October 18

Henri Bergson and Isaac Jogues

Author

David Barnhart
October 18, 2025

Art deco bird on a Birmingham building, 2016. Own photo.

Today is the birthday, in 1859, of Henri Bergson, French philosopher and Nobel laureate in literature. His writing touched on the human experience of time, free will, and religion, and he inspired the pragmatists and psychologist William James. He was a Jew who considered converting to Catholicism, but stood in solidarity with his Jewish community when the Nazis invaded Paris. 

Today marks the death of Isaac Jogues, in 1646, a French Jesuit priest and one of the Canadian Martyrs (whose feast day is tomorrow). He was a missionary to the Huron and Algonquian people, but as relations between settlers and indigenous people deteriorated, he was captured by the Mohawk nation and tortured, losing several fingers. Though he managed to escape captivity after more than a year, he was determined to return to missionary work and was killed. 

Reflection: 

Henri Bergson wrote: 

“Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually.”

I was a participant in a study of psilocybin and mystical experience back in 2018. Much of the research into psychedelics has been premised on the idea that all religions share a mystical core. I am skeptical of this notion, but I find Bergson’s language helpful because I think there is a dance between what Catherine Albanese calls “ordinary” and “extraordinary” religion. 

Regarding Isaac Jogues, his and other missionaries’ martyrdom is a difficult point in modern public theology. As a Christian I take seriously both the call of Christ to make disciples of all nations (or “people groups”) and the social justice work of decolonization. There are plenty of people who believe the work of missions and the work of decolonization are mutually exclusive, and missionaries have often been the leading edge of violent settler-colonial activity. This is not limited to foreign missions; today in urban settings, suburban churches start missions in neighborhoods which their wealthy members intend to gentrify. I have sat in mega-church worship services where they publicly celebrate replacing the population of a neighborhood.

But Jesus’s words to his disciples were not made by the leader of a dominant social movement intent on colonizing the world. His words were to a minority movement of nonviolent disciples to spread an inclusive, peace-and-justice-oriented community. The missionaries I have known embody this concept. 

Prayer: God, save our world from human-made destruction by turning us toward peace. Amen.