Pew Forum Items of Interest: Polygamist U.S. Muslims, and Evangelical Populists and Cosmopolitans

The current edition of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Weekly Update includes two items that I found noteworthy. The first is a story from National Public Radio titled "Some Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy." As Muslim immigrants bring their culture with them to the U.S. this includes their marital customs such as polygamy. According to the story, "No one knows how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families. But according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people." These Muslims have a lower profile than other groups that practice polygamy such as the various forms of fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (with no formal connection to the LDS Church), and thus they receive far less public scrutiny and critique. But this story comes at a time when the Fundamentalist LDS Church is engaged in an ongoing struggle with Texas authorities over polygamy and child custody, and when this is connected to the prolonged conflict between the Western world and certain expressions of Islam, it will be interesting to see if public discussion of such Muslims becomes more frequent and takes on a critical tone.

The other story comes from a May 2008 Pew Forum Faith Angle conference in an article titled "American Evangelicalism: New Leaders, New Faces, New Issues." This article comes in the form of a transcript from the recent conference that describes developments in evangelicalism. One particular facet struck me in their description of a "divide" between populist and cosmopolitan evangelicals. Michael Lindsey shares his thoughts on this situation:

"And I began to realize that there is a whole segment of the evangelical movement –many of those folks who are in the elite – who were trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the evangelical subculture. And so I began to think more about this and pay more attention to it. And the real divide, in my opinion, in evangelicalism is not between the left and the right; it’s not between the young and the old. It is between a group that I call the “cosmopolitan” evangelicals and “populist” evangelicals. And these are very, very significant divisions.

"You see, populist evangelicals are what we oftentimes think about evangelicals. These are the folks who are culture warriors, who say that they want to take back the country for their faith. They see themselves as embattled against secular society. They are very much concerned that they are in a minority position, and they’ve got to somehow use very strong-arm tactics to win the day.

"So that populist evangelicalism is alive and strong, especially in the evangelical subculture: the music, the publishing, the entertainment segment of the evangelical subculture. But there is a whole other segment. The people who I interviewed, by and large, fit more this cosmopolitan outlook. They are less interested in taking back the country for their faith. They really are more interested in their faith being seen as authentic, reasonable, and winsome. So they still have an evangelistic impulse, but their whole modus operandi looks quite different. Because of that they have different ultimate goals of what they are actually trying to achieve. They want to have a seat at the table. They want to be seen as legitimate. They are concerned about what The New York Times or TIME magazine thinks about evangelicals because they [the cosmopolitan evangelicals] are concerned about cultural elites. They want legitimacy. Legitimacy is actually more important to them than necessarily taking back the country. And so that cosmopolitan-populist divide I find to be quite significant."

In my view, Lindsey has recognized an important difference within evangelicalism, but I would argue for more depth in the understanding of the cosmopolitans. While many do indeed want a "place at the table" in popular cultural discourse, their actions and differences with the populists must be accounted for by something beyond seek legitimacy. Indeed, it could be argued that the assume legitimacy and that they then seen to express this legitimacy outside of the evangelical subculture to engage the broader world. In my experience many evangelicals are rethinking what Christian spirituality means and how it is to be lived in light of a post-Christendom, globalized, pluralistic culture. This involves the need to rethink the roots of the Christian faith, to reflect more on the ministry and example of Jesus, and to constantly bring theology into dialogue with culture. This process of reflection results in a cosmopolitan form of evangelicalism which is very different from its more populist expressions of the past.

Lamin Sanneh: Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West

One of the areas of ongoing reflection for me is bringing my Western cultural and theological assumptions into dialogue with that of world Christianity. As many people are aware, Christianity is growing and vibrant in the Southern Hemisphere in contrast to the North, and this "new complexion" for Christianity means that Christians in the Global North, particularly the West in nations such as the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and even the good old United States of America, might have a lot to learn about our faith in dialogue with expressions of Christian community in other parts of the world.

One of the books I recently finished is Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West (William B. Eerdmans Publishingn Company, 2003) by Lamin Sanneh. As the back of the book describes, Sanneh is "a native of Gambia, and is D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and professor of history at Yale Divinity School." He is the author of a number of interesting books including Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process - The African Dimension, and Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa.

In this helpful short volume Sanneh defines "world Christianity" differently than "global Christianity" where the former "is the movement of Christianity as it takes form and shape in societies that previously were not Christian," whereas the latter is "the faithful replication of Christian forms and patterns developed in Europe." As Sanneh develops his answer to the book's title by way of reflection on world Christianity, particularly in its African expression, he does so by way of "indigenous discovery of Christianity rather than the Christian discovery of indigenous societies." By framing his discussion in this way and reversing standard missions approaches to the topic, Sanneh not only addresses how Christianity has been communicated across cultures beyond the West, but emphasizes discovery of Christianity by diverse cultures in ways that resonate with their cultural concerns.

I found several statements in the book worthy of continued reflection and I'll post them here for others who are encouraged to pick up a copy of the book to read the comments in context before dismissing Sanneh's thinking as out of bounds:

"People want to interpret Christianity by standards of exegesis and doctrine familiar to them, something that the Christendom model of the church warranted. World Christianity, by contrast, must be interpreted by a plurality of models of inculturation in line with the variety of local idioms and practices. The mental habits of Christendom predispose us to look for one essence of the faith, with a corresponding global political structure as safeguard, whereas world Christianity challenges us to pay attention to the dynamic power of the gospel and to the open-ended character of communities of faith. Doctrine and exegesis are important, it should be stressed, but not without the dimension of personal experience and the network of human interactions." (p. 35)

"Syncretism represents the unresolved, unassimilated, and tension-filled mixing of Christian ideas with local customs and ritual, and that scarcely results in the kind of fulfilling change signaled by conversion and church membership. Besides, syncretism is the term we use for the religion of those we don't like. No one calls himself or herself a syncretist! It's a name we use for others, and not in a complimentary way. Unless we use the term as a judgment against our own forms of religious practice, I suggest we drop it altogether." (p. 44)

"..the West can learn from the fact that the gospel entered a particularly promising historical phase of cultural transformation when in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it encountered the religions and societies of Africa....I just don't see how Europeans can continue - and I devoutly hope they do continue - to study and teach Christianity without paying heed to examples of Christianity's successful cross-border expansion in postolonial societies." (p. 58)

"The tradition of exegesis that has been practiced in the West seems to have run its course." (p. 58)

These and other comments within the overall context and arguments of the book provide the content for missional and ecclesiological reflection by evangelicals and other Christians. In the past I've benefited from reflection on world Christianity in terms of the growth of the church and new forms of theologizing in China, and through Sanneh's encouragement I need to reflect on what can be learned from the situation in Africa as well. Such reflecitons will faciliate a balance resulting in what my friend Matt Stone refers to as “'globally informed, locally embedded Christianity' or 'glocal Christianity' for short."

Pew Forum Update Items of Interest

The Pew Forum Weekly Update includes a few items of interest. First, data files from the Pew Research Center's 2007 survey of Muslim Americans are now available to scholars and researchers. The complete report is available here.

The Update also includes a story that reports on a Faith Angle Conference that looked at neuroscience and the idea that our brains are hard-wired for belief.

A quick review of previous conference topics revealed a couple of items that caught my eye that might also be of interest to readers, including one on religion in a globalizing world from December 2006 featuring comments by the noted sociologist Peter Berger, and a May 2007 conference with the topic "Mormonism and Politics: Are They Compatible?".

Robert Schreiter: Constructing Local Theologies

Some time ago I heard an evangelical professor make comments in a video resource that articulated his theological concerns about the beliefs of a new religious movement in terms that drew upon classic and ancient Christian creedal expressions. This was appropriate given the Christian audience to whom his comments were directed, but it made me wonder why we haven't developed theologies that are contextualized for the cultural and subcultural concerns of the new religions that we interact with. Why do we continue to present theological formulations from the early church that are not brought into dialogue with contemporary cultural circumstances? I am not at all suggesting that we ignore the ancient creeds, but our historical reflections must also take into account diverse cultural circumstances of the present.

These reflections, coupled with my desires to develop contextualized theologies for the post-Christian West, led me to purchase and recently finish reading two volumes, Dean Flemming's Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission (InterVarsity Press, 2005), and Robert J. Schreiter's Constructing Local Theologies (Orbis Books, 2002). I was familiar with Flemmings work due to my exposure to an academic journal article he wrote on Paul's preaching at the Areopagus as a paradigm for cross-cultural communication, but I was not familiar with Schreiter's work until recently. Flemming's work serves as a helpful reminder that the New Testament writers practiced not only a contextualization of the gospel in their proclamation within Judaism and then beyond it as the gospel crossed cultures, but that the early apostles also developed various theologies that were appropriate to the local circumstances of various Christian communities and the cultures in which they were embedded.

