Does your faith have any power? Yes or no? Of course what do I mean by power? What do you mean by power? What can your Christianity actually do? You might argue that it can make you a new person and forgive your sins. All well and good, but how do you know it can do that? Jesus in answering that question told a paralysed man to get up and walk. So they’d know. Jesus’ teaching came with authority to heal the sick and cast out evil spirits (Mark 1:27). The way of Jesus had a little oomph to it.
In Europe Christianity has long lost it’s oomph. I’m not talking about the vast swathes of nominal or cultural Christians but even among evangelicals. We are full of, what Harvey Kwiyani calls, functional atheists.
A God whose only promise to humans is eternal life in heaven does not make sense. Yet, such is the God that many other Christians worship, especially in the post-Enlightenment West. Many people profess to follow Christ, yet, they live as if they are atheists. They are functional atheists. When they pray, they do not expect (or need) God to answer. Usually, they do not have needs to pray for. They are Christians, yet they are so self-sufficient that they do not need help from God. They live out their faith as if everything depends on them; their intelligence, credit cards, work ethic, technology, etc. Many do not have space to receive from God, even if God forces a gift on them. Needless to say, mission, when carried out by functional atheists, depends, to a great extent, on their abilities. There is little space for God to help.
For Kwiyani the diagnosis is rooted in the lack of belief in a spiritual world. No need for a faith that casts out evil spirits because there aren’t any. No need to ask God to help because we’re materially comfortable enough to have most of life’s needs covered.
The search for a more ‘active God’ was no doubt one of the impulses for people being drawn to charismatic Christianity. People longed for a more experiential form of faith where emotions could be expressed not just by the believer but by God. To not just hear that God loves you but to feel it. The excitement of God speaking, not just through the sermon or the Bible, but through everyone or anyone was very real as people sought outpourings of the Spirit and the use of spiritual gifts.
Recounting her experiences of British charismatic Christianity, Pippa Bailey writing in the New Statesman describes it this way:
I was raised in the Nineties in the New Church Movement, a non-denominational group that eschewed High Church formalities in pursuit of community and a return to the sort of early church seen in Acts. It was quite normal to me as a child that the adults around me prophesied, spoke in tongues or prayed for healing. The music was pop-rock in style, and congregants responded to it by throwing their hands into the air, or dancing with ecstasy in the aisles, or falling to the ground – we called this being “slain in the Spirit”. During prayer, they opened their hands to Heaven, signifying their openness to what the Lord wanted to do, or laid hands on each other, as though they could conduct His power through their skin.
In a deeply honest reflection of her own faith, having read Lamorna Ash’s book on searching for Christian faith1, Bailey shares her rejection of the certainties of her earlier faith and all the signs of ‘oomph.’ “The Christian I was at 21 would be horrified by the Christian I am now: she would see my faith, such as it is, as noncommittal, insipid, unserious, taking from the Bible only what suits me.” This deconstruction has left her with a faith that is ‘a half-formed thing, without clarity or certainty, at times without substance at all.’ And without any surprise, she found a home for this sort of faith in her local Anglican church.
On the other side of the Atlantic having also grown up in evangelicalism, albeit the Black variety, Karen Attiah also rejected the Christianity of her youth. Attiah sees American evangelicalism as terminally compromised.
I consider myself one of those who have left the American evangelical church, unable to recognize as legitimate a belief system that doesn’t worship Jesus’ example to help the poor, the sick and the hungry. A church system that doesn’t recognize Jesus’ love and empathy, but rather worships money and power for money’s and power’s sake.
But unlike Bailey, Attiah went looking not for less ‘oomph’ but more. And in her reflection, not on a book but on the movie Sinners she says growing up she “was taught to fear anything related to African spiritual power — or to the ability of Black people to summon spirits. African spirituality was demonic, we were told.” She left the Black Church but not African spirituality and she says she’s not alone, ‘There has been increasing interest in returning to African spiritualities outside the church.’ Attiah rejects the demonic as a pejorative but not the reality of a world full of spirits.
The ability of the musically talented main character, Sammie, to summon both the living and the undead is a sign that music can create portals between the material world and the spiritual world. It’s why drums and singing in the West African traditional practices I follow are used to summon spirits and orishas, allowing them to temporarily inhabit the bodies of the initiated.
This is Kwiyani’s point. In African spirituality the world of the spirit is real. Very real. And also not good. Jesus, for many Africans is chosen not just because He saves but because He protects. He saves us not only from sin and death but also from evil and devils.
One of the most generic questions African converts to Christianity ask is, “Will this Jesus be able to protect us from witches?” If all we can say is, “Jesus will give you eternal life in heaven,” we are misrepresenting the Gospel. Yes, Jesus gives them eternal life in heaven, but God also protects them (from evil) here on earth (Mat 6:13). Our God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, is Jehovah-Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, who protects humanity. And, of course, God does much more.
For Kwiyani we need to rediscover a faith that is active, has power, that protects, that does something.
It is an interesting time to be in ministry. White westerners like Bailey have deconstructed but are looking to reconstruct something new. Black westerners like Attiah looking for the authentic spirituality of her ancestors. Attiah is firm in her rejection of the church, Bailey is not certain about anything. But she senses a longing for something. So who is the more spiritual, Attiah who is inhabited by spirits or Bailey whose faith is often without substance?
In an interesting discussion of the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 12, Stephen Kneale says before we get to gifts and experiences it’s about being the right kind of spiritual person.
Those who reject Jesus as Lord and God are rejecting him and prove they’re not spiritual. Those who affirm Jesus as Lord, and respond to him as God and saviour, are truly spiritual. In short, it’s not about whatever experiences you might have. Pagans worshipping statues have experiences. Other religions have experiences. True spirituality is about your response to Jesus which evidences a work of the Holy Spirit. Do you acknowledge him as Lord, God and saviour or not? If you do, you are a spiritual person with the Holy Spirit dwelling in you. After that, you can let the experiences and gifts fall where they may.
According to this way of looking at it, Attiah is not the truly spiritual person despite her pursuit of spirits and spiritual experiences because she has rejected Jesus (or so it would seem). Bailey, depending on whether she stills holds to the Jesus of her baptism may be more spiritual because despite her reservations about the church and her doubts about certainty, as Keller said, it is not the strength of your faith but the object of faith that saves or not.
Yet we also need the Spirit to gift us to distinguish between spirits and we need teaching that comes with the authority of Jesus to cast out evil. A church that lives in the enchanted world of the spirits and knows the true power of Jesus to protect and provide. A church that is confident in its beliefs but able to handle doubt and questions. A church that preaches the Lordship of Christ and salvation in Him alone by faith alone but is not dry or without emotion, that seeks the presence of God by His Spirit.
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