Mysticism bad, bizarre stories good

June 4, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

I was amused by a recent story in the Dallas Morning News about the rise of charismatic forms of worship in the Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria.

The article chronicled the exploits of the Rev. Ejike Mbaka, a Catholic priest whose style is more akin to the “700 Club” than the often-staid Church of Rome. Mbaka claims to heal people with magic water. At his highly emotional services, he promises that the blind will see, the lame will walk and that those who oppose him will suffer great torments. In other words, it’s classic Oral Roberts stuff.

The Catholic Church has been moving to embrace charismatic forms of worship. Pope Benedict XVI, back when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, urged the faithful to be open to such worship, calling it a counterbalance to “a world imbued with rationalistic skepticism.” (I guess he prefers the alternative — irrational gullibility.)

The story notes that not all Catholics are comfortable with services where people fall on the floor, scream and generally behave like “holy rollers” — a dismissive term for Pentecostal Protestants who believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Observes the reporter, Joshua Benton, “Some in the church worry about this nudging of conventional Christian doctrine toward the mystical.”

I hate to be the one to break it to those critics, but my understanding of the core doctrine of Christianity is this: It was necessary for God to assume the form of his own son and come down to earth to redeem humankind because all of us were slapped with a type of generational curse thousands of years ago after a talking snake persuaded the first woman who ever lived to eat a piece of fruit that she was not supposed to eat.

In light of this, I think it’s a little too late to worry about mysticism invading the church.

Religions have to work under the premise of “irrational gullibility”. They have no truth, fact, or history that can shower them with legitimacy to survive “rationalistic skepticism”. Their existence depends upon people accepting them as “spritual leaders”, when in fact, they are neither “spiritual” or “leaders”.

peace

  • When the Jesuits arrived in west central Africa to convert the Ashanti, Dahomey and others to their Trinity, they ran into a problem: these people already had a Trinity of their own.

    Seems they had been female-dominated moon-worshippers until about 700 A.D. when they were discovered by Arab slave traders, who also realized that there was a lot of gold in the area which could be mined. Conquest brought males into social prominence, and they added (or strengthened) a male sun-worship. The two deities were reconciled with the people through a kind of Vulcan (Greek sense, not Star Trek) underground but human-form son of theirs.

    What were the Jesuits to do? Rather than fight it, they just adopted the native names for their own Trinity and went on converting from there. Apparently much of that combined Roman Catholic ritual (bells, candles, etc.), mingled with bits of the native religion, made it into the West Indian voodoo rituals once these natives were taken by English and French slave traders to the New World.

    I guess wherever there’s a buck to be made….

  • Morbo, you are one of most insightful and amusing bloggers online today. Many, many thanks and please keep the posts coming.

  • Charismatic (speaking in tongues, etc) Christian church services have been common for years in West Africa, largely in Pentecostal churches. Members of other Christian denominations (not to mention Muslims) often frown on this style of worship. That this behavior is creeping into Catholicism is interesting, though not entirely surprising given that it’s not new. Catholicism is not the largest Christian denomination, however.

    As for this notion of West Africans worshipping a trinity and being female dominated moon-worshippers, that strikes me as one of those romantic new age ideas that has little basis in history. So let’s not confuse the point.

    The Ashanti, for example, have the “nyame”, which is the name of their traditional monotheistic god. West African traditional (i.e., pre-Muslim and pre-Christian contact) religions largely feature ancestor worship and animal sacrifice. Some tribes pass names through the woman’s side of the family, but this certainly isn’t female-dominated.

  • Thinking any of this has anything to do with mysticism is like thinking George W. has anything to do with statesmanship.

  • Pope Benedict XVI, back when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, urged the faithful to be open to such worship, calling it a counterbalance to “a world imbued with rationalistic skepticism.” (I guess he prefers the alternative — irrational gullibility.)

    Well said. I guess if a religious leader is going to take sides between one or the other, they’ll reject rational skepticism every time, knowing that it kills faith like Roundup kills weeds. Irrational gullibility is precisely what religious leaders value in their flock, whether they admit it or not. It’s the indispensable characteristic of the true believer.

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