23AR28-42

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AR 28:42 - Eastern metaphysical mischief, a history

In this issue:

AMERICAN RELIGION - Is America "religious" according to other countries?

EASTERN MYSTICISM - "a drily amusing book on a subject that would make many writers nervous"

SPIRITUAL ABUSE - "not everyone is actually capable of true repentance"

Apologia Report 28:42 (1,639)
December 13, 2023

AMERICAN RELIGION

"What adults in other countries get wrong about American religion" by Kelsey Dallas (Deseret News, Sep 12 '23) -- America's religious reputation "does not match ... actual religious practices and beliefs, according to a Pew Research Center analysis <www.tinyurl.com/3v8jf4sw> of international data. ...

   "More than 4 in 10 U.S. adults (41%) say that religion is 'very important' to them, compared to 37% of adults in Greece, 36% of adults in Israel, 26% of adults in Canada and just 5% of adults in Sweden, Pew reported. 

   "Americans are also more likely to engage in religious practices like prayer, practices that have endured even as engagement in organized religion has declined, as the Deseret News previously reported. 

   "'Eighty-five percent of Americans participate in some kind of spiritual practice, with the most common being prayer,' the Deseret News reported <www.tinyurl.com/pyw3wz73> in May, citing research conducted by City Square Associates <citysquareassociates.com> on behalf of Skylight. 

   "To some Americans, high rates of religious interest and practice are not enough. Nearly half say the U.S. should actually be a Christian nation, although, to some, that simply means being a country guided by generic moral values. 

   "'Many supporters of Christian nationhood define the concept in broad terms, as the idea that the country is guided by Christian values,' Pew reported <www.tinyurl.com/4mrcpapx> last year." 

   Nevertheless, "'In some countries, large shares say the U.S. is less religious. ... Nearly half of adults (48%) say this in Mexico,' as do 38% of adults in India and 36% in Israel, Pew reported." <www.tinyurl.com/43k5s372>

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EASTERN MYSTICISM

"The Phoney Mystics Who Fooled the West" by Philip Hensher (Spectator, Sep 2 '23) -- introduces "the excellent story Mick Brown tells in The Nirvana Express <www.tinyurl.com/4x7c6x6n> ... How western travelers to India went from sober, interested inquiry to a weirdly content-free fantasy existence, and how some sharp-minded Indians saw an opportunity to make a lot of money and garner a good deal of vulgar status...."

   Among the highlights from Hensher: "In the first stages, western (principally British) observers of Indian culture were driven by scholarship and sustained by responsible investigation. ... Sir William Jones's research into Sanskrit resulted in an unprecedented understanding of relationships between the Indo-European languages. Francis Buchanan, an East India Company official, surveying Bihar in 1811, rediscovered the long-forgotten site of the Emperor Ashoka's shrine at Bodh Gaya, the site of the Buddha's first enlightenment. [Then, in 1785] Charles Wilkins ... produced a translation of The Bhagavad Gita and introduced the West to a then unfamiliar culture. ...

   "Through Edwin Arnold's long poem The Light of Asia <www.tinyurl.com/4vtrmx6n> (1879), the Victorian general reader became acquainted with the Buddha's teachings. ...

   "The Light of Asia was immensely popular (in 1902 the first westerner, an Irish migrant worker, was ordained a Buddhist monk), and from it sprang the richly amusing line of charlatans, mountebanks, gulls, knaves and opportunists that provide the meat of Brown's book.

   "Indians had been coming to the West for generations – Dickens met Rabindranath Tagore's moneymaking grandfather Dwarkanath – but now a wave of mystics arrived. Among the first was Swami Vivekananda, an honourable and sincere man whose appearance at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 unleashed mass hysteria. Annie Besant, the theosophist, was swept away; Mrs Roxie Blodgett, an Indiana businessman's wife, was thrilled to see 'scores of women' besieging him. He was signed up immediately by an American speakers' agency. Other theosophists spread the word, including the glamorous Madame Blavatsky, aiming to link all the world's religions. ...

   "E.F. Benson produced the deathless episode in Queen Lucia <www.tinyurl.com/bdh5v85h> when a swami teaching yoga arrives in an English village - who of course turns out to be a cook at a London Indian restaurant, ordering brandy on Daisy Quantock's account. Some of these characters were intelligent people, talking to other intelligent people; some were brazen chancers, seeing, with Vivekananda's triumph in mind, an opportunity to exploit rich, naive westerners. 

   "In 1930, a failed London bookseller and publisher, an associate of the Satanist Aleister Crowley, set off for India in search of spiritual enlightenment. Paul Brunton came across a mystic, Meher Baba, via a recommendation from a fellow Crowleyite. Meher had taken a vow of silence five years earlier and communicated by means of an alphabet board. He informed Brunton that he was preparing to convey a spiritual message to the world. In 1931, aged 37, he announced: 'Love calls me to the West. Make preparation.' ...

