Sublime

connections,

The pastor’s job was to give order and protection from the constant flood of enchantment. It was a world drowning with meaning because it was a world soaked in divine action.

But the pastor can, as a primary element of his vocation, help his people be open to God arriving, even in his immanent frame.

What makes the pastoral (or better, the ministerial) remain significant, even up against these transitions, is its ability to host an encounter with personhood. It appears, both in lived experience and the tradition, that divine action comes in and through personhood.

To affirm that time may have some sacred weight is to risk the need to slow down the drive toward acceleration and growth.

work of the people.

Taylor, who affirms the genius of Durkheim but turns him against himself, shows with this triad how the social function of religion adds to the opaqueness of divine action.

it also opens up a problem that we feel more acutely in our time. When the pastor is layman-ized and one of us, it becomes much harder for her to call attention to divine action.