‘The Familiar Stranger’ Reintroduces A Familiar Debate About The Holy Spirit
(REVIEW) In times of perceived decline, people search for answers on how to reverse it. Many in the church and the Western world view Christianity and Western civilization as being in cultural retreat. One of the proposed solutions is "re-enchantment.”
“Re-enchantment” (a concept put forward by authors like Rod Dreher in “Living in Wonder,” Charles Taylor in “Cosmic Connections” and podcasters like Justin Brierley with his “Re-Enchanting” podcast) is the idea of rolling back the Enlightenment’s rationalist posture and re-establishing spiritual experiences as legitimate ways of interpreting the world — faith included.
For “re-enchanters,” when we learned that phenomena like lightning weren’t divine wrath but natural occurrences explained by electricity (which could be countered with lightning rods), we mistakenly decided to interpret everything through this purely rational lens. As a result, we lost the sense of God’s presence in our everyday lives. This rationalist shift, they argue, has made our faith — along with our experience of the world— feel lifeless and dead.
To restore meaning, we must find ways to reintroduce spiritual experience. Pastor and author Tyler Staton’s “The Familiar Stranger: (Re)Introducing the Holy Spirit to Those in Search of an Experiential Spirituality” fits neatly into this trend. Staton argues that the church has lost its way by losing touch with the Holy Spirit, having focused too much on rationalism and too little on experiencing God — the Holy Spirit's domain (he refers to the Holy Spirit as "the experiential agent of the Trinitarian God”).
Drawing on Scripture, personal anecdotes, and the insights of theologians and psychologists, Staton advocates for a deeper personal relationship with the Holy Spirit to make our faith real and life-giving again. In fact, Staton’s new book makes a compelling case for placing the Holy Spirit at the center of Christian life. Unfortunately, much of what it says also validates the fears of those skeptical about spirit-filled theology.
This is a topic I’m deeply interested in. I’m often wary of people pushing for a stronger focus on the Holy Spirit because I’ve seen many confuse the spirit’s work with their own emotions, often with harmful results. This puts me in the “suspicious” camp Staton describes. However, I’ve also seen the positive side: I’ve witnessed how encountering God’s spirit can help people trust their intuitions, leading them to better minister to others' emotional needs. Being open to the miraculous can also help bring real healing. So, I’m drawn to voices that offer answers for keeping the positive aspects while minimizing the negative.
Staton is at his strongest when he shows the benefits of embracing emotional experiences as holy and redemptive parts of the Christian life. Some of the most convincing sections of the book include the stories of people whose lives were changed for the better through personal, spirit-led encounters. For instance, a man who weeps after someone interprets the meaning of his dream, and a woman who discovers her life’s mission through a prophetic word from another. In another example, someone’s attempts to heal others result in what seems like miraculous healing.
He also makes a compelling case from the New Testament: If it emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit for believers, why do modern Christians focus on Him so little? Why do we see so little difference between the spiritual lives of Christians and non-Christians — at least none that can’t be explained psychologically by religious practices, as David DeSteno argues in “How God Works?”
However, when Staton describes how the Holy Spirit interacts with us, I find little that distinguishes it from intuition or emotion. He describes it as providing us with “experiences” through “imagination” and making God feel “personal.” He contrasts this with rational, logical, head-based approaches to God. The way Staton advises us to hear from God — by acting on our feelings and seeing how they work out — mirrors how we learn to follow our intuition. In fact, his critique of the Western church for being too analytical and not open enough to experience is strikingly similar to the secular critique Iain McGilchrist makes of the Western world, where we’ve abandoned “right-brain” thinking in favor of “left-brain” thinking.
If Staton were simply making the case that we need to reintegrate both right-brain and left-brain thinking into our faith, that would be one thing. But he claims more than that. He argues that, as Christian believers, we have access to something nonbelievers do not. Yet, none of his stories describe experiences that my highly intuitive secular friends don’t also have.
Much of the advice Staton offers inadvertently validates the concerns that “suspicious” people like me have about the movement. For instance, he brushes off worries that we might confuse our imagination with God’s voice, claiming that God speaks to us through our imagination. Yet Scripture condemns those who speak from their own imagination instead of God’s word (Jeremiah 23:16-21). If it’s your intuition, it can be balanced by logic. But if it’s God, it must be obeyed.
He suggests that we train ourselves to recognize God’s voice by listening to various voices (as long as they don’t violate Scripture) and seeing the results. Yet, he admits elsewhere that sometimes following the Holy Spirit’s leading can result in outcomes that seem to contradict the word you received. But even then, we are to obey the voice and follow it.
This is precisely the kind of reasoning that has led to disaster for people I know and love. It’s the same logic used by those who read horoscopes or engage in "manifesting" their futures. Studies show that astrology has no more predictive power than chance, and the belief in “manifesting” (for example, that by believing in a desired future, you can cause it to happen) has no impact on whether that future comes to pass. Yet, people continue to believe because they can always find ways to explain away the discrepancies.
I’m sure some will accuse me of being like Nicodemus, as Staton describes him in the book: That I’m demanding all the answers before I engage in the experience, and that this is holding me back. But it’s actually the opposite. I’ve experienced what Staton describes and have seen the bad fruits. Before I partake in those fruits again, I need to understand why this tree is different. So far, it doesn’t seem to be.
This is actually a very biblical approach. As scholar Dr. Dru Johnson noted on my “Overthinkers” podcast, many of the so-called “prophets” in ancient Israel would claim to interpret dreams and predict the future, but they never saw any missteps as invalidating their methods. The biblical God, however, introduced the idea of testing prophetic claims, a requirement that eventually contributed to the rise of the scientific revolution.
As someone who grew up evangelical-adjacent, it’s also hard for me to take seriously the claim that evangelicals are too “head-knowledge” oriented and not emotionally engaged enough. Evangelicals are often criticized for being anti-intellectual and overly emotional, which is the subject of books like “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and Life in the Negative World.” Evangelicals are vastly underrepresented in academia, which is why many of our intellectuals come from the Catholic tradition. A recent study showed that American Christians struggle to accurately describe Christian worldviews and how they apply to everyday situations. This makes me question whether the problem is really too much head knowledge.
Staton is right that we need to integrate our emotions with our thinking, and that we do this within a community that upholds good doctrine and practices their faith. But this suggests that what we need to do right now is shore up our doctrine. That will make our intuitions more trustworthy and make it safer to follow them.
The irony? People are returning to Christianity, and they’re doing so because of intellectuals. Gen Z men, as an example, are returning to church in greater numbers than previous generations, and they’re doing it because intellectuals like Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson are making persuasive intellectual cases for faith online. This should make us pause and consider whether we should be moving away from the intellectual side of the faith in favor of the emotional side.
As a film critic, one of the most telling parts of Staton’s book was the story he told from David Brooks. Brooks mentioned that, as a film critic, he initially got into film because he loved it, but as he used his analytical mind to critique films, it started to get in the way of enjoying them. That hasn’t been my experience. Analyzing films gives me more joy, not less. The same goes for my faith.
Staton deserves credit for highlighting the importance of the Holy Spirit and encouraging us to experience our relationship with God rather than merely think about it. If the book had offered better practical advice on how to live this out, it could have been a must-read.
“The Familiar Stranger: (Re)Introducing the Holy Spirit to Those in Search of an Experiential Spirituality” will be available for sale on Jan. 28 wherever books are sold.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.