Shepherd Keynote Address Lyceum 2008 (Full Text)

Culturally Christian, Spiritually Unlimited: A Unity Response to the Challenge of Postmodernism in Contemporary Theology

Thomas Shepherd, M.Div.


Unity is a Christian movement in search of its identity in a post-Christian, postmodernist world. Postmodernism is not an easy concept to nail down. According to the PBS website, Postmodernism is a “general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others.”[1] Kevin J. Vanhoozer writes, “Those who attempt to define or to analyze the concept of postmodernism do so at their own peril.”[2] Nevertheless, Vanhoozer proceeds to define and analyze postmodernism. If I am reading him correctly, Vanhoozer seems to be saying that, like the effect of an observer on the outcome in quantum physics, postmodernism holds that every definition is shaped by the definer.[3] This is probably a good summary of a key element in understanding postmodernism.
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Another way to understand it centers around the concept of the metanarrative. French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard coined this term in his definition of postmodernism. A metanarrative is a grand narrative, a story used to explain all other stories and events in human existence. For example, the Exodus from Egypt in the Hebrew Bible provides a metanarrative for Jewish thought, after which the Children of Israel continually looked backward to this master story to interpret their lives. Be kind to the widows and orphans, because you were in bondage in Egypt and the Lord delivered you. Show justice and mercy, because when you were in Egypt the Pharaoh showed none to you. We are the people who crossed the Red Sea on dry land, therefore we trust in God no matter how impossible the situation seems to be. That’s a metanarrative.
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The more effective the metanarrative is at shaping the way people see themselves and their world, the less conscious of it will they be. For example, Americans tend to see themselves as a just and honorable people who keep their promises and who are respectful of others. We are the people who fled the crowded cities of Europe to seek a better life, religious freedom, and a chance for everyone to own a home and make a fortune. This is NOT the way many people around the world see Americans, especially after the collateral damage of the Iraqi War and our treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
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Closer to home, we have become anything but a land where everyone is welcome. Millions of dollars are being spent to put up a fence to keep Mexicans out. Even more troubling is the jarring disrepair which has befallen our freedom of religion mythos.
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Look at what happened in the campaign which just ended today. When a major presidential candidate has to defend himself against claims he is a Muslim—against charges that he is a member of an ancient and deeply spiritual religion, a religious faith which gave us the university system and algebra and the concept that all people are created equal before God—there is a very different process at work here than the metanarrative of America as a melting pot would suggest. Why did Barack Obama not simply say, “I am a Christian, I am not a Muslim, but so what if I were?” Because he would have paid an unacceptable political price for making that statement. It was only Colin Powell—an African-American war hero and member of the opposition party, someone who is running for nothing this year—who was finally able to say:

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president?"[4]

Let me add that, although one of the reasons the American nation was founded was to guarantee religious freedom for all, America still has a long way to go before everyone understands the meaning of its national motto, E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. Unity in diversity.
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Postmodern critics say these metanarratives, while culturally necessary, nevertheless cannot be trusted. In uncharacteristically simple terms, Lyotard said: “I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.”[5] These grand visions of what life is about are culturally determined myth-making and not absolute truth. There are no objectively true metanarratives, only stories we tell ourselves to bolster our courage for the trials of life. Let me hasten to add that metanarratives are not bad things. Humans need this kind of narrative framework rather desperately, in direct proportionality to how desperate life becomes. Take Viktor Frankl for example.

Viktor Frankl, a survivor of imprisonment in a concentration camp during WWII, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning (1984), identified meaning as a central factor enabling people to endure torture and injustice. The will to meaning is the focal structure of Frankl’s system of logotherapy according to which “man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives” (p. 121).[6]

Postmodernism reduces the metanarrative to whistling in the dark. Nothing is objective; everything is shaped by culture, language, and experience. There is no vantage point which humans can attain to look down objectively on their circumstances and come up with universal truths. Whether one is contemplating literature or philosophy, art or architecture, thoughts about life or about God and the afterlife--where does one go to find an objective vantage point to evaluate a worldview, when the person considering these ideas is already inside a worldview which is shaped by language and culture? As I have said many times to my students, there are no tiger gods where there are no tigers.[7]

Universal Truth Non-Existent: Even This Truth?
One could argue that this does not mean there are no universal truths, just that certainty about them is unavailable. However, postmodernism kicks aside that argument and asserts that, in fact, not only are universal truths unattainable, they are also non-existent. One of the most cogent definitions of postmodernism which I have encountered comes from the PBS website:

Postmodernism…is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.[8]

One problem postmodernism faces is it seems to have a thanatos, a death wish about its own ideas. It offers metaphysical critique of metaphysical systems by denying that metaphysics are possible. Its central principle is that there are no central principles. A metaphysical system that rejects the possibility of any systematic understanding of metaphysical reality is not unlike anarchists who suddenly come to power. How does one govern when government itself is the enemy? The snake eats its own tail. Back to the PBS definition:

Postmodernism is “post” because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody—a characteristic of the so-called “modern” mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning.[9]

Overlooking the self-contradictory nature of a radically postmodernist position and taking its elements separately, there are many things in postmodernism which sound surprisingly like New Thought Christianity.

