*This article, written by the Cedar Tree Director, is adapted from the Living Lutheran November, 2018, a national publication of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a Protestant denomination in the U.S. numbering 9,000 congregations and 11,000 ordained clergy (of which 7,000 are currently serving as parish pastors).
A Kingdom Within
Last week I sat with a friend of mine, suffering from depression and fatigue, who recently returned from one of the most prestigious medical centers in the country: After three days, dozens of tests, and interviews with numerous physicians, he came back discouraged. The only advice he received was to try a new adjustment of medications.
I asked him if anyone there had asked him about his sense of life meaning, how he saw the world, the dynamics of his marriage, his family relationships. He responded, “No one seemed interested to go there.”
I’ve discovered my friend’s experience is not unusual. As a practicing psychotherapist and ELCA pastor, I’ve observed a growing distance between modern psychiatry and spirituality. Studies have shown spiritual life –our beliefs and sense of purpose-is vital to well-being, yet it’s largely ignored by today’s medical community. The question should be raised if this dissonance contributes to our country’s current mental health crisis. Rates of addictions, anxiety disorders, suicide and depression are on the rise even as prescribed medications for such disorders, ironically, is at an all-time high.
But the abandonment of some recognition of the reality of an existential inner world isn’t limited, in our times, to medicine. It’s a cultural phenomenon, continuing to override all dimensions of modern life. Religion is no exception.
A Search for Meaning
Leaders of ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Synods across the country are boldly warning that dramatic changes coming to mainline religious institutions. Their forewarnings come as the Pew Research Center reports a steady decline of religious affiliation over the last three decades in North America. Such news is debilitating for a generation of leaders, most 50 and over, who successfully built reputations protecting vestiges of European immigrant culture and defending what was perceived as America’s moral consensus.
Pastoral care for a primarily European immigrant culture, principles of theological integrity, and “right teaching” about doctrines, sacraments, and church structure shaped Lutheran identity, for the most part, in North America during the last 150 years. Personal experience, psychological reflection, and devotional disciplines were suspect in most Lutheran churches, often dismissed and delegated to those who held more conservative religious persuasions. Now, social justice and institutional survival are major themes across the ELCA.. In most congregations, spirituality is not a priority. We pay a price for that.
Confusing, now, to many churchgoers, is the emergence of what appears to be a deep hunger driving generations to seek new forms of spirituality in pay-as-you-go activities such as yoga, mindfulness movements, life-coaching, Cross-Fit and self-help groups. Competing for attention to a more faith-based interior life are the attractive, highly sophisticated commercial forces embedded in social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The great majority of us are more acquainted with how our iPhones operate than understanding the troublesome dynamics of our own egos and demons. Despite our technological advances, more Americans are grappling with mental health issues, a symptom of our collective spiritual sickness.
Crass materialism of modern culture holds us captive, kidnapping the most precious and powerful of our rituals and prayer life. Baptism, an initiation into the realm of spiritual life, is too frequently reduced to a follow-the-words-in-the-hymnal welcome ceremony into yet another social network. The art of prayer often remains stunted by conventional church protocol. For many of us, prayer life is limited to a laundry list of communal requested offered in workshop. Little, if any instruction is offered to individuals on contemplative devotional practices: how to listen, slow down, discern.
A Path Forward
ELCA leaders now have a chance to help us reclaim and rediscover the geography of the inner spiritual world with all its depth, power, and magnificent, baffling complexity.
One step forward is to prioritize spiritual practices in our congregations. This will mean more small-group meetings, retreats, and other opportunities to reflect on our inner lives. It will involve a new kind of Bible study where the focus is not external facts and historical narratives, but on more personal, honest reflections. When parishioners begin such a journey inward, ideas like grace, forgiveness, acceptance and love take on ever-deeper expressions.
We will to talk to each other in more respectful ways, especially when our opinions, political or otherwise, differ. Recognizing and acknowledging how the wounds each of us carry shape our worldviews is an essential step in this process. Lasting reconciliation is possible when we find a way to meet in humility. When we care for our spiritual well-being, will we be equipped to translate, in a healthy way, those experiences into courageous acts of compassion, justice and peacemaking,
I recently received a gift from a friend who visited Detroit. That city, once a gleaming example of the American Dream, is now economically depressed and filled with abandoned churches. He offered me a single photograph of a stained glass window. Most visitors, tourists, and many churchgoers see such architecture only as stunning pieces of art. What is forgotten is that such art was originally intended, down through centuries, to serve as reminders to individuals from all walks of life of their own interior worlds: Sacred, dramatic, personal.
In the bleakest environments, even in blighted urban wastelands, we can find encouragement and be led forward by such beacons of hope. Guided by grace, we can begin to allow ourselves to be led into a more attentive, redemptive way of living.
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Jon W Magnuson
August 10, 2018
A former parish pastor and university chaplain, the author is an ELCA pastor and currently serves as Director of the Cedar Tree Institute, a nonprofit organization in Northern Michigan providing services in the areas of mental health, religion, and the environment.