While both volumes are worthy of extensive commentary, with this post I'd like to share some aspects of Schreiter's book, and a few reflections that came as as a result of reading it. Schreiter is a Catholic theologian who is part of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. I found his Catholic perspective, as well as his theological and cultural savvy to be extremely helpful in reflecting on theological contextualization. In his view contemporary pluralism presents a "multiplicity of new pastoral and theological problems unprecedented in Christian history." Schreiter discusses some of these unique challenges that arise in a variety of forms, such as the asking of new questions in differing cultural contexts, questions that impact even the most routine issues of church life often taken for granted in the West:

"Indeed, so many new questions were emerging that the credibility of existing forms of theology was weakened. For example, questions about the eucharistic elements: How was one to celebrate the Eucharist in countries that were Muslim theocracies and forbade the production of importation of fermented beverages? What was one to do in those cultures where bread products such as bread were not known, in which the unconsecrated bread itself became a magical object because of its foreignness? Or how was one to celebrate baptism among the Masai in East Africa, where to pour water on the head of a woman was to curse her with infertility? How was one to understand Vatican Council II's opening to non-Christian religions in countries in southern Asia where Christianity seemed destined to remain a minority religion?"

In order to address these questions in ways that are theologically and culturally responsible, Schreiter suggests that we need to develop local theologies. He defines this as a form of theology that "begins with the needs of a people in a concrete place, and from there moves to the traditions of faith," and which involves a "dynamic interaction among gospel, church, and culture." Schreiter sees this starting place with culture as a strength as it begins "with the questions that the people themselves have" rather than the concerns of the church that often result in a theology and ecclesiology disconnected from local cultures.

As Schreiter develops his thesis he not only defines local theology, but also includes discussion of mapping local theologies, the need to understand local cultures (where he includes an emphasis upon listening), as well as a consideration of the context of theology as church tradition interacts with local theological perspectives. In discussing the latter topic he includes a helpful reminder that our perspectives for understanding are strongly influenced by culture, including church tradition in its forms and formulations. He reminds us that in spite of our assumptions they are not supracultural and are "always born in some cultural context." With this insight we are reminded that "the great theologies of East and West have drawn upon philosophical systems elaborated in their respective cultures to frame their questions and their answers."

In the chapter that discusses theology and its context I found a particular question Schreiter raised most interesting when he asked: "What is the relation of the form to the local culture conditions?" This question is deceptively simple, but in my experience I am not aware of many evangelicals consciously reflecting on this question either in activities among new religions, or among church planting efforts or the day-to-day existence of well established churches.

Schreiter also discusses the issue of Christian tradition and identity, popular or folk religion and its relationship to "official" religion, and a chapter devoted to syncretism. His discussion on syncretism is especially helpful as he distinguishes between various types of "dual religious systems," and then raises a series of issues and questions related to the topic. Along the way he states that "Syncretism and dual religious systems raise the question for Christians of how serious we really are about contextualization." Indeed, with the seeming trend in evangelical missiology toward increasing conservatism as it approaches the issue of contextualization Schreiter's query seems to prod us toward a balance of careful reflection as well as daring experimentation in the contextualization process.

Near the end of Schreiter's chapter on syncretism he raised some issues that echoed my seminary experiences in my reflection on folk religions in the world's great religious traditions and how this relates to dramatically and foundationally different religio-cultural ways of understanding the world. Schreiter asks, "Is there a Buddhist way of being Christian, or a Hindu way of being Christian? Those two great traditions have been able to accommodate Christianity, but Christianity does not seem able to accommodate them." He notes that these are not easy questions for Christians to answer not because they deal with Christian doctrines as many evangelicals might assume, but rather because they touch on "Christian exclusivist thought patterns." He then asks, "Are those thought patterns essential to Christianity, or do they represent certain cultural categories only?"

I recognize that Schreiter raises issues that will cause many conservative evangelicals to shudder, perhaps even reject his basic thesis outright, as demonstrated by an email conversation I had with a Christian professor not long ago who questioned whether it was accurate to speak of Christian "theologies" in the plural. Added to that, the connection of contextualization to the process raised even more red flags. But in my view Flemming and Schreiter are on to something. The biblical material includes numerous examples of contextualization of not only the proclamation of the gospel but also in the development of various local theologies for differing Christian communities. It seems to me that Western Christianity has lost sight of this and it is time to bring theology and culture together as ongoing dialogue partners so that the Jesus story and Christian spirituality might be told and lived in ways that draw upon the lifeways and concerns of local populations.

New Edition of Sacred Tribes Journal

Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 2008) of Sacred Tribes Journal is now available online. Readers must create an account and login in order to read the free publication.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction

Featured Articles

The Family International: A Brief Historical and Theological Overview - James D. Chancellor

Research Observations: The Meaning of Life in Contemporary Druidry - Michael T. Cooper

Latter Day Saints, Rituals, Pilgrimage and Cultural Symbolics: Neglected Sources for Understanding Engagement - John W. Morehead

Analysis

US Religious Landscape: Analysis with Potential Implications for American Religious Identity - Michael T. Cooper, Jonathan Brown, Rebecca Erickson and David Liu

Interview

STJ Interview with Douglas Cowan

Recent Entries to Sacred Tribes Journal's Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements

The Druze - Rebecca Erickson

Wicca - Philip Johnson

Satanism - John Smulo

New Barna Update Discusses Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses

The latest edition of The Barna Update includes data on Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses. The conclusion of the document moves beyond evangelical critique of these groups, and demographic considerations to state:

George Barna, who conducted the research and presented the findings, noted that in the religious world seemingly small matters can make a big difference. "All three of these groups claim to be Christian, uphold the importance of faith and spirituality, are active in their churches, generally believe in the same God, and accept the holiness of Jesus Christ," Barna commented. "Beyond that, there are huge difference related to central doctrines such as the means to eternal salvation or the reliability and authority of the Bible. Millions of adults, however, shut the door when Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses come visiting without having any real idea what they or we believe - or caring enough to pursue such insights."

Barna indicated that such front porch interactions could stimulate unexpected benefits. "It’s no secret that Americans spend little time thinking through the deeper applications and implications of their beliefs. In a society confronted with challenging issues such as immigration rights, gay marriage, war, and environmental crises, our positions on such matters should come from a well-conceived and deeply embraced theology of life. Sadly, most Americans react on an emotional level rather than from a worldview that is based on thoughtful convictions. Perhaps having a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness ringing our doorbell and pushing us to explain or defend our beliefs could be a catalyst for an even deeper process of discovery - especially if we enter the conversation knowing that we probably have some substantial disagreements on core elements of faith."

I know that it is too much to ask that Barna might consider cultural aspects of these new religions beyond doctrinal issues, or advocate a broader form of understanding and cultural engagement with these groups be undertaken by evangelicals, but at least he speaks positively about the potential for doorstep encounters. Now if only these encounters could move beyond doctrinal debates, and perhaps even move beyond the doorstep to involve actual relationships and dialogue.

The update may be read here.

Daughtrey Dissertation: The Mormon, Neo-Pagan and New Spirituality Synthesis - Updated

Update: Readers can learn more about Doe Daughtrey's research on the Mormon and Pagan/New Age synthesis at her blog, as well as her MySpace page. You can also network with her at Facebook group page.

Before I relocated to Utah from northern California three years ago to enter the intercultural studies program at Salt Lake Theological Seminary I joined several Yahoo! Groups on Paganism in Utah. This later proved very helpful, not only in developing relationships with the local Pagan community, but also in becoming aware of a phenomenon in Mormonism. I soon came across the term “Morwic,” which I have blogged on previously. This term was coined by a woman in Utah who is an active Mormon and who also practices various forms of the New Spirituality and Wicca. Further research indicated that this had become known by others, and was referred to in a past Salt Lake Tribune article as a phenomenon involving “LDS Double Dippers.” As I was taking a course on Mormon culture I used the opportunity to write a paper on this phenomenon, and one of those people I interviewed for my ethnographic research was Doe Daughtrey, a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University. Doe has been researching this for some time, and has written articles on it for Sunstone, while also giving presentations at Sunstone Symposium on the topic. After several months of trying to connect for an interview, Doe and I recently found some time to discuss this fascinating cultural and religious synthesis.

