by Harvey Cox
First, for centuries Christians have claimed that the Holy Spirit is just as divine as the other members of the Trinity. But, in reality, the Spirit has most often been ignored or else feared as too unpredictable. It “blows where it will,” as the Gospel of John (3:8) says, and is therefore too mercurial to contain. But some of the liveliest Christian movements in the world today are precisely ones that celebrate this volatile expression of the divine. The Spirit’s inherent resistance to ecclesial fetters still vexes the prelates. But it also inspires Christians in what used to be called the “third world,” but is now termed the “global South” by those living there, to discern the presence of God in other religions. As women come into leadership positions in Christianity, many prefer “Spirit” as their preferred way of speaking of the divine. By far the fastest growth in Christianity, especially among the deprived and destitute, is occurring among people like Pentecostals, who stress a direct experience of the Spirit. It is almost as though the Spirit, muted and muffled for centuries, is breaking its silence and staging a delayed “return of the repressed.”
Second, increasing numbers of people who might once have described themselves as “religious,” but who want to distance themselves from the institutional or doctrinal demarcations of conventional religion, now refer to themselves as “spiritual.” They often say, “I am a spiritual person, but I am not religious.” But what does this mean? Often church leaders and theologians wince at the vagueness of the term “spirituality,” which is burdened with a long history of ambiguity and controversy. Within the early Christian orbit people spoke of Jesus and then of themselves as being “filled with the Spirit.” As decades passed, “spirituality” came to mean the subjective aspect of faith in distinction to the objective teachings. It described a way of life rather than a doctrinal structure. Later, in the Roman Catholic sphere, “spirituality” characterized the different manners in which those in religious orders practiced their faith. One could speak, for example, of a distinctly “Ignatian spirituality,” as followed by the Jesuits, or of a “Carmelite” or “Franciscan” spirituality.
But the term “spiritual” also turned controversial at times, especially during the medieval period, when movements like those inspired by Joachim arose that accentuated the immediate experience of God or the Spirit without the necessity of the sacraments or the hierarchy. Some of them even vented explicit protests against the institutional church. Many, like the Beguines, were inspired by women. Some were led by clergy. Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), a Dominican priest, for example, taught that the soul is a spark of God that is to be nourished until the person attains full communion with the divine and is filled with love. He did not condemn churchly observances, but thought they were only of limited value. Shortly after his death Pope John XXII, who was pontiff from 1316 to 1334, declared his ideas heretical.
That did not, however, kill the ideas. Eckhart’s student John Tauler (ca. 1300–1361), also a Dominican, took the next step and openly denounced reliance on external ceremonies. The “Spiritual Franciscans,” who appeared shortly after the death of St. Francis, taught, as he did, that the Spirit could be found in nature, in “brother sun” and “sister moon,” but they also preached against the wealth and power of the institutional church. Most were excommunicated, and some were burned at the stake. Centuries later Simone Weil found the institutional church more of an obstacle than a help in her spiritual quest. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the most farsighted Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, envisioned the entire sweep of cosmic history as a process of “spiritualization.” And the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) wrote wistfully from a Gestapo cell of what he called a future “religionless Christianity,” liberated from its dogmatic tethers. All of these figures were, in different ways, forerunners of today’s dawning Age of the Spirit.3
As in the past, today “spirituality” can mean a range of different things. At a minimum, it evokes an ambiguous self-reflection devoid of content. For some it can become mere navel gazing, a retreat from responsibility in a needy world. Sleek ads in glossy magazines promise a weekend of “spiritual renewal” in a luxurious spa where, for a price, one can reap the benefits of a sauna, a pedicure, and a guru who will help you cope with the stress of your demanding job. For others, however, “spirituality” can mean a disciplined practice of meditation, prayer, or yoga that can lead to deepened engagement in society. A researcher named Seth Wax recently gathered 105 interviews of self-described “spiritual” people in eight different professional fields. He found that what most of them thought of as their “spirituality” actually enhanced their sense of responsibility in their work and in society by giving them a larger goal or by helping them to concentrate on doing a good job.4 It is evident that different forms of “spirituality” can lead to either self-indulgence or a deepened social engagement, but so can institutional religion.
Recent studies have shown that the conflict between the religious and the spiritual, even between the spiritual and the secular, are not as sharp as some have supposed. People today can move back and forth from one to the other with little sense of contradiction. They carry “spiritual” attitudes and practices into the congregations and religious values into the secular world. They develop what researchers call “repertoires” that include elements from all of these overlapping spheres and are able to negotiate continuously among them. Clerical leaders often object to what seems like the blurring of important distinctions, but the process is making the borders between the religious, the spiritual, and the secular more permeable.