Connie Fillmore’s Five Principles
For example, the idea that humans create their own reality is quite similar to the fourth of Connie Fillmore’s five principles. Let me say a word about them before proceeding. These ideas are popularly called “The Five Unity Principles.” I am trying to be a good postmodern theologian here, which requires me to identify my source. It seems important to me that I call them “Connie Fillmore’s Five Principles.” Scholarly discipline requires me to cite the author and resist the temptation to declare this a Unity-wide statement. Unfortunately, the opposite tendency seems operational in Unity today, as these five ideas evolve toward an embryonic Unity creed.
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Please note that I am not blaming Connie Fillmore for this stampede toward creedal certainty, which postmodernism says is problematic at best. I am questioning the methodology of calling these ideas “Unity’s Five Principles” rather than simply attributing them the author. Calling them “Unity’s Five Principles” shuts off discussion, making it nearly impossible to critically analyze their content without sounding like you are attacking or at least “deconstructing” the Unity movement itself. Yet, it should be abundantly clear that Connie’s grandfather encouraged just this kind of critical thinking in his students.
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In fact, we have both the Fillmore co-founders, Charles and Myrtle, on record as endorsing theological discourse in the very early stages of their work. Before they were married, Charles and Myrtle carried on a cross-country correspondence which contains this comment by the future Mrs. Fillmore. In a letter to Charles, dated September 1, 1878, Myrtle Page writes:

You question my orthodoxy? Well, if I were called upon to write out my creed it would be rather a strange mixture. I am decidedly eclectic in my theology—is it not my right to be? Over all is a grand idea of God, but full of love and mercy.[10]

James Dillet Freeman writes in his book The Story of Unity the following description of Charles Fillmore’s teaching methods:

Often in his classes, a student would be answering a question and Mr. Fillmore would ask, “Where did you get that idea?” The student would reply, “I read that in such-and-such a Unity book, Mr. Fillmore.” “Are you sure?” “Certainly, Mr. Fillmore, that is right out of page so and so.” “You know,” he would say, “that is not exactly right,” and then he would go on to explain the point in a way that clarified it. Often in his classes, he would interrupt his students, when they were quoting him, with the question, “But what do YOU think about it?” The main aim of his teaching was to get his students to think Truth through for themselves. [11]

As Fordham University’s Avery Cardinal Dulles has said, “Theology begins with wonder and unanswered questions.”[12]
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When Connie Fillmore summarized her theological view of basic Unity principles in the 1990 booklet Keys to the Kingdom: Five Fundamentals of Truth, this is how she described her fourth principle:

Human beings create their experience by the activity of their thinking. Everything in the manifest realm has its beginning in thought.[13]

The Association of Unity Churches International website paraphrases Ms. Fillmore’s fourth principle: “We are co-creators with God, creating reality through thoughts held in mind.”[14]

The difference between what Connie Fillmore is saying and the postmodernist view may seem subtle, however its actual divergence is far from insignificant. Postmodernism holds that we create an illusion of reality and live within those parameters for lack of an alternative. Ms. Fillmore holds that reality itself comes from the way we perceive it. Whereas postmodernism follows Kierkegaard and denies the possibility of a rational metaphysical system, Connie Fillmore goes beyond this and accepts the out-picturing of human consciousness as constitutional for reality itself. What we think is what we get. Thought is not just definitional, it is definitive, the mechanism by which everything exists. We do not create an abstract world of thought and live in it; we live in a concrete world created by thought.
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As with any metaphysical system, there are oceans of difficulties with this idea. If everyone is creating their own reality, how do they coexist side by side and maintain communications? The 1998 motion picture What Dreams May Come shows an afterlife in which everyone has the heaven of their dreams, creating the reality they want to experience and peopling it with whomever they want to attract. While this Hollywood version of the fourth principle is a lovely thought, it quickly deteriorates to contradiction and absurdity. What if you want an afterlife with a snow lodge and I want the sunny tropics? Does this mean all you get in your heaven is my doppelganger, a mere astral projection, or a cardboard cut-out of my likeness with none of my consciousness?
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Of course, one could argue that physical limitations are meaningless in a spiritual existence and the details will have been worked out by God long before we get there. However, when transplanting the discussion to a concrete existence on this side of the veil, the idea that everyone creates his or her own universe is frightfully difficult to maintain without a lot of imaginative apparatus and some degree of fantasy. I am not sure I want Osama bin Laden’s thoughts creating reality, and although we have never met I am equally certain Mr. bin Laden shares the same sentiment about me. One could argue that bin Laden and I are co-creating this world, because we could not exist in our present form without each other. Without the West, Islamic terrorism is a different kind of animal, just as giraffes probably would not have evolved without leafy trees to browse for lunch. I am uncertain whether that analogy really works, or whether I am the tree or the giraffe, but you get the point about the function of symbiosis in evolutionary development.

Boldly Choosing
Former Notre Dame head football coach Lou Holtz said, “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”[15]

Taking the challenge of postmodernism seriously—assuming that people really get to chose the world in which they live, and by the choosing actually create it—then I choose the idealistic world of humanity as one family. In this regard I am proud of the irrepressible optimism of the New Thought Christian churches and of religious progressives from many traditions. To its credit and despite wars and rumors of wars, Unity never relinquished the optimistic, monistic, idealistic vision of transcendentalism. Our writers and theologians still affirm the divine nature of humanity, taking seriously the imago Dei regardless of appearances to the contrary. The prophetic tradition within our movement aims at calling people to the higher vision of their potential as sons and daughters of God. We see all sentient beings as fully divine and fully human, to include the main example of this indwelling divinity, Jesus of Nazareth.
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Such a prophetic word from our tradition, properly explored by theological reflection and communicated via modern networking, has the potential to transform the consciousness of humanity, one person at a time. The outrageous possibilities of such a claim remain unexplored today because the potential apologists for Metaphysical Christianity are unequipped to play in the major leagues of theological dialogue. In fact, one could argue that Unity’s longstanding aversion for intellectual discourse indicates we have yet to show up for spring training. To communicate a prophetic vision today requires an understanding of contemporary issues and their antecedents, plus the ability to translate one’s insights into the common language of Christian theology.