Morehead's Musings: Doe, thank you for agreeing to discuss the interesting intersection between religious practices and ideas. Let’s begin by discussing what interested you personally and professionally in this topic and how would you describe the phenomenon that is the subject matter of your Ph.D. work?

Doe Daughtrey: Well, I've described it in various ways. At first I thought, I was going to be looking at "Mormon Pagans," and that's just a euphemism for people that do something different that are engaged in the New Spirituality, or the cultic milieu of the twenty-first century. But when I was doing my IRB application for human subjects I made it clear that I was going to be talking to people who didn't necessarily know anything about what I was doing and so I needed to put it in as terms as plain as possible. In that application it was framed as a popular religion dissertation project. I was going to be looking at spiritual practices of Mormons with an emphasis on LDS women. More recently I have come to see it as a broader kind of project where I really am looking at Mormonism and the New Spirituality. Because really the Mormons are not any different from other Americans in that they are dipping into that pot of diverse beliefs and practices. So my argument is going to be that, yes, twenty percent of evangelicals may believe in reincarnation, but Mormons have a context for that, it's embedded in their tradition.When I was doing my master's thesis, my committee members and other people who came to my various presentations asked how I got into these topics and my response was, "Cheap therapy!" This writing has been therapeutic for me. In terms of my own practice, fifteen years ago I was having bouts of depression and concerns about my status as a woman in the LDS Church, and I'd had several experiences that highlighted what I perceived at the time to be my marginal status. I was suffering a lot, and so I was trying solve these problems. I've actually found that a lot of the women who do Reiki and other kinds of alternative healing modalities come at it from the same perspective. When I ask them how they came to do this they inevitably will say, "Well, I was really, really sick," or "My children have been sexually abused," or "I have been sexually abused." So they are trying to solve this intractable problem that priesthood blessings didn't solve, that personal prayer, reading Scripture, or even therapy didn't solve. So that is pretty much where I was. I was trying to resolve some intractable health issues, and as a result I went to massage therapy school. I didn't know anything about it at the time it felt a little dangerous. I have a very dear friend who was also Mormon and a massage therapist, but I never saw myself as possibly getting involved with that. I didn't know what all it entailed. But that opened the door to all kinds of things. That was my entry into an eclectic kind of Mormonism. And I didn't see any kind of incongruities between being a massage therapist and going to Relief Society on Sunday. It was very practical for me. I was trying to solve some problems and for whatever reason I was not able to access what I've been told should have been my primary entrance into the realm of healing.

Morehead's Musings: To some readers the thought of an intersection between Mormonism and various forms of the esoteric may seem strange, to some even heretical, but can you briefly sketch the historical intersections between various forms of spirituality in the cultural and social currents of early Mormonism and how they may also find expression today?

Doe Daughtrey: In terms of esotericism, there are several ways to approach looking at esotericism. I love Wouter Hanngraaff's first distinction of esotericism as it doubles for the generic term "occult." So in that definition, esotericism stands in for psychic, mystical, and other kinds of paranormal topics. Then you've got as a kind of experience of direct gnosis, or a non-rational way of knowing. And you've got esotericism as secret teachings or teachings that are only conveyed to certain people. Then you've got something called "Western Esotericism," a sort of container concept for the hermetic revival, including things like Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, studies of the Qabala, etc. So I think it's pretty clear if you look at those, anybody who's interested in one of these kinds of definitions of esotericism it's pretty clear that Mormonism is obvious as having facilitated or expressed all of those definitions. For instance, Mormonism has always facilitated psychic and paranormal events, and validated those kinds of experiences, direct experience and apprehension of the divine, both institutionally and individually. You've got Mormon history, too, that is so full of great stories about communication beyond the veil, prophetic dreams and patriarchal blessings. My experience has been that really serious Mormons understand that they can routinely receive that kind of direct revelation. Then you've got that form of Mormonism that sees itself as a restoration of primitive Christianity, possibly the original religion of the world. My favorite book title is Latter Days: A Guided Tour Through Six Billion Years of Mormonism by Coke Newell. That says it all! In the Mormon mind, the story of Mormonism is the story of the earth and then the universe.

Also very well known is the idea of the esoteric and sacred secrecy in the temple rituals, and they are only accessible to those who have temple recommends. And of course John Brooke, who did The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, he did that piece, looking at hermetic culture. What I like about his book is the image of the hourglass he uses to talk about how all of those historical trends, or fragments as he calls them, trickled down through the middle of the hourglass into Joseph Smith's consciousness and then out come out into the classic Mormon cosmology. Historically then, early Mormonism was embedded in this larger cultural practice of treasure hunting, divining, and he ended up creating this religion that combined those things with Swedenborgianism, Qabala and hermeticism. Mike Quinn looked at some of that too in Early Mormonism and the Magical World View, and Harold Bloom touches on this in The American Religion. What I love about Quinn's book is that the table of contents reads like a New Age bookstore shopping list. So Quinn and those others have done work that has been really valuable. I think that what Mormons are doing now is not any different than what was done in the past. Like other nineteenth century Americans, early Mormons were involved in divination, divining rods, astrology, and choosing auspicious dates for important events. What's significant is not that they were doing this – everybody was – but that they created a religion that wedded folk magic to Christianity.

Morehead's Musings: In your research, and on the Facebook group called “New Age Mormon Pagans” that you have created to facilitate this and network with individuals on the topic, you mention several facets of various esoteric traditions that you see as having parallels or analogies in Mormonism. Can you describe this?

Doe Daughtrey: The categories I'm looking at are channeling, spiritual healing and personal growth, New Age science, and Neo-Paganism. For our discussion today I'd like to focus on one of these areas, that of channeling. It's kind of the primary and most easily constructed analogies or comparisons. It also easily connects with my own experience as a Mormon. Many of the experiences that Joseph Smith had are those which Mormons of my generation continue to aspire to. What I mean by that is I recognize the LDS Church has changed in the last thirty-five years and that Mormons who join today might not have those kinds of goals, but at least those of my generation really took very seriously the King Follet Discourse, for instance, and Smith's command to replicate his experiences. So I really like seeing scholars, like Catherine Albanese and some others, define channeling as revelation. It works for me. There's a disclaimer that goes with that in that not all channeling can be compared in that way with revelation. But my main interest is how Mormons interpret it when they are integrating it with their spiritual practices. I'm looking for people who participate in channeling as it is created in the New Age movement. So what channeling is, then, is a kind of communication that originates outside an individual's consciousness. It might involve trance states; it could be automatic writing; and it can definitely be a learned skill. It's a lot like cultivating a psychic ability--you could find all kinds of books on New Age or in the mind-body-spirit section of the bookstore that have instructions on how to develop various kinds of intuition and psychic abilities. Then there's also the idea of channeling one's higher self for healing and self-discovery and another kind that is seen as direct communication with ascended masters who present programs for living. J. Z. Knight is one that I am particularly interested in. She claims to channel Ramtha who is a 35,000 year-old ascended master who was a Lemurian subjugated by the Atlanteans. So Ramtha calls Knight a "pure channel," or somebody who has a near-death experience. He says he operates through her brain. This, of course, is different from someone trying to develop psychic abilities.

I'm interested in channeling in Mormonism, or messages that might resonate with Mormons in terms of being able to interpret them as being channeled revelation. So I didn't know when I started this that I had several LDS friends who were students at Ramtha School of Enlightenment. His main message is "You are God." That has really connected with them. It's a very Mormon message, "you are the same species as god," "you can become god." But it's not just the message. Yes, the message is great and that attracts them, but it is the experiential part that I have found that is the especially important to them. Mormonism has become so practical and this-worldly that these friends of mine have felt compelled to look somewhere else for deep discussion and experiential opportunities that blend the practical with the mystical. My own experience was that I did not have the tools – Mormonism gave me great and expansive doctrine – but just prayer, just reading the scriptures, just getting a priesthood blessing, while really compelling to a lot of people, if it doesn't help you, and those are the only tools that are authorized, then that's a problem. The experiential part has been important to these women who have been involved in Ramtha, especially since they lack access to the priesthood. The priesthood is not just the power to act in the name of God at the institutional level, but it's the power to do what God does. What Ramtha's school does is provide a pivotal experience in their lives. If I understand it right, they create a card containing a visual symbol of importance to them, after which they are blindfolded and sent into a field and asked to intuitively find their cards. Two hundred people blindfolded in a field! This is a pivotal moment for them, an experiential moment of being god, of putting into practice that they are god. And they do not feel like they've had that in Mormonism. They don't go and talk about this at church, but even though there's nothing like that in Mormon practice, it's perfectly legitimate to them from their perspective.

