and not-participated descriptions have been accepted, is the mainstream Christian supposed to work on participating in them. 

And, of course, such participation carries with it a more-or-less detailed expectation of what is allowed to come-out from the attempt...

In other words; the "mystical" Christian who desires participation, has already been told The Answer! 

The mainstream Christian who seeks conscious participation has been told what he will find in his mystical participation, and what it means - as a matter of objective truth; so that the seeking for participation is regarded as secondary, subjective-essentially; and an "optional extra" to the "realities" of Christianity that are objective, external - and matters about which our personal experience is irrelevant. 

Because I regard participation as necessary and intrinsic to the human condition; I regard this to be a fatal flaw in mainstream Christianity... Because participation is an unavoidable reality, thus our un-consciousness of it (an unconsciousness that is encouraged and enforced by mainstream Christianity) must be an error or an untruth. 

In sum: Seeking conscious participation in reality, including divine realities, is not some kind of optional or esoteric activity for Christians; on the contrary, it is a matter of working towards what Christianity needs to be and must become - if it is to be motivating and truthful.