Deconstructing an Anti-Intellectual Bias
Historically speaking—and now I am going to move into a little creative deconstruction—Unity has been rather anti-intellectual and anti-traditionalist. This tendency has kept the insights, ideas and tools available to clergy and religious scholars from mainstream Protestant and Catholic traditions from finding their way into our branch of Protestant Christianity. Even among the ordained Unity clergy, there is almost no tradition of theological reflection, no widespread understanding of modern biblical scholarship, little sense of church history, and an appalling lack of awareness about the very tools required to make our gifts available to a wider Christian world. The intellect has been described as inferior to, and often in conflict with, intuitive insights gleaned in personal meditation.
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Again and again, Unity foundational writings take a swipe at the intellectual approach to religion, like this question in the study guide of Fillmore’s 1939 book, Jesus Christ Heals: “Is it better to seek understanding through intellectual reasoning or through divine inspiration?”[16] Note the dichotomy; the choice is between trusting your limited human intelligence (intellectual reasoning) and trusting God (divine inspiration). Since dialogue among biblical scholars and theologians provides a context of continuity for the Christian community, it is precisely this juxtaposition of intellectual reasoning over and against divine inspiration which has perpetuated Unity’s isolation; we have been an archipelago somewhere over the horizon, far from the mainland of Christian thought.
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With no seat at the table where the ongoing discussion of Christian theology is taking place, it is not surprising that Unity is often evaluated in absentia, decried as a cult by members of the Religious Right, or dismissed as light-weight positive thinking by mainstream churches. The price we have paid for refusing to think deeply and critically about basic metaphysical ideas is painfully summarized by one of Unity’s few practicing teachers of religion in an institution of higher learning, Dr. Paul Alan Laughlin. Dr. Laughlin is professor of Religion and Philosophy at Otterbein College, a Jesus Seminar Fellow, and an ordained Unity minister. Laughlin contends this adverse reputation is partially because Unity lacks a tradition of theological reflection, which has kept its main ideas unexplored.[17]
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Some of those distinctive ideas include a tradition of mysticism, spiritual healing, introspective meditation and affirmative prayer; a thoroughgoing monism which proclaims no power exists except God-power; identification of the Christ as the divine within each person; and a relentlessly positive attitude despite all appearances to the contrary. These are great theological concepts, yet despite Charles Fillmore’s example of thinking creatively about great ideas, Unity people have too often settled for fill-in-the-blank repetition, restating and meditating upon its ideas without critical reflection. Laughlin writes in the Westar Institute’s Fourth R magazine:

I am sad to say that the healthy spiritual introspection and introversion of mysticism has often failed in practice (in New Thought churches). Unfortunately, it too easily degenerates into a thinly veiled egotism and produces a superficial, sentimental, self-serving, and self-aggrandizing jingoism and happy-babble that can aptly be termed “Hallmark holiness.” Further, New Thought organizations have tended to eschew traditional academic education and theology, leaving their key concepts underdeveloped.[18]

Some theologians, myself included, have always believed that an informed and intellectually grounded spirituality is both the deepest and most practical expression of one’s faith. According to Mark’s gospel, the First Commandment given by Jesus includes an intellectual component:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”[19]

At the AUCI People’s Convention held in June 2007, Unity President and CEO Charlotte Shelton observed that Unity Institute’s movement toward becoming a fully accredited theological seminary “gives us a seat at the table for important international theological discussions.” Dr. Shelton brought the cheering delegates to their feet with these words:

"I humbly suggest that as a movement we have longed to have greater impact on the world while also refusing to honor the rules for doing so. It’s causing many of us to play small–way small. I, for one, am ready for Unity to step up to its rightful role of influence on the world stage. And I know many of you are as well. And, as we individually and collectively raise our consciousness about what is ours to do, our opportunities for growth and greater influence will flow to us like bees to honey."[20]

It is interesting that Dr. Shelton paired “opportunities for growth and greater influence” as the results of Unity’s movement toward academic accreditation. She appears to agree that the same kind of mutual benefit which I have envisioned will accrue from engaging Unity in “important international theological discussions.”
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As Unity grows from encountering the ideas of others, it will exert greater influence through the newfound ability to speak the language of theological discourse. Reading Dr. Shelton’s remarks, one biblical text which immediately springs to my mind is the call of Abram, “I will bless you...so that you will be a blessing.” [21]

How Christian is Unity?
How will Unity interact with a global society in a postmodern world? The major question which we have not yet begun to address theologically is how Christian is Unity, and how Christian should it be? Today, New Thought Christianity stands at a crossroads, pondering this momentous decision: Shall we affirm the Judeo-Christian metanarrative, however imperfect, modifying it for a postmodern age, or toss it aside in favor of an emerging interfaith synthesis? How will Unity and other New Thought Christian groups integrate their ideas into a world where Internet sites, like Beliefnet.com, are making more and more people aware of the multitude of religious perspectives within the human family?
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Let me begin by announcing my biases: I hold that Unity is a Christian movement which needs to get in touch with its intellectual heritage in order to establish itself as an authentic expression of the faith in the postmodern world. The established historical fact is that, just as Jesus was born inside the Jewish metanarrative, the Unity movement was born inside the Christian worldview. However, neither Jesus nor the founders of New Thought Christianity had any inclination to be bound to the current interpretations of what that metanarrative meant in the world in which they lived. Jesus carefully reinterpreted the Hebrew scriptures, and every successful reformer who has come after him has followed the same model. Reinterpret, stretch the limits, shape the metanarrative by pushing out the walls rather than burning down the building.
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Charles and Myrtle Fillmore were careful not to reject a single major Christian doctrine, although they reserved the right to reinterpret the symbols of the ancient metanarrative to reflect a nineteenth century, Hegelian-transcendentalist-Newtonian consciousness. Today, we face the same challenge within the twenty-first century, to bring our metanarrative in line with our Teilhardian-panentheistic-quantum postmodern consciousness.

Biblical Analogy
A biblical parallel might be found in the situation of the Apostle Paul as he looked outward at the Hellenistic world from his Jewish heritage. Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee, schooled in minute interpretations of the Jewish Law. However, instead of insisting that the Greek-speaking majority of the Roman world must convert to Judaism before becoming Christians, Paul emphasized faith in Jesus as the key to membership in the Kingdom of God. That meant gentile males did not have to go under a rabbi’s knife to inherit the faith of Israel; the Old Covenant was renewed and extended through the world-embracing, self-sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. This preached well in a world where people hungered for meaning. As ancient pagan institutions crumbled around them to be replaced by Caesar worship, educated Greeks and Romans were chasing mystery cults and reading Greek translations of the Jewish scriptures.
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The metanarrative was changing, and Paul snuck into the control room and reprogrammed the Christian message to work in this time and place. However far afield his reinterpretations of Judaism took Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles considered himself a Jew all the days of his life. One could say Paul was culturally Jewish but spiritually unlimited. This became increasingly hard for subsequent generations of Christians to affirm, partially because the majority of the new believers had never been Jews in the first place but also because Palestinian Judaism rose in two bloody rebellions against Rome. Because people tend to lump everyone together, as we have seen in Colin Powell’s comments— Jews everywhere began to look like the Taliban in the eyes of the cosmopolitan Hellenistic world. This was an unfair prejudice, but it accelerated the distance between Christianity’s Jewish birthplace and its new home as a thoroughly Greco-Roman mystery religion.
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Yet, even as Hellenistic Christians divorced themselves from the people of Moses, the faith of Jesus continued to wear its wedding ring to Judaism; the Jewish Bible and the History of Israel would now become a Christian story. The metanarrative had changed.

Culturally Christian, Spiritually Unlimited
Neither Jesus not Paul, neither nor Meister Eckhart nor Martin Luther, neither Ralph Waldo Emerson nor Charles Fillmore simply rejected their heritage and fled to another religion, or tried to build a new religion from pieces sliced from other living faiths. They acknowledged their respective heritages, critiqued the metanarrative, and offered a new direction beginning on the established path upon which they stood. What I am suggesting is that today the model for New Thought churches going forward into the twenty-first century is better served by recognizing, as have the great reform movements on the past, that Unity is a descendent from earlier metanarratives. One can see this connection even from a casual reading of history. Unity as a Movement accepts that people of other faiths also have a connection to the divine, both within themselves and in the life and history of their religious traditions. As Unity people acknowledge these two ideas—its indebtedness to the cultural and intellectual heritage of Christianity and its openness to truth from whatever source is flows—we can see that the Unity movement is culturally Christian, spiritually unlimited.
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This is where postmodern thought can help Unity and all those who are rightly averse to the toxic fumes of Christian fundamentalism. By acknowledging that truth is not one but many, religious progressives are able to be faithfully Christian without intellectual compromise. I am able to call Jesus Christ my Lord and even my Savior (Greek, soter – deliverer, healer). Regardless of how differently other persons may understand those terms does not affect the truth they speak for me. It is those two words, for me, which frees postmodern Christianity from dogmatism while acknowledging the power of Jesus Christ in shaping individual consciousness.
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There is a kind of smug naiveté which comes from being information poor, and we are not immune to this tendency. Even original thinkers like Eric Butterworth—whom I greatly admire—can fall into this spiritual ego-trap when writing about Unity’s place in the family of Christian religions. Butterworth distinguishes between religion about Jesus and the religion of Jesus. He thought that all it took was to read the gospels “as they have been written” to get the pure, original meaning of the faith of Jesus. Coincidentally, this pure, original faith is exactly what Unity teaches.[22] Of course, the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons and the Russian Orthodox Church and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod all believe they are teaching the religion of Jesus while everyone else us merely following a man-made religion about Jesus. Again, postmodern theology comes to the rescue by reminding all players that no one has an exclusive claim on Jesus because every claim has self-authenticating validity for every person who accepts it. Lacking an objective place from which to adjudicate among the competing claims of various Christian traditions, the postmodernist is obliged to regard them as equal, or at least equally worthy of critical review. Historically speaking, the only person who ever really followed the religion of Jesus was Jesus himself, and as already noted, he was a Jew.

Critical Thought without Absolute Certainty
However, if one acknowledges the subjective nature of truth, what grounds does anyone have to evaluate the claims of any system of belief? One solution is that each person presents a subjective account of what works for him or her, clarifying what the presenter finds adaptive and maladaptive in contemporary thought. This person-centered point of view then dialogues with other subjective evaluations of truth, and through the process everyone refines and corrects his or her ideas in the light of new insights, all of which nevertheless remain individual and subjective.
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Postmodern Christianity describes a faith lacking finality in any theological view, regardless of how basic and essential it may appear. This does not preclude a belief in universal truth, merely that such belief must be understood as a faith position, which is itself subject to cultural influences. Furthermore, I would argue that Unity, viewed as a postmodern form of New Thought Christianity, can firmly hold to the belief in universal truths—e.g., God is One Presence and One Power—as long as Unity people are courageous enough and fully aware enough to acknowledge that even this idea is a subjective element in a culturally shaped worldview. I absolutely believe God is Absolute Good, even though I am absolutely sure there is no way to be absolutely sure of it. Perhaps that is why they call it faith.

The Challenge Continues
The challenge of postmodernism is that we must continue to explore religious practices and spiritual ideas while realizing that all our theologies are the products of our best understanding in the current slice of time. This can be an empowering insight, giving future generations the absolute mandate to critically evaluate everything we say and do and to find the truth that works for them in whatever universe they build from their consciousness. Education is a lifelong, perhaps eternity-long, process. As Charles Fillmore said in 1941, “The minister who thinks his education is complete when he leaves the theological seminary never becomes a great teacher of men.”[23]
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Today, sixty-seven years later, this footnote in Unity’s metanarrative would be amended to read: “….men or women…” The absolute uncertainty of postmodernism suggests the need to continue the discussion relentlessly. For those of us who love ideas, this is a very good thing, indeed.
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NOTES:
[1] Unsigned article, PBS website http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html (Accessed 10-30-08).
[2] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ed., Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge, UK: 2003), 3.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Colin Powell, in Jason Linkins “Colin Powell Invokes the Image of a Fallen Soldier,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-invokes-imag_n_135977.html (Accessed 11-01-08)
[5] Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, (NY: Verso Books, 1998), 24–27.
[6] Justin A. Irving and Karin Klenke, “Telos, Chronos, and Hermēneia: The Role of Metanarrative in Leadership Effectiveness through the Production of Meaning,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3 (3), September 2004, p. 11.
[7] Edward Scribner Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 47. Old maxim in social science.
[8] PBS website http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html (Accessed 10-30-08).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Myrtle Page, unpublished letter to Charles Fillmore, dated September 1, 1878 (Source: Unity Archives).
[11] James Dillet Freeman, The Story of Unity, (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1978), 170-171.
[12] Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, from a printed sign in the elevator at St. Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, MO. Referenced 10-30-08.
[13] Connie Fillmore, “An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” in Keys to the Kingdom booklet (Unity Village, MO: Unity publications,1990),5.
[14] http://www.unity.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=5%20Principles&category=About%20Us Accessed 10-17-08
[15] Lou Holtz, http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/2006/09/Lou-Holtzs-Life-Lessons.aspx (Accessed 11-01-08).
[16] Charles Fillmore, Jesus Christ Heals (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1939), 202.
[17] Paul Alan Laughlin, “Putting the Historical Jesus in His Place, Part I – A New Thought Christian Perspective,” The Fourth R, January-February 2006.
[18] Ibid.

[19] Mark 12:28-34, NRSV.
[20] Charlotte Shelton, quoted in Unity Monday Bulletin for 07-02-07, e-mail publication, Unity Village.
[21] Genesis 12:2, NRSV.
[22] Eric Butterworth, Discover the Power Within You (NY: HarperCollins, 1992), 14.
[23] Charles Fillmore and Cora Dedrick Fillmore, Teach Us to Pray, (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1941), 162-163

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Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Perry. The Origins of Postmodernity. NY: Verso Books, 1998.
Butterworth, Eric. Discover the Power Within You. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.
Cady, H. Emilie. Lessons in Truth. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1903.
Chidester, David. Christianity: A Global History. NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.
Fillmore, Charles. Dynamics for Living. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1967.
Fillmore, Charles and Cora Dedrick Fillmore. Teach Us to Pray. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1941.
________. Jesus Christ Heals, 1939.
________. The Revealing Word, 1959.

Fillmore, Connie. “An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” in Keys to the Kingdom booklet. Unity Village, MO: Unity publications, 1990.
Freeman, James Dillet. The Story of Unity. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1978.
Irving, Justin A. and Karin Klenke. “Telos, Chronos, and Hermēneia: The Role of Metanarrative in Leadership Effectiveness through the Production of Meaning.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3 (3), 09/04.
Laughlin, Paul Alan. “Putting the Historical Jesus in His Place, Part I – A New Thought Christian Perspective.” The Fourth R, January-February 2006.
McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. A History of Christian Thought, Vol. I. NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960.
Shepherd, Thomas W. Glimpses of Truth: Systematic Theology from a Metaphysical Christian Perspective. Miami, FL: UFBL Books, 2000.
Scribner, Edward Ames. The Psychology of Religious Experience. NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1910.
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. ed. Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Cambridge, UK, 2003.

Leaving the Kiddie Table

New Thought Christianity: Full Participation in Theological Adulthood

(From an e-mail Reply to one of my D.Min. advisors.)

Your comments are quite helpful; thank you for taking the time to think about this project and giving a measure of your wisdom about how to make it work better. My intentions in designing Lyceum and the Unity Institute Journal of Theology (UIJT) are twofold, and both purposes are frankly subversive.

First, “to produce an ongoing theological journal that can bring Unity into dialogue with the wider world of Christian thought.”

When contemplating this project (UIJT), the image of Thanksgiving dinner comes to mind. While the whole family gathers for the feast and shares a general blessing, adults often sit around a large table while the children with their specialized menu--no wine goblets, light on vegetables, de-crusted white bread, extra sweets--sit at an adjacent table with other kids. The kiddie table(s) might have mixed ages, some just old enough to hold a fork safely, others at the teen years along the leading edge of adulthood. While this latter age group is mortified to be with the little kids—teens often consider themselves more mature than their parents, let alone younger siblings—nevertheless, they still prefer the youth-friendly menu items and are not eager to sit beside Aunt Bertha, who will expect them to at least try her cheese-covered Brussels sprouts.

Okay, I had fun with that image. Not very theological, but I think it makes a point: When it comes to the wider Christian family, Unity is not unlike that fourteen year old at the kiddie table. We have a fairly sophisticated concept of ministry, a deep and powerful understanding of prayer and spirituality which is recognized world-wide through the publication of Daily Word magazine and the millions of calls annually to Silent Unity’s Telephone Prayer Ministry (TPM); we have a worldwide network of churches and study groups where people actually attend classes during the week (often organized on their own impetus) to pursue personal spiritual growth, and a history which traces its origins back through Emerson and Hegel to mystics and delightfully heretical thinkers like Meister Eckhart, Pelagius, and Origen. We have a whole art gallery of spiritual techniques, including centering prayer, affirmative prayer, Ignatian-style guided imagery, and meditation in the Silence. The problem with Unity in its current state is that less than one Unity minister in a hundred would understand those historical references and fewer still would have any idea about how to reflect theologically on what those teachers and mystics said. We are too savvy in the practice of spiritually to be this information poor about the ideas which support praxis. We need theology like a long-haul camel needs an Oasis.

To return to my original metaphor, I believe that Unity needs to grow up and move to the big people's table. I hope the Lyceum and UITJ will help us transition to full membership in the wider Christian community and the world of religious thought. When we move from the kiddie table to the adult dining room, we need to leave the picture books of pop-fad spirituality and grab a volume of Tillich, Moltmann, or Rosemary Radford Reuther.

Second, the window looks both ways. I also believe the wider world of religious thought has much to gain from embracing Unity as an adult member. (See above on spiritual gifts we have been sharing for over a century.) So, as well as subverting Unity’s self-imposed, extended adolescence by offering opportunities for theological dialogue with thinkers beyond what I call the New Thought compound, I see the possibility for Unity’s ideas to extend their influence into the wider community as these principles, beliefs, practices and insights are explored and expressed through the tools of theological inquiry.

Additional thought, not in the actual e-mail: The results of this two-way communication might truly change the world, one person at a time...

How to Overthrow the Government and Bring about a New Revolutionary Consciousness Which Transforms the World

Pray with "denials", letting go of negative images, visualizing a better world. Pray affirmatively. Then vote. Pray more, affirmatively. Write emails to leaders. Pray unceasingly. Study the issues. Pray over them. Visualize the good established. Vote again--every election, school hourse to the White House. Pray again. Vote again. Pray. Vote. Pray. Vote. Pray...

You got the system.

Beware of Gnostics Bearing Gifts

The Sirens of Gnosticism
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Because a barrage of popular publications have highlighted a few Gnostic ideas which sound compatible with New Thought Christianity, the idea has somehow circulated that Unity is a modern version of Gnosticism. After you have encountered the actual content of Gnostic belief systems, you will probably want to re-think those claims.

There were many types of Gnostics, apparently non-Christian Gnostics included pagans and even Jews. Their basic point was that salvation (variously defined) is only available through secret knowledge (gnosis), which not everybody will receive. Gnosticism was a flagrantly elitist, highly dualistic worldview which saw the physical universe as evil. Only things of the mind and spirit were good and potentially holy. In fact, Gnostics believed this world was so evil that the Supreme God could not have created it; some even said the earth was created by Satan, or some other lesser god, while God wasn't looking.
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Women Must Become Men
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Oh…and women are evil, too. Especially evil, because their seductive wiles draw men's contemplation from the higher things of spirit. The much-touted, Gnostic Gospel of Thomas concludes with these words, from saying # 114:
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Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.”
Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
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(Don't get mad at me--I didn't write that!)
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St. Valentine, He's Not...
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Valentinus of Rome (second century C.E.), arguably the best-known Gnostic teacher of antiquity, developed a form of Gnostic Christianity to a high level of complexity. Valentinius was born in Egypt and educated at Alexandria. He later established a Christian school at Rome, where according to Tertullian he had been on the short list for Bishop of Rome, today called Pope. He was probably influenced by Middle Platonism, which taught that God was transcendent being itself. While that premise does sound like New Thought, the problems come quickly when Valentinus begins unpacking his whole Cosmology.
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Thirty Gods...You're Kidding, Right?
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According to Valentinius, the Supreme God for its own reasons began creating spiritual beings, called Aeons (gods?) These represented various divine powers: Mind, Truth, Logos, etc. Taken together, these thirty Aeons constitute the pleroma or fullness. Last one, Sophia—wisdom—decided to create her own creature, Hokmah, but it was not perfect as she. Sophia and Hokmah together created the Demiurge, who was incompetent and ignorant. The Demiurge created material world, and the humans who live here.
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Are you following this? 1) The physical Universe is so crass and evil that the Supreme God could not have created it. 2) He created thirty gods (Aeons), who were also too holy to have created the Cosmos. 3) The last goddess, Sophia, created her own clone god called Hokmah, who was also somewhat sacred and therefore could not have created the material world. 4) But when Sophia and Hokmah create a being below this last level--the Demiurge, who is also equated with the God of the Old Testament--it is this bumbling fool who finally drags spiritual power down low enough to make the world and all that dwells herein.
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It gets worse...
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The two semi-competent spiritual beings, Sophia and Hokmah, were able to undo only some of the damage by implanting the divine spark in a few humans. These were the Elect, who could be awakened to their true nature by knowledge (gnosis). But before you start hopping up and down, pointing to this as a New Thought concept, listen to the fine print: Only a very few people have this divine nature. Most humans are walking meat, nothing more.
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Here's the Gnostic breakdown of humanity:
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1. No soul – majority of human race is animal; perishes at death.
2. Soul – ensouled humans with opportunity for acceptable afterlife.
3. Divine spark – the few Elect who can re-unite with God in glorious eternity.
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It is this third concept which some New Thought teachers admire. However the original Gnostic teaching was limited re-union with the Divine by the select few who qualify. Frankly, the idea of Gnostic “election” was dualistic, elitist, and mean-spirited.

