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Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual?

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DO CHRISTIANS KNOW HOW TO BE SPIRITUAL? THE RISE OF NEW SPIRITUALITY, AND THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH

John Drane. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005.

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

Over the last year almost all of the significant faith discussions I have had with family and friends outside of church circles have related to new expressions of spirituality. What can we learn from religious systems of the Australian Aboriginal Dreaming and American first nations? How does spirituality and a sense of meaning relate to health? What are the themes to learn from in The Celestine Prophecy and The Da Vinci Code?

With this burgeoning interest in spiritual things, an unapologetically missional book like Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual? is welcome. John Drane, practical theologian and author of What is the New Age Still Saying to the Church, wrote the lectures for the 2004 London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity that led to this book. The book draws on a wealth of research on how spirituality is perceived in the Western world today.

Drane surveys the move from `Religion' commonly regarded as controlling, prescriptive, narrow-minded and ultimately damaging, to `Spirituality' popularly perceived as life-giving, nurturing and personally empowering. This is a move represented by growing institutional mistrust and burgeoning interest in mystical and esoteric practices. But it is also evident in everyday life experiences such as how people see friendship and good food, and in the workplace and the sciences. The new field of neurotheology is exploring how biology, genetics and chemistry suggest that being `spiritual' is not just a Christian or religious activity but a human activity.

I particularly appreciated being provoked to think about some of his practical suggestions for responding:
- not demonizing the New Spirituality: `From a missiological perspective, the sense of emptiness, and the need to fill the spaces with something of meaning - even if it is only organic food or environmentally friendly washing powder - represents a desperate search for reality in our culture, which Christians should neither ignore nor ridicule' (p.63).
- using imagery of new life and journey rather than predominately language of death and war.
- talking about story and experience of God and not just philosophical abstractions: `Evangelism is more about inviting others to join us on the journey, because we share the same questions, than it is about selling people the `right' answers to life's problems' (p.143).
- fostering emotion as well as intellect, intuition as well as rational thinking, and artistic as well as philosophical approaches: `for God to be reduced to reasonableness is rather dull and unattractive' (p.139).
- hearing afresh ourselves the call to follow Jesus: `We have something to share with others not because we are different, but because we are no different, and we can become credible witnesses not as we condemn others and dismiss what we regard as their inadequate spiritualities, but as we constantly listen to the gospel and appropriate its challenge in our own lives' (pp.160-161).

He promises more application and mission implications in a coming book, but in a book titled Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual? I would have loved to have read more practical discussion of how to develop authentic biblical spirituality and community. He alludes to playful spirituality, celebrating the perspectives of women's spirituality, sharing with storytelling and asking appropriate questions but his examples of how these are expressed are limited. I suppose, again, the challenge is over to the reader to reflect on and implement the implications.

Darren Cronshaw is a student and teacher of practical theology and works with Baptist Union of Victoria and Forge Mission Training Network. This was originally reviewed in Australian Journal of Mission Studies, Vol.2, No.2 (December), p.73.