We could be witnessing another revival movement similar to the great Christian Revival period in the early 1800s in the USA involving many devout Christians including Quakers and Shakers -- and a time that even spawned new denominations such as the Mormon and the Christian Science churches. It is interesting to consider what might happen if such a religious revival was repeated in the 21st Century. American culture benefited much from the Christian lives of the 19th century and effects of those revivals are visible in the United States today.
The causes and dynamics of religious zealotism are always evident in sectors of our culture. I am writing as a Christian and do not wish to disparage religion. But I think there are dangers in religious fanaticism that should be recognized. This essay attempts to examine the possibilities that might result in a modern-day Christian revival.
There is strong Christian fundamentalism spreading in Africa. In South America there is Liberation Theology and demonstrations of Holy Spirit activity in the Roman Catholic Churches. And the Assembly of God and Jehovah Witness churches can be seen in most cities. I think that a worldwide growth of evangelical Christian activities, often lay-led, can be verified. Christian work in prisons in the United States and Brazil have shown that criminals and drug addicts can be completely changed into model citizens by radical conversions by spiritual powers.
There is violent opposition to Spirit filled Christianity in the United States. The courts have forbidden prayer led by students in any areas controlled by public school. The atrocity of burning alive the children of the Branch Davidian Christians in Waco Texas is just being made public.
"Live with men as if God saw you; converse with God as if men heard you."
"The same being whom we call Jupiter, the wisest men regard as the keeper and protector of the universe, a spirit and a mind, the Lord and Maker of this lower world, to whom all names are suitable. Will you call him Destiny? You will not err. On him depend all things, and all the causes of causes are from him. Will you call him Providence? You will say well. For it is his wisdom that provides for this world that it be without confusion and proceed on its course without change. Will you call him Nature? Your will not commit a mistake. For all things have had their beginning from him, in whom we live and move and have our being. Will you call him the World? You will not be deceived. For he is all that you see wholly infused into his parts and sustaining himself by his own power."
This idea of an everywhere-present God is certainly an invitation to prayer. And praying is done universally in all religions. These are the notions that pervade the religious world. A God speaking our language is implied available to our minds and capable of conversation about life on earth.
We get a similar understanding of God from a modern Christian theologian, John Smith, writing in EXPERIENCE AND GOD, "Belief in God then means belief in a reality of whose presence we are especially aware of on the crucial occasions of life, and it means a reality upon whom we depend for our being, our purpose and our fulfillment."
We are dealing with life, our existence, our purposes, and our options in living. We are here; what shall we do and why?
Wrapped within an amazing body whose organs, chemistry, and genome code of a billion components we are just beginning to appreciate. It is our mind and mental capacities that enable us to learn about ourselves and about the gigantic Universe that engulfs us. It is with our senses we form reality and with words we fashion meaning. We have discovered much about life and this planet in recent centuries but most things are only superficially understood. Our colossal ignorance is rarely confessed and seldom turns us to God or religion. But our helplessness in the tragic and cruel episodes of life causes us to yearn for help and meaning.
Life is issued to us by stages and there are certain things we all must experience. Of what does life consists? -- birth, infant care, food, learning, work, sex, social roles, ownership, sickness and death. We encounter these and a myriad of other things and events in distinct scenarios as we pass from infants to school days, marriage and child rearing, jobs with different roles, friendships and clubs, and voluntary work and play. Our culture with its language + thought carry us along the road suggesting actions -- and our religion is part of our culture.
So what is the purpose of this life-path and how should we perform? Religion purports to tell us.
The answers proclaimed by the Christian religion are scary. God created this earth and the entire universe and has a special interest in mankind. God is gentle and loving and instantly in contact with us through prayer. He is powerful and can control and intervene in affairs on earth. He fashions history. He is a God of wrath and causes wars, famine, and sickness to happen. These calamities he distributes as he pleases without regard to merit or piety of people, although Hebraic scripture declares that God punishes sinners and rewards righteous men and women here on earth. Jesus taught that the poor and afflicted here on earth were not necessarily bad people, but that justice and judgment are final events placing men in heaven or hell depending on their earthly deeds. It is His sacrifice on the cross that saves us.