Morehead’s Musings: Do you think there is a sense for them that one of the Mormon ideals of exaltation that might in some sense seem unattainable as they go through life in the LDS ward, and yet through New Age kinds of practices it seems more experientially attainable?

Doe Daughtrey: Yes. I wouldn't have put it that way but let me tell you this story. One of my best friends had worked in the temple for years. She studied, she prayed, she had done all of this, she was incredibly knowledgeable about scripture, and she'd read the extra-canonical stuff. She kept asking questions about the things she was experiencing and she said no one in the temple had a clue. They didn't understand the questions. This was the only place where she could legitimately ask questions and yet none of the people who routinely worked in the temple seem deeply curious about exploring anything but the most shallow of interpretations of doing temple work so that dead people can choose between Mormonism and something else. After attending the Ramtha School of Enlightenment and discovering that she could find her card blindfolded, she quit going to the temple and never went back. She said, "I got it. I got what the temple is there to teach me. I really am God, and I don't need to go back now." What she really got at the deepest level is what Joseph Smith said near the end in that the most important thing for human beings to is to learn to become God.

In the other categories I'm going to be making connections to include Mormon concepts of reincarnation or rebirth, what multiple probations look like, and what work that has been done looking at Joseph Smith's teaching on reincarnation. One of my dissertation chapters is titled "Molly Mormons Can Be Reiki Masters Too." This one will look at alternative healing practices and how these compare to the priesthood in Mormonism. I want to know how women who do or receive Reiki interpret priesthood. Some women I talk to say, "It's priesthood power and I'm using it and I don't care what they say." And others say, "Oh no, it's nothing like priesthood power and I'm not in competition with the priesthood. I'm just being a good LDS woman. God told me to do this and I'm doing what I'm called to do." So there is very much this sense of calling in relationship to these alternative healing things. Also in that chapter I'm going to be looking at things as seemingly mundane as the huge number of herbal supplement companies that have been created by Mormons and based in Utah as part of self-reliance, herbalism, etc. In the Neo-Pagan chapter I'm going to be looking at those I call MormoPagans, who I discussed in one of my Sunstone presentations a couple of years ago. Like the other categories, there is a spectrum of belief and practice. Right in the middle is the woman who wears her pentacle to church every Sunday and she has a temple recommend and thinks that magic is the essence of what Joseph Smith restored. And then at the other end of the spectrum are women who have left the LDS Church and do not consider themselves Mormon at all but are still informed by their experience of Mormonism. Usually being a MormoPagan has at least something to do with the Heavenly Mother. One of the things I'll be exploring is the secularization of Mormonism. Some of the people I've interviewed believe that institutional Mormonism is spiritually bland. One of the ways I'll be approaching this is through the idea of secularization. Quinn touches on this a little. My MA thesis on Heavenly Mother looked at secularization as the privatization of unpopular ideas like plural marriage and Heavenly Mother. So my dissertation will also be looking at Mormon secularization, or its loss of magic, which is a response to Stark and Bainbridge's theory on secularization as a cycle of "cult" formation, assimilation, and resistance in the form of dissent and religious innovation. One of the things I want to discover is whether or not people are doing these things because there is increasingly less and less of a context for magic in Mormonism.

Morehead's Musings: As I have reviewed your research it seems to indicate that Mormon women gravitate more toward this interesting synthesis rather than men. Is this impression correct, and if so, why do you think this is the case? And do you think that the coming together an interest in the West in the divine feminine and the Mormon concept in a Heavenly Mother might create a matrix that provides more interest in this orientation?

Doe Daughtrey: To answer your first question, I've been really thinking about this. I don't know that I could prove it in any case, but for a long time I presumed that a belief in Heavenly Mother is likely to be more important to LDS women, but I've also met many LDS men for whom the idea of developing relationship to her has been really important to the development of their spiritual path. My biased assumption has been that women would be more interested in the Heavenly Mother than men, but I haven't actually asked that question very often of men. I'm beginning to believe that perhaps men might be drawn to different things than LDS women and also perhaps to different types of forums. For instance, I've joined the Mormon Mystics Yahoo! Group which is a very rich forum. There are all kinds of people on there, but they are mostly men. There are Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, and they study the Qabala, etc. There are women on the list, but there are mostly men. Then there's LDS-Reiki, which seems to have more women than men. It is easy to assume that LDS women, who lack the priesthood, are more interested in that group than LDS men, but I don't know that that's true. It also seems like LDS men get involved in Buddhist meditation as opposed to becoming Pagan, for instance, so I'm wondering if maybe Buddhism is something that appeals more to LDS men than it does to LDS women. So while I started thinking I was mostly interested in women's stories, the lived experience of men has become incredibly compelling to me too.

Last night I happened to meet a couple of Pagan people at a coffee shop who ended up being ex-Mormon. The man told me this beautiful story about being on his mission. At some point he was out in a field that was an ancient sacred site, and he felt this incredible connection to the spirits of the land. By way, that's another parallel that I see. When we go into the temple we are taught that everything was created spiritually before it was created physically. So it is not at all incongruent to believe that you could go out into a field on your mission and communicate with the spirits of the land or feel connected to that energy. I found his story incredibly compelling. It's not that I'm not interested in men's stories, it's just that I started out thinking women would be more interested in these ideas and practices than men, and that assumption derives from questioning why men would need these alternatives if they had the priesthood. My own interest in LDS women derives from my experience of feeling like Mormonism gives men ritual tools with which they can access spiritual or physical healing for themselves or others but that is absent for women. I'm very aware now that priesthood doesn't solve men's needs either, completely. Men also have needs that, perhaps, aren't met by the priesthood.

In terms of the divine feminine, that's another one of my interests because it was so important to me. But I do think that people like Carol Lynn Pearson, Margaret and Paul Toscano, Janice Allred, who have all done this incredible theological work on the concept of the divine feminine in Mormonism, have been very important in connecting the larger women's spirituality movement with Mormonism. If nothing else, their work creates the opportunity for connecting the two. One of the things I'm interested in finding out is the extent to which that may have happened with the women I talk to. One of my early suspicions was that Mormon women either expand their practice to include Heavenly Mother or that they leave Mormonism for Paganism for that reason, because she's "absent": She's there, but she's not visible. In reality I'm finding that that's only one of the reasons. I'm still doing my analysis, but it appears to me that these people are just looking for a deeper spirituality. Like another woman I met recently: She was very much a feminist; she got married in the temple, but she was also very resistant of Mormon patriarchy. That is really what eventually led her to leave the church. Heavenly Mother was just one piece of it. So that's what I want to discover: the whole story.

Morehead’s Musings: How do those practicing this synthesis reconcile it with the Mormon religious system that seems to frown on such things?

Doe Daughtrey: I guess I would just quote Gordon B. Hinckley who said over and over again that Mormons can believe whatever they want to so long as they don't try to convince anybody else. That's wide latitude, especially if the LDS Church doesn't ever really clearly define doctrine. If you tell me I can receive personal revelation, and then you tell me I can believe whatever I want to believe so long as I do it "privately," then there are a lot of openings for all of these kinds of beliefs and practices to get expressed and elaborated during the week outside of church on Sunday. Initially I thought I'd find all these women who had left Mormonism; but increasingly I'm finding many more who are still in it, and that's even more interesting to me.

Morehead’s Musings: Do you find that most of these people feel open in practicing these things in ward life or is that something they tend to keep to themselves?

Doe Daughtrey: They don't go to Relief Society and say, "I went to Ramtha this weekend! Let me tell you what you're missing!" They just do it on their own. In the area where I am in Arizona, I show up at events and see people from my ward, people that I never would have thought would show up at alternative venues. There's one healer here who is very Mormon who has this very big healing practice. I went a couple of weeks to her free evening life skill seminar and every single woman there was Mormon--and there they were, talking about chakras! So it was very interesting to hear them put that into Mormon vernacular. And that's another part of what I'm looking for: What are the indigenous terms that Mormons use to articulate these ideas and practices?

Morehead's Musings: How might folks assist with your dissertation research through interviews or other things?