How does the spectacular growth of megachurches like Saddleback and Willow Creek figure into this new picture? Entering Saddleback church, with its large TV screens, piped music, coffee bars, and choice of different music “tents,” is more like strolling into a mall than stepping into a cathedral. Its architectural logic is horizontal, not vertical. The line between inside and outside is almost erased. There are now more than four hundred of these churches, with congregations of ten thousand or more. They are not fundamentalist. Their real secret is that they are honeycombs of small groups, hundreds of them, for study, prayer, and action. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow estimates that 40 percent of all adult Americans belong to one or another of a variety of small groups both in and out of churches, and that many join them because they are searching for community and are “interested in deepening their spirituality.” He adds that these small groups are “redefining the sacred…by replacing explicit creeds and doctrines with implicit norms devised by the group.” Although he expresses some hesitation about this soft-peddling of theology, he nonetheless concludes that many people who grew up in a religious tradition now “feel the need for a group with whom they can discuss their religious values. As a result…they feel closer to God, better able to pray…and more confident that they are acting according to spiritual principles that emphasize love, forgiveness, humility and self-acceptance.”5
The recent rapid growth of charismatic congregations and the appeal of Asian spiritual practices demonstrate that, as in the past once again today, large numbers of people are drawn more to the experiential than to the doctrinal elements of religion. Once again, this often worries religious leaders who have always fretted about mysticism. Echoing age-old suspicions, for example, the Vatican has warned Catholics against the dangers of attending classes on yoga. Still, it is important to notice that virtually all current “spiritual” movements and practices are derived, either loosely or directly, from one of the historic religious traditions. In addition, just as in the past offshoots that the church condemned were eventually welcomed back into the mother’s household, the same is happening today. In India and Japan Catholic monks sit cross-legged practicing Asian spiritual disciplines. In America, people file into church basements for tai-chi classes. Challenged by the lure of Asian practices, Benedictine monks have begun teaching laypeople “centering prayer,” a contemplative discipline that not so long ago church authorities viewed
with distrust.
“Spirituality” can mean a host of things, but there are three reasons why the term is in such wide use. First, it is still a form of tacit protest. It reflects a widespread discontent with the preshrinking of “religion,” Christianity in particular, into a package of theological propositions by the religious corporations that box and distribute such packages. Second, it represents an attempt to voice the awe and wonder before the intricacy of nature that many feel is essential to human life without stuffing them into ready-to-wear ecclesiastical patterns. Third, it recognizes the increasingly porous borders between the different traditions and, like the early Christian movement, it looks more to the future than to the past. The question remains whether emerging new forms of spirituality will develop sufficient ardor for justice and enough cohesiveness to work for it effectively. Nonetheless, the use of the term “spirituality” constitutes a sign of the jarring transition through which we are now passing, from an expiring Age of Belief into a new but not yet fully realized Age of the Spirit.
This three-stage profile of Christianity helps us understand the often confusing religious turmoil going on around us today. It suggests that what some people dismiss as deviations or unwarranted innovations are often retrievals of elements that were once accepted features of Christianity, but were discarded somewhere along the way. It frees people who shape their faith in a wide spectrum of ways to understand themselves as authentically Christian, and it exposes fundamentalism for the distortion it is.
There is little to lament about the present decline of fundamentalism. The word itself was coined in the first decade of the twentieth century by Protestant Christians who compiled a list of theological beliefs on which there could be no compromise. Then they adamantly announced that they would defend these “fundamentals” against new patterns that were already emerging in Christianity. The conflict often became intense. In 1922 Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) preached a famous sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” It seemed for a few decades that, indeed, they might. But now they are on the defensive. The old struggle continues, and their reduction of faith to beliefs persists. But since the emerging Age of the Spirit is more similar to the first Age of Faith than it is to the Age of Belief, the contest today goes on under different conditions. The atmosphere today is more like that of early Christianity than like what obtained during the intervening millennium and a half of the Christian empire.
The three-period way of envisioning Christian history holds a special resonance for me. Biologists say, “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”; that is, the development of an individual repeats the evolution of the species as a whole. My own spiritual evolution traces the same profile. The first, my “age of faith,” began in early childhood. Like many children reared in a Protestant Christian home, I first learned that being a Christian meant to be a “follower of Jesus.” Admittedly, he was a tough act to follow, but at least the goal was clear. Since Baptists did not have creeds, I never heard about them until years later. At fourteen I was baptized and joined the church. As I had been coached, I told the congregation, while standing up to my waist in the baptismal pool, that I accepted Jesus as Lord and that I would endeavor to be his disciple. Then the minister gently plunged me under and pulled me up sputtering. Along with the other young people who had just “passed through Jordan,” after being dried off by the deacons, I changed out of my sodden clothes in a Sunday school room and then rejoined the congregation to be welcomed as a full member. I did not know the phrase “rite of passage” at the time, but, as I look back, this was a memorable one. After that I thought of myself as someone who was trying, never all that successfully, to be a follower of Jesus, and this phase continued into my first semester in college.
