Bradley Jersak, Out of the Embers: Faith After The Great Deconstruction (Whitaker House, 2022)                       

Out of the Embers, like the perennial wise and far-seeing Phoenix, knows the meaning of going to places of death and disappointment, suffering and sadness, and yet, from such places, the resurrection and tears of the Phoenix, brings healing to all whose tears touch the skin of their souls. In short, from the embers and ashes of the great deconstruction, a wise, mature and resurrected life is born and offers tears and discerning insights to others.

Out of the Embers is divided into 3 sections, each section an invitation to journey into the next, deconstruction birthing reconstruction and renovation in the larger culture wars: Part I: Memoirs: Trauma, Purgation, and Liberation, Part II: Memos: Seven Sleepers of Deconstruction and Part III: Provocations: Out of the Embers –Faith after Freefall. 

Part I, as the title suggests, has a personal and confessional bent to it, Brad relating and telling his journey, his journey having much overlap with many who were birthed in varied forms of a conservative evangelical ethos but finding such a family soul suffocating and tomb-like. Needless to say, Brad’s journey does mirror and reflect the initial faith journey of many but such a beginning does need to be grown beyond if minimal depth and thoughtfulness are to be part of the next steps of the pilgrimage through time—in short, such beginnings do need to be critically deconstructed. But, who might be heard, trusted, and consulted in such a needful deconstruction?

Part II, in a creative and engaged manner, draws from an ancient myth of the seven sleepers, such sleepers awakening to bring light and life to dark and troubling times. Brad has called forth seven significant philosophers of the past to aid in the deconstruction process: Moses (and his apophatic line and linage as a means of deconstructing ways of thinking and being that are too certain types of interpretive idolatry), Plato, Voltaire, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Weil-Camus. There are two sections dedicated to Nietzsche and three sections heeding the challenging insights of Dostoevsky. Each of these thinkers-activists are rigorous and no-nonsense master of deconstruction: they have little time or patience for religious silliness or thinness. I was fortunate, when doing my Ph.D., to do translations of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra and trekked many of the trails Nietzsche did from his home in Sils Maria in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland (there is a scholars in residence program at Nietzsche’s home in Sils). I have also, at the University I have taught for almost 35 years, hosted day-long symposiums on Russian writers, including Dostoevsky—Brad has chosen wisely and well from his seven sleepers. Part II is the longest section of the book and is worthy of many a meditative read—deconstruction and reconstruction ever the challenging and lived tension.

Part III reflects on various and needful approaches of provocation, the emergence, phoenix-like, out of the embers, faith after a painful and for many years erratic and confusing freefalls. Each of the sections in provocations is worth lingering at as pointers to the deeper, fuller and resurrected journey—such is “revenants”. The future way forward is more than hinted at in this final section of Out of the Embers—do read and inwardly digest.

Each of us, probably, has 5-10 books on our shelf as keepers if told we could only take so many to a deserted Island. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse is in my top 5. The Glass Bead Game is about a community of intellectuals (Castalians) who live in the midst of cultural chaos and fragmentation, shallow journalism, war, multiple amusements and diversions and such Castalians attempt to raise the level of cultural and civilizational thought to a higher and fuller level. The low culture, pop culture, deconstructionist and mediocre culture of the time had led to nihilism, cynicism and tribalism. The battle of ideas and identity waged vigorously at many levels. The head of the order, Magister Ludi, understood the need for grappling with ideas at the highest level, but he realized that those who separated the struggle for the best that had been thought and said from engagement with the public and political realm were themselves in an enclosed matrix of sorts. I have taught in the area of political philosophy most of my teaching vocation and I have often been somewhat concerned about how the glass bead game of ideas, theology, exegesis, liturgy etc is often disengaged from political thought, substantive political theology, political parties, political activism and policy. When this occurs, a subtler form of gnosticism emerges, ideas versus history, theology-philosophy versus politics etc. In short, in this superb book by Brad, I would have liked to see some serious thinking on how “faith after the great deconstruction” faces into the head winds of political philosophy, political theology, political parties, activism and party policies—cynicism and skepticism in these areas is short-sighted and counterproductive. Some of the seven sleepers Brad draws from certainly did rigorous political probes—more attention to these probes might have enriched the book yet further.

In sum, Out of the Embers is a beauty and bounty of tome—more pondering on how the glass bead game of ideas connects with the challenges of public and political life would yet have made for a fuller way of embodying a form of political faith after the serious limitations of the great deconstruction.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart