Re-enchantment

Last updated on: May 2, 2016 at 6:14 am by John Vest

Re-enchantment 2016-05-02T06:14:43-04:00 John Vest

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Scripture readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year C; May 8, 2016): Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

Today is the last day of a two week travel seminar in Ghana that I’m co-leading as a class for Union Presbyterian Seminary. I’ve learned much about the two Presbyterian churches of Ghana and their practices of evangelism, Christian education, and ministry with youth and young adults.

One of the consistent themes of our trip has been the influence of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements on mainline churches like the Presbyterians. (One of the scholars we spoke with noted that the Pentecostal and charismatic churches are now the mainline and prefers to call the older mission-initiated churches “traditional”.) There is much tension regarding this influence: many of the Presbyterians we’ve met readily incorporate charismatic practices into their ministries in order to prevent people—especially young people—from leaving their churches, while others are more reluctant to accommodate these trends. Ministries for children and college students, both of which get relatively little attention from pastors, tend to adopt Pentecostal and charismatic worship styles, which ends up alienating young people once they are expected to participate in the more traditional “adult” worship services. (Sound familiar?)

Several of the pastors and scholars with whom we’ve talked point out that the Pentecostal and charismatic movement appeals to Ghanaians because this form of Christianity more directly addresses the spiritualities inherited from traditional African religions. African culture, we’ve been told, is spirit-infused and still maintains many supernatural understandings of how the world works. By contrast, post-Enlightenment Western cultures are largely disenchanted. Most mainline and progressive Christians in the United States downplay or completely discount supernatural traditions and experiences.

This week’s reading from Acts includes spirit possession, divination, and a miraculous earthquake. What are we to makes of stories like these? Normally I would write them off as relics of an unenlightened understanding of the world. But last week I witnessed Presbyterian pastors and elders performing what I would call an exorcism. We don’t teach this in Presbyterian seminaries in the United States. They don’t teach it Ghanaian seminaries either, but it happens all the time. I can’t explain what I witnessed, but I can say with certainty that the people involved believed it was real.

I think Christians in the United States need to reclaim a sense of the supernatural, especially as quantum physics and other disciplines help us understand that even the “natural” world can be strange and unpredictable. I have a hunch that some of this re-enchantment is already happening through our retrieval of contemplative spirituality and practices like healing prayer. In both my youth ministry and evangelism work, this return to experiential faith is emerging as a vital phenomenon.

As you think about this passage with your youth, consider these questions: