The chief enemies of a culture based on invitation and repair are, in general terms, Powers and Demons. The Powers are, as St. Paul teaches in his letters, the vast and typically impersonal – or, more accurately, transpersonal – forces that direct the general course of this broken world. Demons are the Powers’ malicious agents that manifest themselves in the behavior of human beings. All those people obsessively jacking one another up online, filling their allies with fear and assaulting their enemies? They are driven by Demons. And I’m not sure you would believe quite how literally I mean that.

But the Demons are the agents of the Powers. As I have said in another context, white supremacy is a Power. Surveillance capitalism is a power. Most forms of nationalism, perhaps as opposed to patriotism, are Powers. They are rival sovereignties to God.

I have written a bit about Powers here, and about demons here.

At this stage of my project I am simply laying out what I think will be the major categories for developing a theory of culture, which I will later channel into a theology of culture. But I want to signal even at this point that, at some point along the way, I have to articulate the demonology. Every serious account of culture needs a demonology.