   "It was really only when he hit Hollywood that doubts began to surface. Much of his spiritual energy started to be devoted to engineering a meeting with Greta Garbo and persuading the studios to make a massive movie about his life. ...

   "Sri Ramana Maharshi, emerges as a thoughtful person, slightly perplexed by the questions of his strange visitors and giving them the politest brush-offs. ... Brunton asked whether Meher was, as he claimed, the avatar of a god. 'Everyone is the avatar of a god,' he was told. The situation is gloriously dramatised in Half a Life, a late novel <www.tinyurl.com/2f878c2t> by V.S. Naipaul, in which the search for meaning by rich westerners creates a moneymaking guru. ...

   "The Beatles' famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi put up with a lot for the sake of his famous followers and lost no time in advertising them in order to drum up more business. ... Jack Kerouac planned to start a Buddhist monastery in Mexico dedicated to 'pure essence Buddhism… that would be, I 'spose, no rules'. Brown wryly comments that this 'would have made it unique among Buddhist monasteries throughout the world, which generally have more rules than the British civil service'. ... One mystic, Rajneesh, declared himself the 'rich man's guru' and encouraged sexual libertinism. The locals living near his ashram found the sight of westerners dressed as monks or nuns copulating in the street difficult to deal with. ...

   "Hare Krishna was invented by a pharmacist [Abhay Charan De] on New York's Lower East Side in 1966. In a sharp novel, John Updike has a charismatic guru turn out to be one Art Steinmetz from Massachusetts. This is far from implausible. A Buddhist philosopher, Anagarika Govinda, was a German called Ernst Hoffmann. Krishna Prem turned out to be a Ronald Nixon from Cheltenham. Madhava Ashish was in reality a former RAF engineer, Alexander Phipps, with a disconcertingly unmystical style of banter. ...

   The Nirvana Express is a drily amusing book on a subject that would make many writers nervous. It describes some startling stupidity as well as some very sharp behaviour without forcing the point, and includes fierce assertions by followers on both sides. It is interesting to compare Brown's well-documented narrative of Meher Baba's life with the breathlessly reverential account on Wikipedia.

   "I strongly recommend paying attention to the book's footnotes, where some of the more knockabout material is buried. The best of these is a spirited exchange between Brown and a representative of Bhagavan Das, who is set on extracting hundreds of dollars for a conversation." <www.tinyurl.com/44da8279>

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SPIRITUAL ABUSE

"What Is Spiritual Abuse? And How Do We Heal from It?" by Jenna Barnett, senior associate culture editor (Sojourners, Aug 10 '23) -- Seems this topic is on everyone's radar. No surprise we don't always share the same conclusions. Interesting remarks come to the fore during an interview with Rachael Clinton Chen (director of teaching and care, The Allender Center), <www.tinyurl.com/yt37wvbj> who "believes that we are seeing 'an apocalyptic unveiling' of abuse committed by faith leaders. ...

   "In the past decade, a slew of once-revered Christian leaders have been exposed for sexual violence or sexual misconduct: Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels, Jean Vanier, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and too many others to name. ... And when sexual violence is committed by a faith leader, it's often accompanied by another form of violence that's harder to define: spiritual abuse.

   "Spiritual abuse is 'a distortion and exploitation of spiritual authority to manipulate, control, use, or harm others, mostly through shame and fear,' Chen told me in January 2023 during our conversation for Sojourners' Lead Us Not podcast." <www.tinyurl.com/yy52skhc> 

   [This series has an emphasis on Vanier, a deceased Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian, who in 1964, founded "L'Arche, an international federation of communities spread over 37 countries for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them. ... 

   "In February 2020, an internal report published by L'Arche concluded that Vanier sexually abused six women in Trosly-Breuil, France, between 1970 and 2005." (Wikipedia)] <www.tinyurl.com/45b97y55>

   "'It's actually a really scary moment,' she told me. 'Because it's one thing if you have an experience of spiritual abuse or sexual abuse, it's another thing when you start to see ... a whole pattern of behavior.'"

   Chen remarks: "I think that connection to vulnerability is, to me, what is part of the wicked nature of spiritual abuse as it connects to sexual abuse, because grooming is a huge part of both forms of abuse. ...

   "Jesus' fury is really reserved for the religious leaders who are exploiting their religious authority...."

   Later, she adds that "not everyone [who harms] is actually capable of true repentance. ... 

   "I believe in a God who brings beauty out of our ashes and who has promised to make things new, but we know in trauma studies that newness is not without evidence of the wound."

   Last, the concept of "spiritual trauma" comes up, and Chen opines: "Just because that abusive experience didn't happen to you, the spiritual leadership did, whether it's from afar or in proximity." <www.tinyurl.com/59j39myc>

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