Doe Daughtrey: If someone wants to contact me, my email address is doe.daughtrey@asu.edu. The project has been approved by the ASU IRB board, and I will provide the paperwork, including forms that explain my responsibilities. For instance, participants are assigned pseudonyms and therefore remain anonymous. You have to be at least 18, have a background in Mormonism, though you don't have to be practicing currently. I've actually met some incredibly wonderful women lately who are married to LDS men, but who aren't Mormon themselves. So far, every one of these women want to become Mormon precisely because of the magic they see inherent in Mormonism. So anybody who meets those criteria and believes in a form of rebirth, channeling, astrology, energy work such as Reiki or other healing modalities, divination (tarot, pendulums, etc.), Goddess spirituality, herbalism and related kinds of things. Anybody who has done these things or is doing these things. I'd even be interested in hearing from people who used to do them but for whatever reason feel it is now inappropriate. I'd like to know why.

Morehead's Musings: Doe, thanks again for sharing this. I look forward to seeing how your research develops, and to meeting with you during your next trip to Utah.

Trinity Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities

Trinity International University Deerfield, Illinois USA
16-19 October 2008

Trinity International University, in conjunction with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization Issue Group 16, The Church and New Spiritualities and the Western Institute for Intercultural Studies, announces an international conference on Christianity and new religious movements hosted by the School of Biblical and Religious Studies at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, USA on 16-19 October 2008.

The conference will be a gathering of practitioners and scholars addressing the decline of Christianity in the West and the concomitant growth of new unreached people groups expressed in religions and spiritualities such as modern Paganism, New Age, and other alternative spiritualities. Plenary sessions and parallel workshops will address the topics of the future of religion in the West, the make up of the alternative religious marketplace and approaches in engaging adherents of alternative spiritualities. For more information, contact Dr. Michael T. Cooper, Program Director, Master of Arts in Communication and Culture. Further information and registration arrangements can be found at Sacred Tribes Journal, which includes the plenary and workshop schedule.

Colin Duriez: A Theology of Fantasy and the Legacy of Tolkien and Lewis

As his website states, "Colin Duriez is based in Keswick in north-west England, and writes books, edits and lectures. He has appeared as a commentator on extended version film DVDs of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, the 'Royal' 4 DVD set of Walden/Disney's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the Sony DVD Ringers about Tolkien's fandom and the impact of Tolkien on popular culture. He is also a part-time tutor at Lancaster University.

"His books include The C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia (Crossway/SPCK), J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Story of Their Friendship (HiddenSpring/Sutton Publishing), Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings (Paulist Press), A Field Guide to Narnia (Sutton/InterVarsity), The C.S. Lewis Chronicles (Bluebridge/DLT), A.D. 33: The Year that Changed the World (The History Press/InterVarsity), and a guide to the Harry Potter books for The History Press and InterVarsity."

I first became aware of Colin's work through my research on fantasy and theology in a journal article, and this stimulated my interest in not only exploring the topic further, but also in talking to Colin to probe his thinking further on these issues. He graciously carved out time in a very busy writing schedule to discuss fantasy, the imagination, theology and popular culture.

Morehead's Musings: Colin, thank you for carving out some time in the midst of a busy schedule to touch on fantasy and theology. On a personal note, how did you become interested in fantasy, and how did you combine this with your Christian faith?

Colin Duriez: My reflective interest in fantasy goes back to my discovery of C. S. Lewis’s writings when I was seventeen or eighteen. These provided a key for me as an adult to the stories I had enjoyed as a child and adolescent. He along with his friend Tolkien (to whom Lewis led me through his writings) rehabilitated fantasy for adults, which had become associated with childhood in the nineteenth century. I learnt from Lewis and Tolkien that literary fantasy has its roots in storytelling, which is as old as language itself. Studying literature and philosophy at university heightened rather than diminished my interest in fantasy. It is in connection with storytelling that fantasy coheres for me with my Christian faith and thinking. Storytelling has a fascinating link with history telling. Christianity is rooted in real history. The Bible celebrates God’s hand in history. The shaping of events by God, a person, turns human history – the contingency of human actions – into story, while remaining history. For Lewis and Tolkien myth (i.e. story) became fact (or, to put it another way, fact become story) with the incarnation of Christ. This pivotal event marked the fulfilment and completion of human storytelling. My own view is that human history from the very beginning has had a story shape, as revealed in Scripture. Thus I see the Bible as historical from the first chapter of Genesis, though it is not revealed in a way that conforms to an Enlightenment mode, which dictates in a very narrow manner what is possible—that mode, I feel, is fatally crippled by a dualism of fact and meaning. I’m always fascinated by the manner in which Jesus taught so much by way of story—though it must be stressed that he was teaching in the context of a rich understanding on the part of his audiences of Scriptural history. Though story is a form of magic, casting a spell, it obeys strict rules. It is not an easy option in evangelism.

Morehead's Musings: I know you have written quite a bit on the topic of fantasy, and one article you wrote in 1998 for Themelios caught my attention titled "The Theology of Fantasy in Lewis and Tolkien." In my view, a theology of fantasy has great potential to inform the Christian faith, particularly in the West which is now seeking re-enchantment in the wake of modernity. Early on in this article you note that evangelicals tend to view the Bible from a framework of propositional truth "looking at reality in a theoretical, systematic way." But you go on and write that, "the Bible encourages, in a very basic, straightforward way, what might be called a symbolic perception of reality." How might engagement with fantasy help us regain a sense of balance between "the poetic and the prosaic, the symbolic and the literal" in not only biblical interpretation, but Christian theology and imagination as well?

Colin Duriez: The predominance in contemporary fantasy of Christians with global appeal (Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling) should provide the clue that imaginative engagement with our culture is possible. We have to remember, however, that the imagination has a very different job to do than that of theoretical argument and persuasion, though they are complementary. Would-be evangelists and apologists must know the tools in their toolboxes. The task is too important to countenance carelessness. I despaired when the first Narnia movie from Disney was due to appear and well-meaning Christians were circulating the slogan, “Aslan is Christ.” This was undoing Lewis’s careful imaginative work—that of preparing the way for the evangelist, getting past, as Lewis put it, the “watchful dragons.”

It is interesting how much of the orientation of Tolkien and Lewis, and even J. K. Rowling, is to the pre-modern. Tolkien and Lewis rehabilitated a medieval world-picture, and Rowling drew inspiration from sixteenth century alchemy, which had a vital rather than mechanistic view of nature. Tolkien and Lewis were fascinated by what they saw as a kind of enlightened paganism. They were caught up in how far the pagan imagination could go in its insights into reality without the aid of special revelation, especially the revelation embodied in Christ. Tolkien and Lewis have struck a chord with twenty-first century culture in making imaginative use of pagan insights. Similarly, in a playful way, Rowling draws upon sixteenth century alchemy—or rather the view of the world it exemplified.

These big names aside, there has been an inspiring growth in Christians involved in the mainstream arts and media, frequently in humble roles — film, television, radio, painting, architecture, sculpture, etc — very often with little encouragement from their churches. As well as more of this hands-on engagement, we need to think through the link in many people’s consciousness between interest in fantasy and the subjectivizing and privatization of faith. Responding to this unhelpful link requires hard, careful thinking and a quality of creativity in making fantasy. Francis Schaeffer’s talk of a desperate mystical leap away from the rational in modern culture remains prophetic, as does his portrayal of the rational in the modern world as leading to death and despair. He saw the modern dilemma, whereby people are equally caught by their reasoning and by their imagination. For Christians, working with the imagination is an essential task, and so is engaging in thinking and ideas. The imagination is sexy at the moment but we shall fail if we seize its opportunities but fail to think, and to call people to heed the demands of Christianity’s truth claims.

By speaking of the Bible encouraging a “symbolic perception of reality” (i.e. a seeing that is shaped by symbol) I’m drawing upon the insights of Hans Rookmaaker, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and others that our very experience of reality as human beings changes at different periods of history. (It even changes during one’s life—compare, if you can, your memory of how you perceived life as a child and as an adult.) Our very sensations, consciousness, and possibly our emotions are shaped by our cultural participation. This shaping is of course complex and multifaceted, but includes our moulding by the language we speak, art forms, literature, and the myths and stories that are part of our lives, as comfortable as old shoes. History-telling, I believe, is very important in perpetuating a society and its culture. A society that is soaked in [Christian] Scripture will perceive reality in a different way from a secular one, or an Islamic or Hindu community. The belief structures of a culture are the most important condition of its makeup. The very common view of progress and evolution in human history is only an example of a conditioning belief. This is not to deny the importance of development and growth in a culture. (There is all the difference in the world between a closed, static culture and one that opens up and develops because its core beliefs are full of possibilities for enriching human life and well-being.)