Then things changed. A couple months into my freshman year at Penn I found myself involved in long conversations in the dorms. Some were with agnostics or skeptics. Others were with Catholics, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, who, I found, had something called creeds. I also met conservative Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists. When one of them asked me directly if I was a Christian, I told him yes, that I tried to follow Jesus. But he fixed me with a direct stare and asked, “But do you believe in the substitutionary atonement?” I was not sure what that was, and for awhile I passed through a difficult period, worried that my faith might be fatally deficient. I began to think that maybe a “real Christian” had to believe a certain set of ideas about God, Jesus, and the Bible. This was my quasi-fundamentalist stage, which I will return to in a later chapter. For me it corresponds to Christianity’s Age of Belief, which began in the third or fourth century, and, like the church with its historical period, I learned a lot from it and do not regret that it remains part of my life story. But eventually it had to be left behind.
Unlike the church’s Age of Belief, mine did not go on for fifteen hundred years. It only lasted about two. In history classes I began reading about the endless debates over creeds and confessions that had roiled Christianity for so long, and I took a course in world religions, which made me see my own faith as one among many. I also became friends with several students who seemed to me to exemplify the Christian life better than some of the taut fundamentalists, although they were not particularly concerned with being doctrinally correct. By my senior year I had embarked on what was to become a lengthy transition into my third phase. But for a long while I remained confused over the vexed relationship between faith and belief.
Then, several years ago an acquaintance of mine described himself to me in a casual conversation as “a practicing Christian, not always a believing one.” His remark puzzled me, but it also began to clarify some of the enigmas that had swirled within both my personal faith and my thinking about religion and theology. His remark suggested that the belief/nonbelief axis is a misleading way of describing Christianity. It misses the whole point of not only Christianity, but other religions as well. I have never heard this insight expressed more eloquently than I did one evening in Milan, Italy, where in 1995 Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini had invited me to give a talk at what he called his annual “Lectureship for Nonbelievers.”
I had not known what to expect, but it turned out to be quite a glittering occasion. A large crowd draped in Armani and Prada had assembled in an ornate public hall, and I was already seated, when Martini, who stands well over six feet tall, entered in a scarlet cassock and black biretta, the full regalia of a prince of the church. He welcomed the audience and then went on to say that by calling this an event for “nonbelievers,” he did not intend to imply anything about the people present. “The line between belief and unbelief,” he said, “runs through the middle of each one of us, including myself, a bishop of the church.”
To call oneself a practicing Christian, but not necessarily a believing one acknowledges the variable admixture of certainties and uncertainties that mark the life of any religious person. In August of 2007 the New York Times reported that in her collection of letters, Come Be My Light, Mother Teresa (1910–97) confessed that for years she had harbored troubling doubts about the existence of God, even as she worked ceaselessly to relieve the anguish of the sick and dying in Calcutta.6 Her confession evoked a wave of criticism. Was she a hypocrite? Had she been faking it all along? But in the tumble of public comments that followed, a student named Krista E. Hughes made the most telling comment in a letter to the editor. “Mother Teresa’s life,” she wrote, “exemplifies the living aspect of faith, something sorely needed in a society where Christian identity is most often defined in terms of what a person believes rather than how he or she lives. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”7
Eliminating the spurious use of “belief” to define Christianity has another advantage. It recognizes that often people who call themselves “unbelievers” have episodic doubts about their unbelief. “Believers” go through similar swings. Beliefs come and go, change, fade, and mature. The pattern of beliefs one holds at ten are not identical with the ones one holds
at fifty or seventy-five. To focus the Christian life on belief rather than on faith is simply a mistake. We have been misled for many centuries by the theologians who taught that “faith” consisted in dutifully believing the articles listed in one of the countless creeds they have spun out. But it does not.
When I first realized this, it came as a welcome liberation. Starting when I was quite young, I often had serious doubts about whether I “believed” some church teaching or something I found in the Bible. Did God really stop the sun so that Joshua could continue the battle? Did Jesus really turn water into wine or walk on the sea? Was Mary really a virgin? But I know now that even when I struggled with these childhood doubts, I never “lost my faith.” Somehow I sensed instinctively that faith was something deeper than belief. Without knowing it, I was beginning to tiptoe, almost unconsciously, toward my personal “age of the spirit.” Like any major change in one’s life, this one did not take place suddenly. It took a while, and it was only much later that I began to apply this insight to my thinking about religious studies and theology.
During my adult life various experiences continued to nudge me along the path. My many encounters with the followers of other religions, especially Buddhists and Hindus, taught me that “beliefs,” in the way we use the word, were not part of their vocabularies. In fact none of the other major world religions has a “creed.” Even Islam, a close cousin of Christianity, only expects its followers to affirm, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his messenger” (the Shahada). In all these traditions, religion means something quite different from attaching credence to doctrines. My marriage to a Jewish woman, and with it an unusual opportunity to participate as a “fellow traveler” in the liturgies and holidays (and food) of her tradition, taught me things I had never known about her faith, and things I had never realized about my own (Jesus, after all, was a rabbi). Jews always say their religion is best understood not as a creed, but as a way of life. Slowly it dawned on me that the same is true of my religion. The earliest term used to describe it in the New Testament is “The Way.”8
