The most beautiful and moving example of this latter form of experience was told to us by a woman we will call Helen Spates. A devout Christian in her late forties, she is a gentle person with rich black hair and wide, youthful eyes. We came upon her in the South, and we sat in her kitchen and drank tea as she recalled the circumstances that led to her first spiritual awakening, which took place at a very early age.
"I had my own personal experience as a child," she told us. "I really came into the awareness that there is something higher that is wonderful and beautiful. My mother died and I was very despondent. I just wanted to die along with her because she was a part of me; she was the one I loved. Here I was in the first grade and the children in school would throw rocks at me and just add to my loneliness. Then one day I was underneath a tree, a big cottonwood tree on our farm, and I was spread out just lying there in an old wagon, looking at the sky and the white clouds. Their beauty overwhelmed me, and from the cottonwood tree I saw these beautiful, shiny leaves, and I thought, 'New life, new life, how can there be such beautiful creativeness? There must be someone that brought all this about. There must be.'"
She looked at us, searching our faces. She explained that she was embarrassed to have such an intimate part of her life tape-recorded, but then, eager to share with us, she went on.
"I was just overwhelmed with everything," she said, "and I started singing my problem to God. I just blurted out to him exactly how I felt. I told him that my father was a drunkard and my mother was dead, and I was an orphan child and I just didn't know where to lay my head. Then I stopped singing and just lay there, and I felt something real warm overwhelming me. It was in just a moment, yet it was like an eternity. No sooner did I become aware of this warm peace overwhelming my little body when a joy, such a joy hit me with such tremendous force that I jumped out of that wagon and ran. I ran past an orchard, I ran on a ditch bank, I ran and ran. Then finally I stopped. I looked at my dad's acreage of alfalfa in full bloom and the butterflies dancing overhead, and I raised my arms and sang, 'My heart is taking over. It's learning how to love!'"
Helen Spates's profound personal experience had apparently released her from the enormous emotional stress she had been forced to contend with as a young girl -- the loss of her mother, the insults of her schoolmates, the constant torment of an alcoholic father -- and had signaled the resolution of those conflicts. Of all the stories we heard, hers stands as the most unchallengeable instance of enlightenment in the best sense of the word. It was a moment in which she broke through to a new level of awareness; it took her beyond her painful emotions to an understanding that left her with new feelings of joy and love.
We spoke with other people who had experienced this natural moment during the course of their adult lives. For each of them, as well, the experience marked the end of a period of personal torment from which they had found no release. Another woman, a recent convert to Christianity, told us about a crisis that was resolved in an instant and led directly to her conversion.
"When I finally accepted Christ I was in a desperate situation," she confessed. "I had fallen and gashed open my head, and I thought, 'Nothing is accidental.' I thought that I had done this to myself. I was going crazy thinking that I had these self-destructive impulses. My mind was going on and on like that and I was really scared. I was afraid I was going to throw myself off a cliff and not be able to stop it. I thought, 'How can I stop this craziness?' and said, 'God, if you can make this go away I'll serve you.' And instantly I felt calm. I felt really crazy, then I felt really calm."
As this woman described her experience, it seemed obvious to us that a sudden physical shock had set off a reaction which nearly snowballed into tragedy. Yet, in contrast to Helen Spates, in the calm that followed, this woman had the sensation not simply of newfound feeling and awareness but of having entered a whole new state of being, a transformation of personality on its most intimate level.
Among Christians in America, this powerful experience is called being Born Again, and it is a surprisingly widespread occurrence in the United States. A recent Gallup poll reported that half of all adult Protestants, or nearly one third of all Americans, say they have been Born Again. This means that at least 50 million individuals in this single faith alone have experienced sudden spiritual renewal. Among this number are many prominent figures in business, the arts, and politics.
Some have even made their private experiences public. One of the more astonishing Born Again Christians in recent years is former White House counsel and Nixon aide Charles Colson. Colson vividly described his experience in his best-selling autobiography, "Born Again."
"Something began to flow into me -- a kind of energy," Colson wrote, recounting an event that came on him suddenly while he was sitting in his car. "With my face cupped in my hands, my head leaning forward against the wheel, I forgot about machismo, about pretense, about fear of being weak. Then came the strange sensation that water was not only running down my cheeks, but surging through my whole body as well, cleansing and cooling as it went. They weren't tears of sadness nor of joy, but tears of release. I repeated over and over the words, 'Take me. . . .' Something inside me was urging me to surrender."
And Colson did surrender, cooperating fully with federal prosecutors in one of the most baffling personal turnabouts of America's Watergate era. As in the two previous accounts, Colson's spiritual metamorphosis can be linked to tangible circumstances. His rebirth came at the height of his legal peril for his role in the Watergate crimes. The intense physical sensations he experienced seem often to accompany the Born Again moment, and they were confirmed for us by many other Born Again Christians we interviewed. A tingling of energy appears to be common, along with alternating feelings of heat and cold. Frequently, the individual will have the impression of a cleansing flow of water, which is usually accompanied by an uncontrollable surge of tears.
