16AR21-12

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AR 21:12 - Transcendental Meditation makes its comeback

In this issue:

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM - its global membership shift from a "vast majority" in the US before 1960 to only 7% today

SPONG, JOHN SHELBY - still plenty of fight left in this lefty

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION - restored to vitality by "Hollywood's most influential avant-garde director"?

Apologia Report 21:12 (1,285)

March 23, 2016

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM

"The Adventist Adaptation" by Philip Jenkins -- this guy consistently publishes an incredible volume of scholarly material. (Alister McGrath is probably one of the few whom Jenkins may never rival in this department. He gets 36 hits in Apologia's AR-chive, versus 40 for Jenkins.) Writing in The Christian Century, Jenkins reports that by "the late 1950s, the [SDA Church] celebrated the fact that it had surpassed the milestone of a million adherents, the vast majority of whom were in the United States. ...

"Sixty years later, Adventists constitute a global church that plausibly claims 18 million members, only 7 percent of whom live in the United States. The transformation is in fact even greater than these rough figures suggest, as so many Adventists within the United States have ethnic roots in Africa or the Caribbean. Most of this change has occurred since 1980.

"The SDA Church includes some 75,000 churches spread over 200 countries. Latin America and the Caribbean account for almost 6 million believers, almost a third of the church's strength. Brazil is the country with the largest number of SDA members. Growth in Africa has also been spectacular. The church's East-Central Africa division reports 2.5 million members worshiping in 11,000 churches." <www.goo.gl/IPQZne>

Recent attempts to interpret Adventism for mainstream evangelicals include an overview by Joe Carter for The Gospel Coalition ("9 Things You Should Know About Seventh-day Adventism" <www.goo.gl/V4TVFf>) and a more doctrinally pointed appraisal by Nathan Busenitz of The Master’s Seminary ("Evaluating Seventh-day Adventism" <www.goo.gl/zGGUj7>).

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SPONG, JOHN SHELBY

Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy - A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel, by John Shelby Spong [1] -- promotional material for this fresh attack on the Bible boasts that it "shows just how deeply Jewish the Christian Gospels are and how much they reflect the Jewish scriptures, history, and patterns of worship. Pulling back the layers of a long-standing Gentile ignorance, [Spong] reveals how the church's literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from these original Jewish authors' intent that it is an act of heresy. ... Spong makes clear that it was only after the church became fully Gentile that readers of the Gospels took these stories to be factual, distorting their original meaning." (via Amazon)

We also read that Spong "is a pioneering leader of progressive Christianity, a weekly columnist, and America’s bestselling non-fundamentalist religious author.... [T]he Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000, [he] has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard and at more than 500 other universities all over the world. His books ... have sold well over a million copies...."

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TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

"David Lynch and the Second Coming of Transcendental Meditation" by Corrina Laughlin of Motherboard (a Vice online affiliate) -- "It's Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, and Jerry Seinfeld, Katy Perry, and Sting are all set to perform. ... This is 'Change Begins Within,' a star-studded benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation [DLF], and the goal is to raise money for the foundation's efforts to promote Transcendental Meditation to at-risk New Yorkers. ...

"The fact that A-list stars like Seinfeld and Perry are willing to donate their time and talent to stump for the Lynch Foundation is just one indicator of how far the movement has come in recent years - and how much Hollywood's most influential avant-garde [film] director is to thank."

DLF executive director Bob Roth says that "TM is at a 'tipping point' and cannot currently supply enough certified TM teachers to match booming worldwide demand. ...

"'We're really putting a lot of attention on New York City.... We want to use New York as a model of what a city could be like if it's offered in the school system if TM is offered in homeless shelters, if it's offered in companies and government organizations. ...

"The David Lynch Foundation is embarking on its Big Apple mission after a successful ten years of spreading TM across America. The foundation has implemented TM programs in schools across the country. ...

"In the 1950s, Mahesh Prasad Varma entered a cave in the Himalayas for a period of spiritual study. There, he developed the mediation practice that would eventually become Transcendental Meditation.

"Mahesh had studied math and physics at Allahabad University, but after graduating, he left to pursue enlightenment under the tutelage of a famous Swami named Guru Dev, a spiritual leader in the tradition of Adavaitic Hinduism. During his hermitage he developed the theories that would underlie the practice of TM. Mahesh believed that here was an absolute reality he called 'the Unified Field' that all people, not just spiritual leaders, had the capacity to connect with.

"Practitioners of TM engage in two 20-minute meditation sessions per day; once in the morning and once in the evening. They access this field by silently repeating a mantra given to them by a certified TM instructor. By connecting with the Unified Field, meditators purportedly feel calmer and more at peace.

"In 1957, Mahesh, who would come to be known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and was often called simply 'The Maharishi' or 'The Giggling Guru,' embarked on a world tour with the hopes of spreading TM. ...

"TM was well received by a select group of Americans and Europeans, but it really took off in the West after it was endorsed by the Beatles. ... This publicity changed the tenor of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement and celebrity endorsement became a central tool in TM's spread. ...

"Currently, TM's most serious devotees - many of whom became believers after being inspired by 1960s pop cultural icons - run The Maharishi Vedic City in Fairfield, Iowa [which Mahesh founded in 1971 and] which has its own internal currency system, its own security apparatus, and its own city council. ... Despite the establishment of an entire town, however, Transcendental Meditation might have remained a relic of 1960s counterculture practiced by the elite few, if it weren't for David Lynch ... the creative force behind Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive has been meditating twice-daily since the 70s, and he believes TM is the secret to his creativity. ...

"Lynch believed that people from all walks of life should be able to practice TM, not just those creative LA types who had the means to pay the hefty price tag (learning TM from a certified instructor at one point cost about $2,500 dollars; today the price has reportedly gone down to just under one thousand.) It was this passion and deep-felt belief in the transformative powers of TM that led him to start the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005. Since then, the foundation's profile has been rapidly rising, along with interest in Transcendental Meditation.

"The David Lynch Foundation has distanced itself from the religious roots of TM, insisting that it is only promoting the technique, not the cosmology behind it. Its representatives rarely mention the promise of yogic flying, for example, or position spiritual enlightenment as the goal of practicing TM.

"Today, Lynch Foundation supporters prefer to talk about how TM can lower blood pressure and reduce stress. Its members bristle at any suggestion that TM is religious. [Perhaps they're unaware of the well-known 1977 and 1979 U.S. court decisions <www.goo.gl/ZU3H8d> that ruled otherwise.] Multiple performers at the Foundation's recent benefit preemptively disavowed that the movement was cultlike."

Laughlin asks "if TM isn't necessarily more effective than other forms of meditation, or even prayer, why are so many people jumping on the TM bandwagon, specifically? The answer may take us back to Seinfeld, Perry, and Sting; the Beatles and the Beach Boys. In other words, it may boil down to a matter of superior marketing."

Mara Einstein, a professor of media studies at Queens College, concludes that "TM's supporters are particularly good at marketing relative to other traditions.

"'In this, TM is no different than Scientology or The Kabbalah Center [sic], though perhaps with fewer negative consequences.' So, TM may be trending because we all want to be as successful as Paul McCartney and Sting." <www.goo.gl/El4gTf>

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