But supernatural theism, especially since the 1600s, has dominated popular Christianity. The belief that there is a parentlike all-powerful being who can protect and rescue us has always been attractive—even as it can be terrifying when God’s wrath is emphasized. But in the 1600s, something new happened; namely, the birth of modern ways of knowing essentially removed the sacred from the world. What happened has been called “the disenchantment of nature”: God, the sacred, was removed from the world. It has also been called “the domestication of transcendence,” namely, the notion that the word
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