Christianity is a way of life and is an accepted confession for millions of humans in the Western world primarily. This religion has different dimensions. It teaches a very high moral standard for ethical relations among people. It generated temples for worship and creates many jobs. It promotes learning and care of poor and sick people in homes and hospitals. Its priests and evangelists often speak with divine authority. They generally receive honor and prestige that translates into political power. Religion is a major ingredient in politics. Politics in religion can be an advocate for the poor and alien peoples, but often it is used by ethnic factions to justify racial violence and by rich capitalists to oppress poor people of the socialist political parties.
Christianity in practice has attractions that have sustained it for millennia. Prayer provides a universal balm that in most Christian communities is available by all the faithful at any time and without an intermediary. Life can be lived with a constant helper by one's side that understands all our difficulties and offers help. Jesus is a companion that is part of our mental make-up and embedded in our emotions and language. Religion is a mental system. There is an instruction manual, the Bible that can guide the process. There are people to guide to happiness in the Lord. But historically the Bible has been the enduring pillar on which churches and faith is built.
Prayer life is generally a two-person operation, yourself and the Lord. But Christianity is a community program that can be reinforced by other Christians. Pastors often do this but lay programs such as Cursillo and Alpha offer ecstasy and delight in fellowship where love and caring for others and for God result in a kind of spiritual euphoria. Charismatic revivalists too are able to induce these feelings of exaltation and nearest to God. This emotion is sometimes identified as being filled with the Holy Spirit. It can be associated with speaking in tongues and with miraculous healings. These phenomena are real and are the demonstrated components of modern encounters with the Holy Spirit!
These gifts of the Holy Spirit are the dynamo that powers the Christian Church. Often they are bestowed on lay persons and are evident in groups of people. Sometimes pastors and priests take part but these gifts cannot be administered by human authority and conceited clergy. These spiritual adventures are usually associated with joy and ecstasy. These may be temporary emotions but they leave a permanent impression on the believers mind and concept of reality. It is these dynamics that is spreading Christianity in Africa, South America and in the United States. These supernatural experiences can lead to fanaticism and the denunciation of all other religions.
Then even for these born-again Christians baptized with the Holy Spirit there is a dark side of Christianity. Prompted by mental obsessions and delights, and verses from scripture, Christians annihilate their own lives, by giving away their property, fasting and rejecting sex, and entering a life of self- denial and seclusion. We see ridiculous sacrifices as in Africa recently where men and women expecting the Second Coming of Christ therefore killed each other.
Some Christians are terrorized by the presence of Satan. Once a spiritual world is acknowledged then satanic powers can be associated with all misfortunes. The New Testament makes scanty references to Satan but it can be alleged from some texts that the earth is the Devil's domain. This idea is not preached a lot but is a haunting topic for many Christians.
Many people see the hand of God in the revival process, saving souls and moving mankind toward the Kingdom of God. This is the motivation of the evangelists working with the power of the Holy Spirit. Who can oppose God if he is the Mover of this movement? The charismatic leaders heading the revivalist campaigns today believe, and those in the 1800s believed, they are and were doing the work of God.
For the men and women turned from debauchery and drugs the fruits of Revival are of incalcuable value. Saving souls is the supreme divine blessing. The reformation of morals in society and the social caring and friendship of the crippled and old by church groups are prizes to be desired. These and other goals are motivating the revival movements.
This essay is written also to warn of the extremes that a new revival movement in the world might bring. We are witnessing some cruel fanaticism in Islam today and in the Christian world too.
A danger often repeated in history is that the fundamentalist uses the authority of God and Holy Scripture to engage in coercive politics. The United Nations and the National governments are denounced as immoral secular institutions. We might see again the denial of human rights to women as the Bible favors male domination. Racist repression of blacks and aliens are often encouraged. Ethnic causes as in Bosnia and here in the US Southern States Rights are given religious approval. The authorization of the death penalty, relaxation of gun controls, and anti-abortion violence become holy causes. The revival leaders are often extremists convinced they know God's will. Pagans and atheists should be punished or destroyed. These religious fanatics have a history of fighting each other about theological questions, causing conflicts and even wars. The historic record of the fundamentalists needs to be acknowledged by Christians before we burn more witches.
