Trend Watch - Christianity Today

Five years ago, no one could have predicted it, but Americans now talk about angels. From supermarket tabloids to lapel pins to angel “collectibles,” people can’t seem to get enough of the celestial world. Even TV talk shows devote hours to people with “angel stories.” Recently Oprah Winfrey chided a guest for being “in denial” about an angel experience.

Prime-time TV offers “Angels: The Mysterious Messengers,” and “Angels in the Outfield” made it to movie theaters last summer. As 1994 began, the number of angel books in print hovered around a hundred. Dozens have come out since, and more wait in the wings, some of which will doubtlessly generate heavenly profits for publishers.

AERIAL SHOW

Christians have been as surprised by this “aerial commotion” as anyone, but it’s just one signal that significant changes in our society are afoot.

Conventional wisdom has it that we live in stubbornly secular times. A generation ago, a liberal German theologian asserted that no one who believed in miracles could also believe in electricity. So much for his wisdom. At the very time scientific knowledge and technological innovations have exploded, fascination with the supernatural has returned with a vengeance. Spirituality is in. The church finds itself in the odd place of playing catch-up with the culture.

But this penchant for the paranormal really should come as no surprise. Repeated Gallup polls show that one American in three claims to have had a religious experience, a particularly powerful religious insight or awakening. Is it any wonder charismatic churches and Pentecostal denominations–with their accent on spiritual gifts and divine manifestations–are some of the world’s fastest growing?

Something in us cries out for the reality of a world beyond profit margins and trendy cars–or even a humming church program. This “substratum of religious experience,” says pollster George Gallup, himself a committed Christian, has gone “undernoticed” by sociologists, theologians, even pastors.

Nevertheless, it shows no signs of going away. Jack Simms of Baby Boomer Consulting in California predicted a few years ago that “the quest for spiritual meaning” would be among boomers’ greatest concern in the nineties, that boomers will want to get “in touch with the supernatural” and that “they will get in touch with it–somehow.” Nothing yet suggests he was exaggerating.

It would be a mistake to imply, however, that the interest in the supernatural takes the form only of fascination with the dramatic: angels or their dark counterparts, the demons.

Americans–and American Christians in particular–seem to be trading in their activism and pragmatism for a new-fashioned accent on the spiritual life. The arrival on Billboard’s pop charts of Chant, the recording of Gregorian chants by Spanish monks, indicates a more reflective side to the trend. And it’s no secret to publishers–Christian and secular–that books on prayer and spirituality are hot. Witness national bestsellers like The Care of the Soul and Healing Words that, for all their deficiencies, take seriously the human need for a spiritual center.

“I find myself,” says historian Martin Marty, “treating the [renewed] concern for spirituality as an event of our era.”

Unfortunately, Americans tell pollsters that they think their churches are so focused on programs and fund raising that churches have lost the “spiritual” side of religion. Such sentiments suggest unmet longing just waiting for pastors and churches to address. We may live in a postChristian world in which the notion of absolute truth is scorned. But we also live in a postmodern world in which many barriers to belief have fallen.

Says Leonard Sweet, president of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio: “People today believe in miracles, in angels. We don’t have to argue the case for spiritual realities. … Our challenge is to help people believe the right thing.”

BANE AND BLESSING

How do these close encounters of the supernatural kind shape ministry in the church? The implications can be summed up in three words.

Opportunity. Our culture’s aroused interest in the supernatural is an open door for evangelism and disciple making.

“Here you suddenly have people aware of the transcendent,” says Eugene Peterson, Regent College professor. “They are finally paying attention to what’s going on beyond their own hormones.”

People seem more eager than ever to discuss things spiritual. This means, says Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw, that churches must think carefully and strategically about the deep spiritual yearnings “at work in the grassroots desire for visible and practical signs of God’s presence.” People are asking the kind of questions Christians love to answer.