Possibly an even more unlikely figure than Colson, former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver says he, too, was Born Again while hiding overseas from prosecution in the United States on charges of assault and intent to murder. In an interview in Newsweek, Cleaver described another mystifying feature of the Born Again experience: the divine vision, which may be a powerful spur to life-changing action.
"I was looking up at the moon," said Cleaver, "and I saw the man in the moon and it was my face. Then I saw the face was not mine but some of my old heroes. There was Fidel Castro, then there was Mao Tse-tung. . . . While I watched, the face turned to Jesus Christ, and I was very much surprised. . . . I don't know when I had last cried, but I began to cry and I didn't stop. I was still crying and I got on my knees and said the Lord's Prayer. I remembered that, and then I said the Twenty-third Psalm because my mother had taught me that, too. It was like I could not stop crying unless I said the prayer and the Psalm and surrendered something. . . . All I had to do was surrender and go to jail."
In the aftermath of his divine vision, Cleaver gave himself up to foreign police and was returned voluntarily to federal custody in the United States.
Many skeptics have questioned the sincerity of dramatic religious conversions such as those of Colson and Cleaver, but there can be no doubt about the existence and extensiveness of the Born Again moment in the United States. In the stressful situations just described, being Born Again was an intensely private, personal experience. Yet for many other Americans, their rebirth took place in a group rdigious gathering held by one of America's numerous branches of Evangelical Christianity.
This public spiritual experience dates back as far as man and society, and it has been a vital feature of rdigion in America as well. The first Great Awakening of Colonial America in the 1740s was led by the Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards, whose fire-and-brimstone sermons reached peaks of emotion that sparked a New Light among whole assemblies of colonists. In the 1800s, Baptists, Mormons, and other nationwide rdigious groups joined in frenzied services of devotion that rivaled the ecstatic rituals of the more esoteric
Quaker and Shaker sects. It was not until this century, with the emergence of American Evangelicalism and its extravagant Holy Rollers, that the experience of divine enlightenment reached out to touch great masses of people in the United States. Long before the human potential movement began hailing encounter highs and peak experiences, America's Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians set off a grass-roots revolution of their own. Since the days of the Reverend Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson, Evangelical Christianity has grown into an international movement spanning a broad spectrum of faiths that includes such worldwide religious crusades as those of Billy Graham and Oral Roberts.
The explosion is generally acknowledged to have begun on the first day of the year 1901, when the long-established tradition of Christian evangelism, the ardent preaching of the gospel, was itself reborn in a new and potent form. In a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, directed by the Methodist minister Charles Parham, people "laid hands" on one another and prayed that the Holy Spirit might be given to them with the sign of "speaking in tongues."
Even to most Born Again Christians, the experience of speaking in tongues remains something of a mystery. Historically, it has its origin in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles. According to that passage, at Ephesus, in what is now Turkey, the early Christian Paul came upon some Christian disciples who had not received the Holy Spirit according to Christ -- they had only received the baptism according to his cousin John. In that first recorded instance of the Born Again Charismatic experience, Paul told them about the baptism according to Jesus; "On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied."
In that ancient moment, according to the Bible, those who felt the spirit spoke in a language unknown to man; as a result of that experience, their lives were instantly transformed. Their awareness underwent a sudden change, which they attributed to the spirit of Jesus Christ, and they became devout followers of Christianity, their faith confirmed by intense physical sensation.
In that same Evangelical tradition, the Holy Spirit did in fact appear to Parham's congregation in Topeka, first overwhelming a young woman student and then visiting others in that assembly. From Topeka, the Christian Charismatic movement has spread around the world to an estimated fifteen million communities. Unlike other modes of religion, which require great leaps of faith on the part of their followers, the Charismatic movement, as one tract describes, sees itself as "a powerful new sign of the spirit adapting to the needs of our modern era." In keeping with the time-honored tradition of Evangelicalism, which promises personal renewal through the "living experience" of Christianity, the Charismatic movement strives to bring its adherents to frequent personal encounters with the Holy Spirit. Strengthened by that experience, the individual is then sent forth into the world with a newfound joy, inner peace, and -- as one minister described it -- "a love for God and neighbor." From then on, among many Charismatic sects, a major focus of the new convert's devotion becomes the activity of "witnessing," or giving personal testimony of his experience in the hope of winning new converts to the movement.
