Archive for October, 2007

29
Oct

The New Age Movement – A Christian Perspective

One evening in October, I went out with a friend and left my daughter in the care of a babysitter, a nice Hungarian woman in her early fifties. When I returned, the babysitter told me excitedly that the next day she was planning to attend the psychic fair. While she didn’t specifically invite me along with her, she obviously felt news about the event was worth spreading (I didn’t go, by the way).

Indeed, the Toronto annual psychic fair has been an attraction for some time now. This year’s features include demonstrations and seminars on astrology, palmistry, clairvoyance, numerology and healing crystals among other things. But one need not go to the psychic fair to witness Torontonians’ fascination with the paranormal. Almost every daily newspaper contains a horoscope section. Psychics set up shop in storefronts, promising to solve prospective clients’ life problems. Books like James Van Praagh’s Talking to Heaven, which describes how to get in contact with dead loved ones, and Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb, in which the actress discusses her purported past lives, make the bestseller lists. It seems that all the city – and all the nation, for that matter – is in the thralls of the New Age movement.

My own reaction to such activities is one of scepticism and amusement. I mean who could not laugh at the image of Shirley MacLaine running around on a beach shouting out “I am God”? I tend to see things like tea leaves and tarot cards as silly but harmless. In time, however, some new questions have emerged in my mind. How should I as a practising Christian (Lutheran, to be more specific) approach the New Age movement? Is it the path to enlightenment or the road to hell?

The Christian community’s reaction to the New Age movement has been mixed. On one hand are those who consider it the work of the devil. Calgary Sun columnist Licia Corbella once objected to covering a psychic fair on religious grounds – though she ended up going, on her boss’ orders, and exposing a palm reader there as a fraud. At the other end of the spectrum are Christians who embrace psychic phenomena, not seeing any contradiction between them and their religious faith. Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was a devout Presbyterian but consulted with fortune tellers and claimed to communicate with the spirit of his dead dog. Sometimes entire denominations have incorporated New Age tenets into their theology. The Christian Spiritualist Church, for example, emphasizes contact with the deceased as one of its core beliefs.

Some Christian authorities have adopted a different outlook towards the New Age movement. Anglican priest and journalist Tom Harpur, for instance, wrote a column in the Toronto Star in which he expressed doubts about most of the movement’s doctrines but stated that for some people it fulfilled a spiritual need that was not being met by traditional religion. A similar view was taken by Lutheran theologian Ted Peters in his book The Cosmic Self.

I agree with Harpur that some individuals may turn to the New Age movement because they feel alienated by traditional faiths. Why then, one might ask, do they reject mainstream religion? Perhaps they are tired of the focus on sin and guilt by some organized religions. For example, a friend of mine remembers a teacher at her parochial (not Lutheran, by the way) high school informing the class that they were selfish and “thought the world revolved around themselves.” Nor does the hypocrisy of certain religious leaders, like televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, help the cause of Christianity as a whole.

The other side of the coin is the accusation that the New Age movement offers its followers the benefits of traditional religion – inner peace, enlightenment – without the demands, such as self-sacrifice and humility. This charge has been made not only by Christian critics of the movement but by secular ones as well, like Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise. I would add, however, that not all traditional religionists are humble or altruistic people and that many secular movements, such as the drug culture (which, like New Age, emerged in full force in the 1960s), also focus on the self to the exclusion of others.

Finally, how should a Christian approach the New Age movement? Obviously some New Age doctrines are incompatible with Christianity, such as Shirley MacLaine’s view that we ourselves are God. Similarly, the portrayal by some New Age proponents of Jesus as an “ascended Master” is surely at odds with his status as the Son of God. While things like astrology and clairvoyance don’t strike me as particularly nefarious, I might wonder why someone with a great faith in Jesus Christ would resort to them in an effort to, say, resolve personal problems. One means of countering any New Age influence is to ensure as a church that the true message of Christ and the gospel of hope reach all people.

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10
Oct

Don Valley West – Ground Zero on D-Day

So lucky, I should be located in Don Valley West for tonight’s provincial election, which has been unofficially declared the center of the voting universe by Ontario media. This is of course because Progressive Conservative leader John Tory has decided to run in this riding, taking on the powerful and popular Liberal incumbent, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

Tory decided to forgo running in a more conservative-safe riding for a riding that has votes traditionally Liberal on both the provincial and federal levels. A recent riding poll published by the National Post stated Wynne as having 52% support in DVW while Tory significantly trailed with 37%. Should the poll prove to be prophetic, Tory will have the dubious distinction of being one of the few party leaders to lose his own riding.

