Curious Christian

I think part of the problem with discussing new spiritualities with Christian leaders is that the majority lack the breadth of experience and cognitive tools to perceive just how ubiquitous the influence of new spiritualities really are:

Three common misconceptions many Christians buy into:

1. That increasing secularism equates to decreasing interest in God
2. That affirmation of Jesus divinity equates to monotheistic belief
3. That religion is based around theology

So when Christian leaders read statistics along the lines that 80% of Australians profess a belief in God, that 75% or so identify themselves with a Christian denomination, that 65% or so believe in the divinity of Christ, but only 8% or so attend church weekly, they draw the apparently logical (but faulty) conclusion that most Australians are basically monotheistic, nominal Christians, who have drifted away from an interest in church and God because they find it booring. Old style church can’t compete with the experience economy and the solution is to sex up the experience with better music.

But if you dig deeper, the fallacy of such thinking becomes more apparent.

Firstly, while Australians are becoming less ‘religious’ they are taking to ‘spirituality’ like never before. What we are really seeing is an explosion of secularised spirituality, of irreligious spirituality, that defies the conventions that the survey statistics were designed to measure. Secularisation, rather than ushering in the death of religion, has ushered in its de-institutionalisation, its commodification. The proof is in the book sales. I’ll keep saying it – Da Vinci Code! We are seeing a shift from formal religion to folk religion. If you think ‘secularised spirituality’ is an oxymoron, then its going to remain invisible to you.

Secondly, while most Australians retain a residual love for Jesus, that doesn’t make them nominal Christians any more than my residual affections for the Buddha make me a nominal Buddhist. Even many hard core Wiccans I know would happily affirm the divinity of Jesus. They would also however affirm the divinity of Diana, Kali, Pan, Mary, Hecete, and a host of others. See, thats the challenge of pantheism, the issue is not “is Jesus divine?”, it is “how can you tell me any of these gods/goddesses are not divine also? They’re all manifestations of Divinity aren’t they?” If witches, who consciously distance themselves from Christianity, can say that then should you be suprised that fluffy do-it-yourself seekers can too? I say this as one of a select group of Christians who have converted directly out of this paradigm without the secondary conversion into modernism. Monotheists are the ones starting to look strange these days! The pantheist worldview used to be fringe but now its increasingly mainstream, now its Oprah. They problem with missions in this environment is that convincing people that Jesus is divine doesn’t automatically make them Christians! All they may be doing is adding him to their religious shopping cart. How prevalent is pantheism? Its hard to judge, but there are some indicators. I’ll pick one – 35% of Australians believe in reincarnation. If you think all people who say Jesus is God are Christians by definition, a lot of this is going to remain invisible to you.

Thirdly, most religions aren’t centred around theology, most are centred around ritual, around praxis. Lets stop projecting western Christian understandings onto other traditions – then you might see further. I can’t recall the number of times Christians have looked at me quizzically when I affirmed that Yoga is a spiritual practice. “Its an exercise regime isn’t it?” My response, “So? That makes a difference does it?” Really, I think the inability to see this says a lot about Christian syncretism with the philosophy of Cartesian dualism.

Can we move beyond this myopia? Sadly, there is a lot of negative reinforcement to overcome. Think of the standard gospel appeal, “accept God into your life” Reality check! Many of these people may already have someone called “God” in their life, right at the centre. Just maybe not the one you know though. Incidentally I recently heard a gospel presentation where one of the apostles was described as taking God to a Jewish man. Can you see the filtering process inherent in such a statement?

And let look further. Buddha didn’t worship someone called “God”. Does that make him unspiritual? He’s the founder of one of the great world religions!

Philip Johnson recently asserted: “Those who believe in pursuing contextual missions inside the culture of late capitalism in the west must place alternative spiritualities and new religious movements close to the centre of their passion”. Are you ready to be that missional?

I know this is a bit of a rant, but I get tired of Christian leaders being so self-congratulatory about how open they are, yet time and time again taking the blue pill whenever the subject of contextualised engagement with new religious movements comes up. If leaders can’t handle it, how do you expect regular Christians to come to grips with it?