In reading the Bible we begin to see the world in a new way, as we internalize its narratives, poetry and didactic sections. The Bible as The Book has an overarching metaphorical quality that gripped the West for an enormous period, and still influences the post-Christian West (you could argue that many modern ideas, e.g. ideological individualism and socialism, are Christian heresies). The Book continues to grip very many people – billions – in the developing world. The Bible engenders a way of seeing that does not prescribe a theocracy or a totalitarian fundamentalism. Rather it expresses itself in myriad forms in human societies and cultures, while meriting a genus description like “basic Christianity,” “historic Christianity” or “Judeo-Christianity” or the label C. S. Lewis brilliantly borrowed from the Puritan Divine Richard Baxter, “mere Christianity.”

We need, I think, to rehabilitate the idea (which goes back to Samuel Taylor Coleridge) that imagination is integral to our mental processes, and thus to truth-gaining. Fantasy is a power and product of the imagination, as thinking is a product and power of the intellect. While imagination and reason have distinct and differing roles in truth-gaining, their integration is essential in knowing. In my view, the sciences in practice rely enormously on imagination (e.g. in modelling) whether they are the hard sciences or cosmology. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, the sciences are often concerned with realities that cannot be touched, smelt or otherwise experienced with our normal repertoire of physical senses—we rely on metaphor to conceive of unseen realities.

Morehead's Musings: In your article you also state that now that we are in a post-modern culture, the “character and social role of fantasy might change and become more central, as it was before the Enlightenment became dominant." Can you discuss how you see this taking place in Western culture since you wrote this article ten years ago, and suggest areas in which the church needs more imaginative engagement?

Colin Duriez: There is no doubt that fantasy has returned to a central place in our culture. Even in academic literary circles it has become acceptable to take writers like Lewis and Tolkien seriously, even though I come across the occasional academic who still complains that Tolkien only appeals to people who have not progressed past adolescence (rather like atheists who claim that belief in God is for people who haven’t grown up). As well as the globally popular filming of works by Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling and Pullman, there has been a plethora of popular TV series like Lost, Heroes, Dr Who and Pushing the Daisies. The Church needs to support believing filmmakers, writers, artists, dancers, who are working in mainstream culture. This must include a rigorous intellectual underpinning of creative work, as for instance Tolkien and Lewis had in Oxford in the thirties and forties in their friendship, and their wider friendships through the Inklings, their club of literary and like-minded people. We have two thousand years of Christian thinking to get us started! The nearest thing I’ve seen in the recent evangelical world is L’Abri, founded by Francis Schaeffer and in several countries, providing a spiritual Shelter, not as a retreat from the world but as a place to be nurtured and enabled to survive in and contribute to the seasoning and redemption of the world. There are other groups as well. They can be as small as where two or three are gathered.

Morehead's Musings: As the title of your article indicates, it addresses a theology of imaginative fantasy as it relates to the writings of Lewis and Tolkien. Can you touch on Lewis's notion of imagination as "meaning making," and Tolkien's concept of the imagination as "sub-creation" and how these ideas might inform a contemporary theology of fantasy and post-modern cultural engagement?

Colin Duriez: Imaginative work results in the making of meaning. Human history itself, as I mentioned earlier, can be seen as creation of meaning, as it is shaped by human beings and ultimately by the Divine hand, who is the Lord of history. Tolkien (and Lewis was influenced him in this) followed the logic of the imagination as making (poema) with his distinctive idea of “sub-creation”—creating in the image of God’s creation, primary reality. God has established primary reality as full of, indeed overflowing with, meaning. In their view imagined worlds by necessity capture knowledge of and insights into the very nature of reality. Lewis was undoubtedly more aware than Tolkien of the apologetic potential of imaginative work. He believed that stories and the making of myths for a contemporary audience could prepare the ground for the gospel. Stories and parables and other imaginative work can help to create a climate favourable to understanding the evangelist’s message. They can get past those “watchful dragons.” They aid the creation of a context within which the Christian claims and dogmas are meaningful and thus effectively communicated; in a sense, given the post-Christian character of the modern world, the Christian message is translated. As medieval scholars, they realized that the human imagination, unlike God’s, does not start with nothing. They picked up upon the symbolism, iconography, and archetypes of what they saw as an enlightened paganism, which in its patterning over time had captured insights congenial to the embodying of Christian meaning, where Christ is the fulfilment of pagan dreams. Similarly J. K. Rowling appropriated imaginative patterns from sixteenth century alchemy and a neo-platonic and Romantic view of nature as vital rather than mechanistic to incarnate what are also essentially Christian meanings.

There are of course many ways in which Christians can make meaning imaginatively today, building “secondary worlds” that through their large metaphors and narratives help contemporary people to see in a restored and re-enchanted way—through story, through social structures (like Schaeffer’s L’Abri experiment), through cinema, art, architecture, a life that expresses what being human is, building and restoring relationships, through loving, through churches that demonstrate the healing of barriers of race, poverty, age, and sex. As Schaeffer remarked: “The Christian is the really free person . . . whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”

Morehead's Musings: In your Themelios article you discuss a number of facets of the "implied theology" of Lewis and Tolkien, two of which stuck out for me, that of otherness and the numinous. Can you flesh these out a little and touch on why they might be significant for our theology today?

Colin Duriez: Lewis picked up upon what might be called a phenomenology of human experience. In The Problem of Pain he makes use of Otto’s study The Idea of the Holy, which highlighted an aspect of human experience which for Lewis went beyond “the walls of the world”—the numinous, which is part of our experience of the “other.” Lewis’s view of otherness is exceedingly rich, and tied in with his constant, hallmark quest for the real. He was totally counter to the incipient narcissism of our day. As a writer and storyteller he struggled to capture the real in words, which by their nature generalize and universalize. His guiding pattern, I think, was the Incarnation of Christ, where, as he put it, “myth became fact.” For Lewis, the “other” could range from our experience of the spirit (evidenced for him even when we think) to the encounter of man and woman. There is a beautiful passage in his science-fiction Out of the Silent Planet about the first encounter of alien rational species: “Neither dared let the other approach, yet each repeatedly felt the impulse to do so himself, and yielded to it. It was foolish, frightening, ecstatic and unbearable all in one moment. It was more than curiosity. It was like a courtship—like the meeting of the first man and the first woman in the world; it was like something beyond that …”

For Lewis experiences of the “other” (for instance, in tasting other worlds in fantasy) are pointers to the fact that reality is created by God, imprinted with his presence. He saw his task as storyteller (and, I think, as scholar) to remove “the veil of familiarity” so that our perception of reality is restored, in order that we begin to see things as they really are, lit up with their full meaning. Such a re-enchanted view helps provide a context for meaningful communication of Christian truth claims.

Morehead's Musings: With our culture's continued interest in fantasy, and the church in the West scrambling to adjust to cultural changes in living in this environment and communicating the story of Jesus in this context, do you think that Lewis and Tolkien will continue to provide a stimulation for the theological imagination into the foreseeable future?

Colin Duriez: It is remarkable that two scholars within the closeted world of Oxford in the thirties and forties, who talked, drank and socialized in smoky pubs, were thinking and writing in a way which was to grip hearts and minds across the globe in the twenty-first century. Their popularity and appeal was not created by the blockbuster movies of Middle-earth and Narnia—it was established before then, though of course on a smaller scale. But cinema is one of the most powerful and distinctly our-age art forms—and this in itself tells us something of the relevance of their concerns with imagination that is connected into deep and thorough thinking and theology. They understood who the human being is, and this, I think, explains their global appeal.

Morehead's Musings: Colin, thank you again. This was fascinating, and it points me once again to continued reflection upon myth, imagination, fantasy, and the contributions of Lewis and Tolkien to these areas.

New Book by Amos Yong: Hospitality & The Other

Yesterday I received a review copy of a new book courtesy of its author, Amos Yong, and the publisher, Orbis Books, titled Hospitality & The Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Orbis, 2008). I have been impressed with Yong's work in the past in developing a theology of religions in light of our pluralistic, post-Christendom and post 9/11 context, and his interest in interreligious dialogue as well. Readers might recall my previous interview with Yong that can be found here and my summary and interaction with one of his articles here.

My initial skimming of Yong's latest book indicates that it looks very promising. As the back cover summarizes the contents:

"Building on careful biblical scholarship and insights into the practices of Jesus and the early church, launched on the day of Pentecost, Amos Yong shows that the religious 'other' is not a mere object for conversion but a neighbor to whom hospitality must be both extended and received. Contemporary practice, he shows, needs to catch up with the revolutionary biblical notion of extending hospitality beyond every boundary of faith, nation, and ethnicity."

