What the Questions Are

I have a basic thesis, and it is this: Whatever “powers that be” in the universe that may or may not exist, a basic requirement of being human is being adult in our religious and spiritual thinking. That which infantilizes us; that which shifts the burden of moral responsibility away from our own actions to some vague other, is wrong-headed.

 

Abrogation of responsibility is not an adult act.

 

Mainline Christianity is slowly awakening to the idea that people need a daily spiritual discipline. In this, Christianity is much like the Detroit automakers on the early-1960s or today. Then, GM’s response to the need for smaller cars then was the Corvair, a car that proved to be unsafe at any speed. Detroit’s answer now is to ask for emergency loans. I wouldn’t say that Centering Prayer, which reaches back to Roman Catholic monastic practice for its grounding, is exactly like a Corvair, but I would say that it is probably too little. . .very late.

 

Yes, there has long been a tradition in Christianity of daily Bible reading and prayer. But reading—even in its “spiritual” form, lectio divina—is not an activity focused on spiritual discipline. Nor is intercessory prayer. Thus, the Western ideal has involved imprinting the mind with external knowledge through reading and directing thoughts outside the self through prayer.

            Since the Second World War, Buddhist practices, particularly Zen, have spread to the Western world to fill this hollowness at the core of Christian thinking. The “emergent” church movement has also developed as a counter-balance, in some ways a fifth column, to the spiritual and rational holes in mainline Christianity.  The rediscovery of early Christian Gnosticism has further changed the Western spiritual landscape. Meditative introspection is back. But again, it looks a bit like a Corvair.

 

Unitarian Universalists have been among the “early adopters” of Buddhism and have shown a fascination with the emergent church movement and the reexamination of Christianity through Gnosticism. These new ways of seeing have led to a new understanding of the power in organized, daily, and dare we say conscious, spiritual practice.