As with Helen Spates's natural moment of enlightenment, we found many instances where the group "personal encounter" proved to be a source of genuine personal growth. The potential benefits of this form of worship were poignantly demonstrated to us during a conversation we had with a gentleman we will refer to as Martin Young, a thoughtful husband and loving father of two small children who, for many years, has been a successful businessman in the Midwest. A Roman Catholic all his life, in the late sixties he joined the growing Charismatic movement within the Catholic Church, which has become a point of controversy in recent years between traditional and more liberal Catholics. In contrast to the popular image of Charismatics as Bible-thumping religious extremists, we found Martin Young to be a polite, easygoing individual, a short, handsome man who was happy to share with us his first experience of "baptism in the Holy Spirit." He ushered us into his living room one afternoon, built a roaring fire in the fireplace, and poured three glasses of white wine.
"There were about seven of us and we went into a prayer meeting," he began solemnly. "After the regular meeting they asked if some of us would like to come upstairs and pray together. We went into the upper room. There were other people laying hands on, and I was kneeling in the circle. I just knelt -- I wasn't asking for it -- and all of a sudden I came into a chant in tongues. Now I'm not much of a singer, but it came out a very beautiful chant. My wife was standing beside me observing, and she received tongues without even knowing it."
As Martin Young described it, he and his wife had a personal experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their small Christian Charismatic prayer group. Along with other members of the group, they uttered sounds which have no meaning in any modern or ancient language, but which they interpreted in terms of the traditional Christian scriptures. The tongues chant, Young told us, has often been likened to ancient Middle Eastern and Asian dialects, but extensive scholarly research has failed to establish its derivation or even a definite vocabulary or grammar. Regardless of its origin, speaking in tongues appeared to be a profoundly compelling group experience which, Young said, may visibly affect both participants and observers. He tried to convey to us the essence of the Charismatic ritual that had become so familiar to him.
"When you come into a prayerful atmosphere," he said, "anyone can sense a different feeling. If you walked in here when we were having a prayer meeting with a smaller group, you could feel the intensity of the fervor with your whole being -- your heart, your mind, everything. You can see the reverence of the people. You can tell which people have been in the prayer group before; you can feel that they are immersed in the spirit of God."
Following his first Charismatic encounter, as others had professed in the Born Again moment, Martin Young experienced a sudden refocusing of awareness which he anchored to the established doctrines of Christianity. From his own account, it became clear to us that strict adherence to this traditional body of moral teachings and guidelines for living enabled him to grow socially as well as personally. He explained how his awareness was altered for the better as a result of his tongues experience.
"After you have received tongues," he said, "you are transformed. You come with new eyes, the eyes of God. You look for new ways of liking people; instead of focusing on their weaknesses, you find something good about them. You turn to the positive, to the beautiful -- this is living Christianity. I'm not saying that we are not still weak and creatures of habit, but walking with the Lord is a process. It's a journey. It's a mode of change."
From our point of view, Martin Young's understanding of his transformation seemed remarkably perceptive, although, as he described it, the entire experience was contained within the framework of his firm religious belief. Traditionally, religion in America has facilitated and encouraged this kind of personal growth through spiritual belief. It took the Evangelical movement, however, to fuse religious faith and intense physical experience into what amounts to an organized program of personal renewal, curing bad habits, vices, and addictions and offering a set path of daily life and worship for those in search of one.
For the most part, the expressed doctrines and values of Evangelicalism are in keeping with the most basic ideals of American life. They do not depart greatly from other traditional religions in the United States that have played autonomous but integral roles in this nation's social and political development. Yet, unlike America's other religious traditions, the Evangelical movement shares many characteristics with religious cults and mass therapies. Its ecstatic moments are sought after and intense; conversion is sudden and profound. The movement boasts miraculous cures for lifelong ailments and engages in the zealous recruitment of new members. Moreover, like many cults and mass therapies, in recent years the Evangelical movement has multiplied its enormous wealth and following through the use
of sophisticated mass-marketing techniques, bringing its heavily advertised crusades to prime-time television and even linking television, radio, and publishing interests around the country into Evangelical networks to promote fund raising and solicitation.
This use of sophisticated technology and mass-marketing strategies is a relatively new trend in Evangelicalism, but in a few short years it has become the movement's primary mode of recruitment. It is in this leap of that "old-time religion" into the arena of big business that Evangelicalism intersects the phenomenon of snapping in America, raising some of the most difficult -- and sensitive -- questions of our investigation.
Perhaps the most visible form of this new attitude can be seen on highways across America, where huge blue and white billboards and innumerable bright yellow and black bumper stickers proclaim the simple phrase "I Found It." This vague message is now almost universally recognized as the catchphrase of America's burgeoning Evangelical movement, yet few Americans are aware of the massive scope of the heavily financed and well-coordinated public relations campaign behind it. The creation of a Harvard Business School graduate and former adman for Coca-Cola, I Found It places the number of recruits it has won for Jesus at 600,000 in some two hundred cities, by its own estimate. In 1976, donations alone added up to $29 million, and sales of literature -- hardcover books, paperbacks, and pamphlets -- totaled an additional $3 million.
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