This volume promises to make a new contribution to both scholarly and popular understandings of a Christian theology of religions and interreligious dialogue, and it provides a challenge to a neglected aspect of Christian attitudes and life in an increasingly pluralistic world. Look for an interview with Yong on this book here in the near future.

Spirituality, Culture, and the Imagination

With this post I'd like to recommend to sources that provide for an exploration of Christian spirituality as it engages culture and the imagination.

The first involves my friends at Cornerstone Festival held June 30 to July 6 in Illinois. I have been privileged to be part of the seminars in various venues in the past, and this year's lineup looks great, both through cstoneXchange as well as in the Imaginarium. The topics and speakers get better and better each year, and this venue for reflection and exploration on theology, culture, imagination and the arts is "must see" for those interested in fresh ways in exploring the Christian faith in the West and in engaging a culture seeking re-enchantment.

The second is a conference going on right now and concluding April 26 called Imagination and the Gospel. As they describe this gathering,

"We will address questions like "how does the gospel address the deeply felt need in our culture for reenchanting the world? How did C. S. Lewis and the inklings integrate reason and imagination in their gospel communication? How do we harness the imagination in our own gospel communication?"

In my view these are questions that have been negelected for too long in Western Christendom, and it is time to "listen" to Lewis, Tolkien and others as they point us forward in an imaginative and mythic way for the twenty-first century.

I encourage my interested readers to explore these resources.

LDS Church Commentary on "Respect for Diversity of Faiths"

Yesterday I was made aware of a recent commentary on respect for the diversity of faiths and the importance of interfaith cooperation released by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The commentary, published April 18 of this year, begins by stating,

"A respect for the diverse beliefs and unique contributions of all the world’s faiths is one of the hallmarks of Mormonism. From the earliest days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith elevated the principle of religious liberty and tolerance: 'We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may' (Articles of Faith 1:11).

"In that same spirit, Church President Thomas S. Monson made a plea during general conference, a semiannual worldwide meeting, for more religious understanding: 'I would encourage members of the Church wherever they may be to show kindness and respect for all people everywhere. The world in which we live is filled with diversity. We can and should demonstrate respect toward those whose beliefs differ from ours.' Latter-day Saints accept all sincere believers as equals in the pursuit of faith and in the great work of serving humanity.'"

The commentary concludes by addressing the relationship between interfaith cooperation and the integrity of the boundaries of religious communities in ways that might be reflected upon by evangelicals:

"It is important to note that interfaith cooperation does not require doctrinal compromise. Though the Church asserts its ecclesiastical independence and recognizes its doctrinal differences, this does not prevent it from partnering with other faiths in charitable projects. These efforts are based on universal values. A different interpretation of the atonement of Christ, for example, need not diminish the mandate of Christ to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.' Therefore, it is necessary to maintain a separation between charitable efforts and doctrinal tenets, while at the same time sharing mutual concern for those in need. People of good faith do not need to have the exact same beliefs in order to accomplish great things in the service of their fellow human beings."

With the passing of Gordon B. Hinckley, the previous president and prophet of the LDS Church, questions existed about the new stance the Church might take in relation to dialogue and interfaith activities. This document answers these questions in positive ways. The entire commentary can be viewed here.

Mackay: Malleus Maleficarum in Translation, History, and Legacy

I recently became aware of a new scholarly translation of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum by Dr. Christopher Mackay of the University of Alberta. For those unfamiliar with the Malleus (translated as" The Hammer of Witches"), this is a medieval text that served as a resource for those in the church of the time as they sought to identify and address witchcraft. This text was extremely influential in the time, it would later inform the various witch trials and "burning times,"and it continues to exert influence in stereotypical notions of witchcraft and alleged connections to satanism in various aspects of pop culture.

Dr. Mackay agreed to an interview to discuss his translation, and the history of the Malleus in the past and the present.

Morehead's Musings: Dr. Mackay, thank you for providing some time to discuss the Malleus and your recent translation efforts. For those who may not be familiar with this work, who wrote it, what time frame was it composed in, and what is it's basic content?

Christopher Mackay: The book was published in 1486. The text itself refers to two unnamed authors, and in the public attestation that forms the approbation (certification of orthodoxy) provided by the theological faculty of University of Cologne in 1487, the Dominican inquisitor Henricus Institoris (known in the vernacular as Heinrich Kramer) states that he wrote the work along with another Dominican inquisitor named Jacobus (i.e., Jakob/James) Sprenger. The argument was made in the nineteenth century by a scholar hostile to what the Malleus stood for that the approbation was a forgery by Institoris and that Sprenger had nothing to do with the composition. The evidence for this is in my view very tenuous (and the main argument is clearly invalid). Nonetheless, once the argument was put forward, it took on a life of its own, and people continue to advance arguments in favor of the idea that Sprenger's involvement was a falsification perpetrated by Institoris, despite the fact that this argument was vitiated from the start.

Anyway, regardless of Sprenger's role in the composition, the work is meant to be a demonstration of a specific conception of witchcraft in order to rebut those whose disbelief in that conception was thought to obstruct the prosecution of witches in secular courts. The work is broken down into three sections (books). Book One is a demonstration of the existence of witchcraft in general and of the specific interpretation advocated for it. Book Two covers the practical details of the effects of witchcraft and is itself subdivided into two sections, the first dealing with the practices of witches and the second of the legitimate means to counteract these. Book Three treats the manner of investigating accusations and of dealing with the accused judicially.

Morehead's Musings: How influential was this document in Christendom in first few centuries following its composition?

Christopher Mackay: There are several ways to view this. In terms of the publication history of the book, it was reprinted numerous times until 1519. During this period, the book was apparently quite popular, and presumably it was read as an up-to-date manual on the topic. There is then a gap until 1574, when reprintings resume, continuing until 1669, the last year in which the book was published until the appearance in the early 1990's of two separate facsimiles of the first edition. There was something of a lull in witch hunting activities during the mid-16th century, when the disturbances associated with the Reformation were something of a distraction, and when things calmed down a bit later in the century and there was more free time to worry about maleficent witchcraft, the Malleus began to appear as part of "omnibus" editions of "great hits of witch hunting". Other books were by that time the "up-to-date" treatments.

By this standard, the Malleus was of comparatively short-lived significance, but I'd say that in the broader perspective, the Malleus was much more important. It presents a view of witchcraft known in modern scholarship as diabolism (satanism) that can't be traced before the early fifteenth century (though it builds on long-accepted concepts). Only one earlier work that sets out this notion, the Formicarium of Johannes Nider, appeared in print (remember that moveable-type printing began in Europe only a generation before the appearance of the Malleus in about 1450), and there the discussion is simply part of a discussion of moral reform in Christendom. The Malleus, on the other hand, is a full-fledged attempt to justify the new conception in terms of the scholastic discourse that was the dominant mode of intellectual argumentation in late-medieval Europe. Thus, I'd say that the Malleus was responsible for the acceptance of a new "paradigm" (in the sense advocated by Thomas Kuhn) about witchcraft. That is, the dissemination and widespread acceptance of the point of view (or world view) that underlay and instigated the so-called "craze" of witch hunting in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries can be attributed (ultimately) to the Malleus. Now, it is the case that some of the major elements of the craze are either downplayed in the Malleus (e.g., the so-called black sabbath) or entirely absent (e.g., the devil's mark), but all that shows is that people added, after their own fashion, to the paradigm that the Malleus did so much to help disseminate and make respectable.

Morehead's Musings: What portrait of Witchcraft was painted by the Malleus?

Christopher Mackay: In modern scholarship, the view advocated in the Malleus is known as the "elaborated theory of witchcraft". Belief in magic (however defined) goes back to long before Classical antiquity, and it was taken for granted in the earlier middle ages as a practice that in some way involved the participation of satanic forces, but this was not worked out in an elaborate manner. One particular form of magic/witchcraft related to the behavior of heretics (that is, groups of Christians who rejected fundamental principles of the orthodoxy recognized by the Church). Heretics were thought to meet in covert assemblies (conventicles or synagogues) that Satan himself attended as the sower of heresy. There the heretics were imagined as engaging in promiscuous (sometimes incestuous) sex and in particular in using pastes made from killing babies for various nefarious purposes. The elaborated theory of witchcraft took these associations of religious heresy with witchcraft and Satan a step further by arguing that there is a specific heresy that consists of nothing but practicing maleficent witchcraft. That is, instead of associating witchcraft (and other forms of despicable behavior) with heretics, it is now held that these heretics have no specific religious views on which they disagree with the established Church, and their heresy fundamentally consists of nothing more than rejecting the Christianity that they had taken on through infant baptism and carrying out evil through witchcraft for its own sake. Basically, this "heresy" is an element in Satan's attempt to subvert the true Church and to offend God as an end in itself. Thus, the evil that is believed to be caused by the adherents of this "heresy" needs no further explanation--it's simply something that Satan wants. This means that once this "paradigm" takes hold, there arises both a sense of urgency on the part of those who accept it, and no particular need to explain examples of the crime in terms of normal motives. It is a dangerous thing when you believe that heinous crimes are committed for "illogical" reasons and you can use judicial torture as a means of extracting confessions from those suspected of such crimes.