I cast my vote barely and hour ago, and the election process has been greatly refined. I know this because I got to vote on the first try this time around. My last attempt at voting was during the last federal election, and when I arrived I was directed to go to “one” of the desks in the front area. I went to the only open table, where the white-haired gentleman took one look at me and folded his arms in strong defiance. My wife was in shock – we thought we left this kind of bias up north. Before I could get any unkind words out, we were quickly escorted to another table by another polling official who noticed what was about to transpire.

The previous scenario would be impossible under the current voting process – tables were assigned by number and a stern-looking election official kept watch over everyone. The staff also suddenly got diverse – far more diverse than Leaside, at least. Security was also increased – after taking my driver’s license, the lady at the table asked me to state my full name and address. Only after that did I receive the ballots (1 for choosing a minister; 1 for deciding on MMP), and after voting was asked to state my name for a second time before dropping the ballots in the box.

Outcome prediction? Results will be rolling through starting in about an hour, but here’s my predictions:

  1. Tory will lose Don Valley West … Kathleen Wynne will be the victor by a safe margin
  2. The NDP will finish a very distant third since its candidate, Mike Kenny, didn’t even bother to show up for the debate
  3. The Green Party will be fourth, but not far behind the Green Party, since the average Green Party supporter votes on principle rather than on the personality of any one candidate
  4. The Family Coalition party will be lucky to break triple digits. I didn’t even know there was a candidate here until I looked at the ballot
  5. Overall, Premier Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal Party will win a light majority because Ontarians were unable to look past the rather trivial school issue of faith-based schooling
  6. John Tory will step down … eventually. His replacement will be connected in some way to Stephen Harper
  7. MMP will fail because hardly anyone understands what it is. Green party supporters will be crushed.
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03
Oct

Another Look at Abortion

Monday’s Globe & Mail carried a story about abortion. Apparently women in the Ottawa area who wish to terminate their pregnancies are waiting longer than usual – sometimes weeks – to do so due to staffing shortages at hospitals that perform the procedure. As was to be expected, pro-choicers and pro-lifers reacted differently to the news: the former with frustration at what they saw as women’s difficulty in exercising their reproductive rights and the latter with hope that the delays might cause some women to rethink their decision. One point on which members of both camps concurred, however: Canadians aren’t thinking much about abortion these days.

Indeed, abortion appears to have passed from the limelight. It is no longer the burning issue it was in the 1980s, for example, a decade that saw everything from the acquittal of Dr. Henry Morgentaler to the introduction of abortion on demand to attempts by men to stop their girlfriends from undergoing the operation. Politicians on both the left and right have largely steered clear of the subject. Media coverage has likewise dwindled, whereas in the 1980s it seemed not a day went by without a piece on abortion in one of the major Canadian dailies.

Nonetheless, through it all some trends have emerged. First, most Canadians support a woman’s right to end a pregnancy, at least in the first few months. This stance may be due in part to a general liberalization of societal mores, as witnessed in the greater acceptance of phenomena like homosexuality, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing. It might also stem from Canadians’ reluctance to let the state into areas they feel it has no business being, such as the family. Of course such hesitancy can work against “progressive” as well as conservative goals. For instance, despite efforts by some child advocacy groups to ban corporal punishment, polls consistently show a majority of Canadians – including myself – oppose making the practice illegal on the grounds that the choice to spank their children or not should fall to the parents themselves.

It does not follow however that most people share the entire pro-choice agenda. According to a number of surveys, over 50% of respondents are against the use of public funds for abortions. There thus exists a large contingency of individuals – and again I count myself among them – who believe that while the procedure should be legal, the government has no obligation to pay for it (other than perhaps in the minority of cases where the pregnancy is caused by rape, threatens the mother’s life, or would result in the birth of a deformed child).

Speaking as a so-called average Canadian, I suspect that many people are tired of the extremist rhetoric from both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. In the former camp, inflammatory terms like “murder” and “baby killing” tend to alienate those who consider abortion the taking of a life of some sort but who don’t equate it to the strangling of a five-month-old infant. On the other side of the fence, I can’t help but get irritated by some pro-choice advocates who take umbrage at the suggestion that an abortion for a fourteen-year-old rape victim is less morally ambiguous that that for a thirty-year-old married woman who thinks children would impinge on her lifestyle (both real-life incidents).

The majority of Canadians obviously don’t view abortion as just another medical procedure. But they appear to have come to the conclusion that criminalizing it would create more problems than it would solve. On the other hand, many of the pro-choice camp’s demands and its seeming unwillingness to address the moral dimension of the issue will probably leave the general population’s support for the movement lukewarm.

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