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Need to take a deep breath?
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The good news in this mess is that no matter how alien these ideas sound today, in the second and third centuries all the above were considered Christian! This demonstrates the fantastic diversity of early Christianity; the fact that one party won the argument and became the universal (i.e., catholic) church viewpoint does not negate the fact that many, many options were on the table, even patently absurd ones like Valentinian Gnosticism, which was wildly popular for a long time. Early Christianity was an evolutionary jungle where new ideas tried to find ecological niches until a stable pattern developed. Given a few shifts in circumstances, a very different ‘orthodoxy’ could have emerged.
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Startling Diversity
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This startling diversity among early Christians is quite new to the modern reader, because the faction which Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina calls the proto-orthodox group—i.e., the minority viewpoint which finally became traditional Christianity—re-wrote Church history in its favor once they gained the majority. The proto-orthodox so successfully shaped the historical record that today people assume proto-orthodoxy has always been the majority view. Their version of heilsgeschicte (sacred history) sees an invariable, divinely ordained, straight-line progression from Jesus, to the early church, to the established religion of the high middle ages, and down through the coridors of time until today.
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Of course, historians know this direct-line, single-faith theory is completely bogus. Christianity has been highly diverse from its beginnings, even on things as basic as how many gods there are. Some Christians believed in one god, other Christians insisted there are two, three, thirty, or even 365 gods. And they all taught this as Christian doctrine.
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We stand in unbroken line with our ancestors, but so do almost all other Christian groups. Diversity rules in the corridors of time.
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Still, the next time someone says with alleged historical authority that Unity or other New Thought groups are the spiritual descendants of Gnosticism, you might want to offer a second opinion...

Addendum to "Smart Heart" -- The Fantastic Four

New Template: Scripture - Tradition - Experience - Reflection

When Jesus recommended that the individual should go into a closet and pray to God in secret, he assumed the Jews he was addressing had already studied Torah and the Writings regularly since they were 10 years old. Shall Metaphysical Christians admire someone who travels 8,000 miles to "study" with a guru, but disparage the systematic study and reflection on treasures of Western spirituality? If our primary tool for spiritual experience is a feel-good event with modern music, how do we differ from Pillar of Cloud Independent Fundamentalist Tabernacle down the street, which offers the same feel-good package, and pulls in a much bigger crowd?

It is simplistic to think people are flocking to fundamentalist and evangelical churches because they are afraid of hell. If you listen to the preachers at those cathedrals-in-the-cornfields of America, what is striking today is their upbeat message. God is a God of redemption, healing, blessing, and love. Yes, they do filter it all through an archaic, dualistic theology, which does contain eternal doom for the unsaved, but that is NOT where the emphasis is placed in many, many conservative churches today. They are selling joy, not fear. And their Jesus-rock, hand-waving, praise-the-Lord worship style is doing exactly what our people do when we sing "I release and I let go..."

It is all about engaging the worshiper at the emotional level and giving them a taste of the sweetness of God. Some would argue that without an encounter with the Divine, it's all an abstract word game. God's Presence and Power must be apprehended first in regions of the heart. But the process doesn't end with emotion; it only begins there.

UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION: NEW THOUGHT

It is not emotions which make Unity unique--it is ideas. And ideas MUST be tested, refined, discussed, applied, re-assessed, re-defined, cussed and discussed again. Jesus discoursed with the learned men of his day. True, he lambasted them frequently, but he engaged them in dialogue instead of dismissing their enterprises as folly. If Jesus showed that much respect for the process of theological discourse, how can his followers settle for happybabble and joy songs? There are so many great ideas, so many great issues, where is the prophet to bring us the word of the Lord for today?

My suggestion is that we continue to do the outstanding work we are doing in prayer, meditation, joy work (yes, joy WORK! ), healing, and prosperity-wholeness. And we add to the mix an intellectual dimension, which has been absent since the earliest days of the Fillmore revolution. To read Charles Fillmore is to engage a mind that thought things through before arriving at very definite conclusions. Myrtle Fillmore, too. In one of her earliest letters, long before they were married, she wrote to warn Charles that she was quite eclectic in her theology.

TRANSCENDENTALISTS

The intellectuals of their day were not all stuffy traditionalists, either. It was the era of the Transcendentalists, which included such intellectual luminaries as Louisa May Alcott, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. And, of course, the greatest of them all, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson is quoted frequently by the early-modern founders of New Thought Christianity. Marcus Bach said Emerson was the actual father of New Thought, although one could argue that P.P. Quimby and Emma Curtis Hopkins are also contenders for that honor.