Morehead's Musings: Why did it finally disappear historically, and when did it resurface in translation?

Christopher Mackay: As I said, the Malleus was already "old fashioned" by the late 16th century, though it continued to be published as long as notions of witchcraft were still intellectually respectable. The issue of why the old "paradigm" about witchcraft broke down fairly rapidly in the early to mid-17th century is a very complicated one, but certainly by that time the intellectual and scientific underpinnings of the work were mostly incompatible with the overall understanding of how the world works as determined by the scientific discoveries of the 16th and 17th centuries.

As for its translation into English, the first translation only appeared in 1928. The translator, Montague Somers, is an interesting figure in his own right, but let's just say for present purposes that in terms of competence, his version is amateurish. He clearly didn't use the oldest edition, he garbles the many references to earlier authorities, and he not infrequently guesses when he doesn't understand something. Also, he writes in a crabbed, old-fashioned style that I think borders on the incomprehensible at times. Finally, he adopts the perspective of curmudgeonly Catholic from the Middle Ages who entirely believes in the view laid out in the work. In his history of witchcraft from the post-First World War period he equates Bolshevism and feminism (the main ills of his own world) with medieval witchcraft. This sort of thing is amusing, but not scholarship.

If I might be allowed to flog my own wares, let me add that as it is, my version only appears in a rather expensive two-volume bilingual edition, but by the start of next year (I hope), a stand-alone paperback edition of just the translation should be available at a much smaller price.

Morehead's Musings: By all means, feel free to promote your work of scholarship. You were recently asked to produce a new translation of the work, which has been released in a two-volume set with commentary. How did this retranslation and your involvement in the project come about?

Christopher Mackay: I was asked by a colleague mine and an MA student of his to come up with a new translation to replace Somers' obviously unsatisfactory version, and they were to provide this translation with an introduction and notes. Eventually, for various reasons the others dropped out, and so the work as it stands is just mine.

In working with a facsimile of the first edition, it soon became clear to me that a proper text of the Latin text had to be established, and this soon became my main focus, though obviously I also translated it. In working with the Latin text, I undertook the laborious task of tracking down as far as I could all the sources used in the text (the authors make it clear in their introduction, which Somers omitted, that to a large degree the substance of the work is copied from earlier texts). You get a much different impression of what's going on in the text from tracking down the sources. Basically, though nearly eighty sources or authors are cited, there are only three main sources, and all the other references come from the small number of main sources.

Morehead's Musings: In your view, how might the Malleus have continuing impact into the present in shaping pop cultural views of Witchcraft?

Christopher Mackay: Well, I think the Malleus is like the Necronomicon of the "crazed Arab Abdul Al-Hazred" in that it is frequently referred to but seldom read in its own right. I should explain that flippant remark by saying that the Necronomicon is a fictional work made up by the writer H.P. Lovecraft that gets referred to in later works as if it really existed (and I gather that someone actually has written a book by that name to make good the lack). Now, naturally, the Malleus really does exist, but it gets mentioned a lot in works of fiction by people (like Dan Brown) who I suspect have never read it (and who could blame them if the only translation available was Somers' version?). I hope that this situation will at least in part be corrected by my new translation (and coincidentally, right around the time of the appearance of mine, another translation also came out, but it's not a complete one, isn't based on the first edition, and doesn't involve all the work on the earlier sources that I've put into mine). As a matter of fact, I recently was reading a book about the role of notions of Satan in the Spanish understanding of the new world, and was surprised to see the Malleus characterized as a work in which witchcraft is conceived of as an offense against the community rather than as a form of idolatry. I don't see how anyone who's actually read the thing could think that in that the work goes on and on about how Satan wishes to promote the heresy of witches as means of angering God against the human race because Satan thereby "steals" people who belong to God via baptism. Apparently, this is a form of treason against the majesty of God, and in retaliation God will give greater permission for witchcraft to take place (peculiarly, the argument of the work is that since God is omnipotent, absolutely nothing can take place without God's authorization, so to some extent the increasing prevalence of witchcraft can be viewed as a penalty for the existence of any in the first place, in a sort of downward spiral of infidelity and retribution).

Anyway, from my perspective, the interest of the work is mainly historical, but in that regard, apart from the interest of why people in the past believed and acted as they did, I think that the witch craze, which is Malleus did much to promote, can give us lessons for understanding human behavior even today. What I mean is that one could readily compare the results of believing in the notion of diabolism, that is, the great witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, with the major scare about child abuse in daycare centers that spread across the .U.S in the 1980's. At that time, because the notion had taken root that heinous crimes (often associated with devil worship) were being committed against children in some daycare centers, certain mild complaints that had nothing to do with such activity quickly snowballed into gargantuan legal cases that defied all rational interpretation of the evidence (I'm thinking of cases like those involving the McMartin and Little Rascals daycares). It was only in 2004 that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts managed to get around (very reluctantly, I might add) to partially remedying the injustice resulting from one such case when Gerald Amirault was finally released after spending eighteen years in prison for a crime that no rational human being should have believed in the first place, much less on the absurd evidence presented in the case. Now, the word "medieval" is sometimes used to mean "characterized by irrational and superstitious beliefs", but before we get on our high horse of feeling superior to the benighted past, it is worth remembering that all ages are subject to unwarranted and irrational behavior that is based on a deep-seated anxiety. The process that dislocates logical reason in both instances is the same, that is, an overriding "paradigm" delineating the sorts of crimes that are thought to go on in the world can cause people to act in defiance of the actual "evidence" because they form specific expectations in light of the overarching paradigm and then interpret what they "see" on the basis of what they expect.

From a religious point of view, I'm not the one to ask. But I can say that I've gotten two diametrically opposite reactions to the work from committed Christians. One person took me to task for undertaking the job of editing and translating the work at all on the following grounds: "Why is it you -or anyone- think that something as dreadful as the Malleus should be perpetuated? I see no reason for it and in the current climate of unbridled anti-religious bigotry to produce yet another edition seems to be just pouring fuel on the fire." Apparently, this person thinks that the "church" (I'm not sure whether he means Christianity in general or the Catholic Church in particular) looks bad through association with the work, which he strove to show (erroneously, as it turns out) was repudiated by the church. If it is the case that the Malleus makes the church "look bad," that's hardly my fault. On the other side of the spectrum, I recently received an email from a woman who took umbrage at views expressed in my introduction as laid out in an article published in my university's newspaper about the edition. Among other things, she wrote:

"It wasn't clear from the article, though, about the source documentation used for your critical introduction. In the article, you mention 'a place where demons inhabit the earth....and plot to ensnare humans...guide them in their evil-doing and have sex with them....' as having no basis in reality and the Catholic Church concocted their ideas out of nothing. These are very strong statements and most difficult to prove. Indeed, it's always easier to prove a positive than a negative i.e. it would appear easier to prove that the Catholic Church contains the full deposit of the Truth, that there are witches and that Satan exists, that people do have sex with demons... My husband [cut] has a personal testimony that encompasses all of these subjects. He will be giving this testimony at the Edmonton Catholic Charismatic Prayer Breakfast..."

The text isn't entirely clear to me, but if I understand it rightly, she thinks it to be Catholic dogma (as laid out in the Malleus?) that not only do witches and Satan exist, but demons in fact walk the earth and have sex with humans, as her husband can attest, apparently through personal knowledge. I don't think I want to know what this personal knowledge could consist of. Seemingly, in this woman's mind, demons are a metaphysical reality in the world around us and the Malleus can still serve as a guide to understanding this phenomenon. For my own part, in the Edmonton that I live in, there aren't any demons. I guess it just depends on the paradigm you use to make sense of the world!

Morehead's Musings: Dr. Mackay, thank you again for making time to discuss this interesting historical document with far-reaching influences.