Micah 6:8
"He hath shown thee, O man, what is good -- And what doth the
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God?
Prayer links us with an eternal frame of reference and memory can give us flashbacks of the roads we have traveled:
About me -- a farmer's son working with horses and Holstein cows, bare-footed, driving Model T Fords. The one-room school, no electric power, snowstorms, measles, pneumonia, and riding horseback to High School. Us -- a Norwegian family of 7 children. Armistice Day and Decoration Day with our Dad a WW 1 veteran firing Enfield rifles on the long bridge and in the cemetery in Chetek, Wisconsin.
Job testing dairy cow's milk for butterfat content and sleeping at a different farm each night for $2 per day. The University of Wisconsin Short Course in Agriculture and then a switch to biochemistry major in Madison's big University. WW 2 came and I enlisted in the company of my father and lucky to be selected for a pre-meteorology course at Ann Arbor Michigan and then to "A" school in Meteorology at Chanute Field IL and then commissioned in the Army Air Corps. Served as weather forecaster at Perry AFB base in Florida and then to Spring Lake New Jersey and Fort Monmouth is pre-radar training. Then on to Harvard and MIT radars schools.
Met wife Ruth at Rev. Steimle's in Cambridge, MA. Finished work on physics degree in Madison, WI and then to Harvard for Master's degree in Engineering Science and Applied Physics. A job with Air Force Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge where I worked in antenna and radars scattering research and became Director of the Microwave Physics Laboratory in Bedford, Mass. Ruth and I raised 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls. We lived in Essex Mass in 1950- 55 while I worked at the Air Force Antenna Test Site in Ipswich. We moved to Acton in 1955 and have lived there in the same house ever since.
Spent a year in Madrid Spain as Fulbright Professor teaching a course in electronics or electromagnetics. Worked part-time as antenna consultant for the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at PUC University. Retired from Air Force in 1976 and started Solar Energy Technology, Inc. a very small company that continued until the year 2000. Worked 5 years for GTE as senior antenna designer and wrote a couple of books with software. Learned computers in SET, Inc and GTE. I have a rudimentary but functional spoken and written knowledge of German, Spanish and Portuguese mastered by travel in Brazil, Spain, Central America, and Germany.
All these roles and experiences!!! A rich life.
Old age is a melancholy condition. (I am 78 years old) We should be aware and smiling at what time is doing to us, and pray that the end will be torment free and bring us to blissful eternity. I read all the modern theologians who struggle with the question of our Christian Religion. I especially like the last chapters in "The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr", editor Robert Brown, Yale Press 1986.
Quoting from R. Niebuhr pp 225, 228, 233
"All the tragic antinomies (insoluble conflict of principles) of
history, the inner contradictions of human existence, and the
ultimate mysteries of time and eternity are obscured by words
like grace, freedom, coherence, rationality, ontology used to
describe theology. (Webster's dictionary defines an "antinomian"
as "one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the
moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is
necessary to salvation.) And Luther is quoted to say,
"We know that reason is the devil's harlot and can do nothing but
slander all that God says and does." It is to be noted that the
great Christian existentialists, Pascal, Luther, Kierkegaard
thought in a world in which modern science had not radically
altered... (But) Modern Barthians blithely disregard the evidence
of modern science as if they did not exist."
Christianity a recipe for living or for dying? Some theology focuses mainly on death and salvation. This version of Christianity neglects the teachings of Jesus about living a good life here on earth. But, His highest of morals have been infused into society and have been of great benefit to life on earth. The churches dedicated to a theology for "living" by the teachings of Jesus have given these valuable ethical guides to Western culture.
Famous theologians argue shrewdly often using polemics to disparage all who disagree with their analysis of Christianity employing the most uncharitable (unchristian) language.
I hope these thoughts of mine will be helpful to you and not provoke contoversy in your minds but rather love and peace.
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