Spirituality vs. spiritualism

What we call religion is not always what it seems

Many choices we face are opportunities to show who we are. Are we generous, honest, compassionate and humble? Or are we selfish, cowardly and hateful? Moral qualities are rooted in spirituality – in the love that decides to help someone who is in trouble, the wisdom that finds a solution to a problem. Destructive qualities are rooted in spiritualism, in the belief that there is a spirit in the human body that animates a person for good or evil but eventually ends up mired in sin, disease or death.

Spiritualism as a concept came out of the belief that spirits of the dead communicate with the living. But it has grown to the point where many people are convinced that matter itself is not only a sentient life-form but an avenue for God to intervene in the world and change events, and that certain religious people and movements can turn God’s will into a destructive force indistinguishable from their own will. Spiritualism leads people astray, and, in extreme cases, encourages them to commit crimes.

New York Times columnist David French wrote on June 20 about a professedly Christian man named Vance Boelter, who attacked two Democratic politicians in Minnesota on June 14, killing one, along with her husband. Boelter, French found, is “deeply connected” with a radical Christian movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, which is engaged in what it calls “spiritual warfare” to bring about Christian domination over society. In his commentary, called “The Problem of the Christian Assassin,” French wrote:

Spiritual warfare is a broad concept with many meanings, from benign to malignant. At its best it refers mainly to intense prayer for suffering people. You may have seen people online who ask for prayer warriors to help them if they’re suffering from sickness or facing a family or financial crisis.

But it can also mean using prayer as a weapon against demons and demonic influences, and at the outer edges of political Christianity, belonging to the Democratic Party is proof positive that you’re under the influence of the devil, and when the Democrats win, that means Satan wins.

Given this level of extremism, it’s hardly surprising that the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 was inspired in part by independent charismatics and New Apostolic Reformation leaders who poured fuel on the religious fire.

I don’t want to overstate the problem — there are millions of charismatic Christians (much less Christians from other traditions) who voted for Trump without either believing these bizarre prophecies or sometimes even hearing the extreme language. They live peaceful and godly lives, and you’d love to have them as your neighbors.

But it’s also wrong to understate the problem, and the grandiose and even militant spiritualism of the New Apostolic Reformation is leaking into other evangelical traditions.

The Conversation, an online collaboration between journalists and academicians, posted an article soon after Donald Trump’s election with the headline, “New Apostolic Reformation evangelicals see Donald Trump as God’s warrior in their battle to win America from satanic forces, and to Christianize it.” The article went on to say that this New Apostolic Reformation is part of “[a] growing movement [that] believes President-elect Donald Trump is fighting a spiritual war against demonic forces within the United States.” It’s a modern embodiment of the belief that God works through material means. This is not Christianity. It’s spiritualism. Christianity aims to liberate thought by lifting humanity above imprisoning matter and material beliefs to higher goals and more noble attitudes. That, in its purest form, is spirituality. As Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy pointed out,

The sensual cannot be made the mouthpiece of the spiritual, nor can the finite become the channel of the infinite.”¹

It can’t be more simple than that.

Spiritualism as a belief is an avenue of thought control, and it is destructive. When a government attacks people in its own country who are peaceful and causing no harm, such as legal and productive immigrants, it is not trying to rid the country of criminals. It is trying to control thought by creating fear. The battles we face now aren’t really about Iran or Russia, Israel or Gaza, or even immigrants. The battles we face are about what and who we are going to allow to govern our thought. We need to protect our thinking so we can do our job to lift humanity.

At some point, the United States is going to have to come to grips with how far it has drifted into spiritualism. As Julie Roginsky and Olga Lautmann said last week in their excellent podcast Pax Americana, sooner or later the United States will have to launch an effort to expose the lies and destructive motives and behavior of governmental and societal leaders, and hold people to account.

When all this is over, and eventually it will be over…we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in a very big way, because that is the only way we get our moral authority back. And that is the only way we get our democracy back, and that is the only way we have accountability for what happened. We cannot elect another Joe Biden who’s going to simply call Trump the former guy and say this was an aberration in American politics and let’s move on. This is not an aberration. This is who we are. And if we don’t take accountability, and we don’t force accountability on people who allow this and enable this and promote this and order this,… I don’t know what is going to happen to this country.

There are important battles happening now over the kind of government Americans want to live under. We argue over things like freedom of speech and press and religion, but that is not really the ground we are defending. What we are defending is our right to think clearly. A big part of the battle now is between spirituality and spiritualism. On which side are we fighting?

Be not afraid.

1. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 73