21st century spirituality

Let's go back again to her first illustration of the cable taking a huge blow to its outer and inner sheath (our story of community and common imagination). Inside the cable are three strands: the spiritual, corporeal and moral strands. I'm creeping through this chapter still and today I'll only write about the spirituality strand when taken out of the braid of those three strands.

She names three aided non-religious spirituality. I say aided because they're good but I can't believe that this is a comprehensive consideration of that subject matter.

The first: AA. "... to God as we understand him." "a higher power." Words do matter and those phrases are common place at this point in our culture. yet, what I enjoyed most of putting AA on the table for this discussion is the value of small groups and the authority that individuals have in their own spirituality which "took the seat of all good advice, holy counsel, wisdom and amelioration" away from the pastor's study.

The second: The immigration act of 1965 which ended a lengthy debate on letting Asians into the country. I would have put this issue in a different place in her argument but I'm happy to see it at all. From the influx of Asian immigrants and their culture, we have the rise of Buddhism... an intrinsically spiritual but not religious practice that can "insinuate itself quite innocently even into the practice of almost any institutionalized religion without abrasion or apparent conflict for that religion's faithful."

The third: The drug age - as a means of spiritual exploration. the quote I enjoyed most says, "I'm spiritual but not religious, among those who knew to the depths of their interiors that there was more here than the Church had ever known."

Before she moves onto the corporeal and moral strand, she takes a moment to look again at the disintegration of sola scriptura, scriptura sola (our remaining question of where authority lies at this point in religion.) This section leads us to understand how the corporeal strand is examined along the way as well.

Both church and culture have struggled with issues of slavery, the women's vote, divorce, the ordination of women and now the ordination of homosexuals. Each time applying our modern sensibility and experience to the traditional scriptural witness. These issues were cultural wars as much as internal church wars. The new way of considering scripture has in itself created a new corporeal strand or morphed it I suppose. Have we created a new way of being together?

Often when I worry about what church will be or more passionately wonder what kind of church the WWII generation of pastors will leave the 911 generation of pastors, I am met with what I believe is spirit wisdom: it will be the church that I'm creating. There are plenty of spirit-filled, god-fearing pastors who love people, love Jesus and love the culture that has been created by the influences like AA, immigration, Darwin, Freud. and more importantly, there is a culture of people thirsting for a church where those influences are embraced and not shunned.