Today's Church in America, Part One, Page Five

<Prev | Next>
Unwrapping Home

When we speak of this as the century of the Spirit, we have to say that the first time that the Spirit was hearing us and moving with us happened on Azusa Street. But there is in that, also, the sense of physicalness that religion had lost in this country--a sense of body and soul belonging to each other--physical manifestations of the spirit.

In 19th century America people couldn't decide what it was they wanted, but they knew they didn't want what they had. The 19th century sees the coming of Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. It is based on the premise that the soul and the body cannot be separated and that one belongs to the other. It is essentially another form of monotheism. The 19th century also gives us Mormonism, which is the fourth monotheism. It's the fourth of the Abrahamic faiths, and to treat it as anything else is ridiculous. That's exactly what it is. It is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism.

At the same time during the middle part of the 19th century, we've got Seventh Day Adventists. They were centered in Battlecreek, Michigan. Their great guru is a fellow named Kellogg. Dr. Kellogg, who was an M.D., began to experiment with baths and spirit and prayer and diet. He invented corn flakes and a bunch of other stuff that you eat. They were all playing with this idea of the body and soul belonging to each other.

Orientalism or spiritualism, what we would call the society of theosophy, is not indigenous to America. It came in from Russia, but it did affect us. 1902 and 1906 did not just happen in a vacuum. There's been a kind of pull into it. But it doesn't all coalesce. It doesn't become in-your-face important until you get to the 20th Century.

The reason I usually start with 1937 is that in 1937 we see the birth of an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous. Prior to 1937, if something wasn’t right in your life, you could not afford to say so. You could not afford to say, "I robbed a bank," or "My kid is guilty of fraud," or "My daughter is pregnant out of wedlock," or "I have a drug problem." The society around you, on which you depended, would have condemned you as a sinner and not right with God, and would have distanced itself. This would have been the end of you. You would have been seen as absolutely damned, and so you kept all of that locked up. AA came along and said, “You know, "it's all right to not be all right. We're all human. We all have our weaknesses. Let us get together over this weakness called alcohol and see if we can help each other."

It's the birth of the small-group movement. There were no small groups before 1937 in this country. It is the birth of that. It is the birth of the notion that sick people mutually afflicted can help each other more effectively and better than can hired, trained people. Take another body blow to the clergy. We don't go talk to the preacher about it, we talk to each other. One of the great ironies and amusements and wonderful things is that most AAs now meet in established churches, to which they dealt a body blow.

The other thing it does is, it says, "We can help each other. It's okay to not be all right. And we can help each other be better, and we can do it in small groups. But before you do it, you have to acknowledge that there is some higher power involved. You don't have to call it Jehovah. You don't have to call it Yahweh. You don't have to call it Brahman. You don't have to call it anything. But you have to acknowledge that the force is with you.” It is the first time that American religion pays serious homage at the altar of generic God.

That's the beginning in popular thought of the possibility that all gods are just different names for the same thing. That's the beginning of the notion that perhaps Allah and Yahweh and Jehovah are just different names for the same concept. It is an important thing.

<Prev | Next>
Unwrapping Home