Even a cursory reading of the ideas of the Transcendentalists will show how very much in their debit we are today. One of my hopes is to offer in the near future a whole course in the relationship of New Thought Christianity & Transcendentalism at Unity Institute.

My point here is that Unity and New Thought in general did not begin as some feckless brew of mawkish sentimentality and nugatory anti-intellectualism. As one YOU'er said to me in California, "Dude, we got us some seriously smart people up the family tree..."

New tools are needed to release the power of those ideas once more, and with all the resources and technologies coming online today, I believe the time is now. If New Thought Christianity learns how to think as deply as it feels, bringing balance between head and heart, the lonely and spiritually hungry multitudes who long for a thoroughly modern, intellectually solvent, spiritual home will flock to our ministries. And we're not talking esoteric science here. Simple techniques are available to assist ministers and teachers to explore metaphysical theology more deeply.


SCRIPTURE - TRADITION - EXPERIENCE - REFLECTION

For instance, decades ago our friends in the Methodist camp discovered a straightforward, four-part program for doing theology, which has yet to be improved upon. Because of its Wesleyan origins, the system has been called the Methodist Quadrilateral, but this template seems to have broad applications beyond the UMC. I like to call it the Fantastic Four. It works like this: Whenever considering a concept or practice which has spiritual/religious dimensions (as everything, properly understood, pretty much does), the procedure is to run the idea under consideration through the Quadrilateral machinery, i.e., scripture, tradition, experience and reflection.

For example, suppose we were considering an issue related to war and peace today. Should a person volunteer to serve in the military forces of his or her country? According to the mission statement of the US Army Infantry, the purpose of combat soldiering is, "To close with the enemy by fire and maneuver to destroy or capture him.” Is this compatible with a Christian point of view?

All right, class, before you raise your hands to answer--relax! It's only a rhetorical question. We're not going to slug it out war-and-peace here and now. (Believe it or not, there are good people on both sides of almost every issue, this one included.) I am a retired US Army Chaplain, so I have some ideas about this topic, but they can wait for another time. The above is provided as a subject to enter into the Fantastic Four/Quadrilateral machinery. I can start anywhere, since all four parts are interactive. However, I'll take them in the sequence given.

SCRIPTURE
Although this is primarily the First and Second Testaments (Hebrew and Christian Bibles), by no means would I rule out the sacred writings of other traditions, which may have something quite profound to say on war and peace. Time and place are important, too. Both biblical Judaism and classical Islam will likely have a different take on the subject than modern Buddhism. And modern interpretations of the Bible shed a lot of new light. For example, the Hebrew text translated "Thou shalt not kill" in the King James Version is usually rendered "You shall not commit murder" according to newer translations. I'd take a look at passages where people were faced with choices involving violence, and see what the tone of the author's message seems to be.

I would NOT simply take anybody's scripture as an absolute mandate from God, and I am OK with saying, "That's what this biblical author said then, but today I disagree..." The idea is to let the words of Judeo-Christian Scripture and the inspired writings of other faiths inform my thoughts as I process the questions at hand. But I am also aware that other people have thought about these issues before me. That's why I need the second factor in the process, tradition.


TRADITION
Talk about a term which has fallen on hard times! Tradition is almost a cuss word in some people's minds, and with good cause. However, what I am talking about here is not blind obedience to hidebound conventions. Tradition refers to stuff that happened and things people thought about it. What did Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Quaker founder George Fox and Mohandas K. Gandhi say about war and peace? What have people on both sides of this issue
thought and done? As I reflect on tradition, I realize I'm not in this alone.

EXPERIENCE
The world has changed radically in my lifetime. When I went to Germany as an 18-year-old Army private in early 1965, my high school peers (class of '64) all had short hair and did NOT do drugs. Kids today don't believe the latter, but it's true. When I returned two years later--1967--the anti-war movement was beginning, the Beatles had revolutionized hair-and-lifestyles, and pot was everywhere. I've still never done any recreational drugs, and never will. It just isn't part of my life values. But I am aware that those values were shaped by experiences--in the military, in my German-American upbringing, in the teachings of the liberal Protestant church which I attended.

Society and individuals have experiences which shape their beliefs. Were all the people in the Old South evil because they by-and-large supported slavery, even those who owned no slaves? Were all the people evil who were caught giving the "Seig, heil!" salute in those grainy, black-and-white photographs at 1930's NAZI rallies? The culture and community experience is a powerful factor in formulating values and beliefs. As the sociologists say, "There are no tiger gods where there are no tigers."

Examining an issue to see the cultural and experiential influences upon one's thinking is part of the process of doing theology via the Quadrilateral. But even the process of examination itself is a factor.

REFLECTION (Reason)
I divide reflection into two parts: intellectual reasoning and creative intuition. Any problem or issue must think right and feel right. The head and the heart again.

And as I said the whole process is interactive. Scripture provides paradigm stories and teachings by which to evaluate Tradition, which in turn gives its verdict on the meaning of those stories and ideas. Experience of the community and individual shapes the way we look at Scripture and Tradition, but each of these also provide tools to evaluate the highly subjective experiences of life in a concrete historical and cultural expression. Finally, Reason gives the tools to think critically, creatively and intuitively about all these categories, while being reined in from flights of fantasy or excesses of emotion by the more earthbound elements of the process.

It is a kind of checks-and-balances system for theology, and I heartily commend the 4-fold process to spiritual seekers and students at all levels of mastery.

The "Fantastic Four" is another way for Unity and the other New Thought churches to be "Smart with a Heart" in the post-modern age in which we live, move, and have our being...