However, church people are also sometimes skittish around those who claim to have brushes with the supernatural. We fear that such people will divide more than revive. Or they may unwittingly create a climate of spiritual one-upmanship. Or we may be tempted to dismiss the hunger for the supernatural as mere fad.

“But I think that it is always a genuine hunger,” argues Martin Marty. “It’s just that hungers can be satisfied with Twinkies or with broccoli.”

Our culture’s taste for spiritual junk food does not negate the human need for vital, intimate, life-changing encounter with the divine. Human hearts will be restless until they find their rest in God, as Augustine put it centuries ago. As for angels, John Calvin urged that we “not overlook such an illustrious and noble example” of God’s creation. Even if the restlessness leads some to settle for spiritual counterfeits or inflates them with spiritual pride, we cannot ignore what drives the search.

This quest holds promise for the church in several practical ways. It has implications for evangelism, for example. A Baptist minister in Illinois, Bill Richardson, points to the Acts 17 story of Paul on Mars Hill as a model: Paul “began with that particular culture’s interest in the paranormal and went on to point his listeners to Jesus.” In our personal and corporate evangelistic efforts we need to be on the lookout for “entry points” of conversation about God, Richardson says.

The spiritual fascination also suggests topics for preaching and teaching. Curiosity about angels, for instance, hands the church (and the pastor) a golden opportunity to teach that angels are only supporting cast, while Jesus claims center stage in God’s drama. Likewise, popular books that contain purported near-death or afterlife experiences, such as megaseller Embraced by the Light, raise questions that can be wonderfully answered in Sunday school discussions, sermon series, even counseling sessions.

Discernment. The new fascination also comes with potential pitfalls. While our basic orientation as Christians, says Eugene Peterson, is that we are “immersed in miracle, in the supernatural,” the wisdom of the Christian tradition also tells us, “you are not to be impressed by it or distracted by it.” The important thing to remind people to do, Peterson says, “is to love your neighbor, say your prayers.” Experiencing a healing or having an encounter with an angel may be a great blessing but should never become our preoccupation. Spiritual seekers sometimes need that reminder.

Furthermore, we dare not mistake spiritual curiosity for spiritual maturity. Interest does not always lead to saving faith. Peterson notes that people today may argue, “I’ve got crystals, angels, vibrations, and auras to choose from. Why narrow it all down to Jesus?” “Spirituality” is sometimes used as a catch-all for anything that makes us mist up or feel warm inside.

People may be spiritually hungry, in other words, but they expect microwave convenience. They want celestial soundbites, not the awesome God of Scripture. Rick Richardson, who coordinates campus outreach in three states for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, notes that young people’s “spiritual interest is amazing. You can have a great conversation about spiritual things–until you mention Jesus. Then people shut down.”

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” says Randy Pope, pastor of Perimeter Presbyterian Church near Atlanta, “to realize that what we are dealing with here is controversial. There has to be wisdom, prudence, good modeling, sound teaching, and careful guiding, or some sheep will go astray.”

And churches can become too oriented toward the supernatural. John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, affirms what he sees as people’s “greater openness in expecting God to actually speak and act. However,” he adds, “we should never suggest that such experiences should be a barometer of someone’s spiritual maturity.”

Expectancy. For all the cautions, there is reason to believe God will use the growing interest in the supernatural for good. Many observers detect within churches across the country a new spiritual intensity and a heightened expectancy that God is up to something.

There certainly seems to be increased attention to prayer. Southern Baptist Home Mission Board staff worker Henry Blackaby, commenting on the remarkable rise of prayer groups in his denomination, says, “I don’t know when there’s been such an explosive sense that God is about to do something.”

In earlier times in the church’s life, God has used spiritual hunger and openness to the supernatural to lead the church to greater things. Heartfelt repentance and revival often follow in the wake of times of increased seeking. We may well be witnessing the first stirrings of such an awakening.

If so, that will be the trend most worth watching, even as angels continue to attract the headlines.

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Timothy Jones is managing editor, Moorings Books, Nashville, Tennessee.

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