More than once on this blog I have quoted an amazing few words from the American mystic Howard Thurman, who had this to say in 1939:
Acts of worship must be tested by the degree to which they remain living channels for the direct release of God into the life of the worshipper. When they become institutionalized they are apt to become dead so the mystic seems always to be the foe of institutional religion. He is very sensitive to the crystallizing of acts of worship into dead forms. It is profoundly true that he does not stand in need of the institution or the institutional forms as such. Even in Catholicism any careful reading of the testimony of the mystics convinces one that the church has no real friend in the mystic.
“The mystic seems always to be the foe of institutional religion.” Not merely the critic or the voice of loyal protest — but the foe. These are powerful words.
Let’s compare them to something that Thurman published a decade later, in his book Jesus and the Disinherited (1949):
The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus…Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.
Here Thurman is suggesting that Christianity, once it became a religious institution, abandoned the radical teaching of Jesus (which, among other things, “appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed”) in favor of serving those with power and privilege — to the point that the institutional church itself began to oppress the very people whom Jesus meant to liberate.
Fast forward another half a century to a similar perspective voiced by the Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong in his book The Sins of Scripture:
I am now convinced that institutional Christianity has become so consumed by its quest for power and authority, most of which is rooted in the excessive claims for the Bible, that the authentic voice of God can no longer be heard within it.
So I want to invite people to a mountaintop where together we can watch the mighty wind, the earthquake and the fire destroy those idols of creed, scripture and church, all of which have been used to hide us from the reality of God.
What can we say? Are Thurman and Spong heretics? Or are they on to something — that institutionalized Christianity has historically represented a distortion of the teachings of Jesus, undermining Jesus’s message of radical inclusivity and equality for a structured religion that is based on God as a judge who metes out damnation to those who disobey him (the type of Christianity that emphasizes G0d-as-judge also pretty consistently insists that God is male).
I think the words of these Christian writers — and others like them — are important for anyone seriously interested in mystical spirituality, because too often churches — from local congregations to national church leadership — seem to be either ignorant of, dismissive toward, or explicitly hostile toward the teaching of the mystics. “Mysticism begins in mist, ends in schism, and is centered on the ‘I’ instead of God” or so I was told in a prayer meeting one time when I was bold enough to admit that I was interested in mysticism. Having studied the mystics for some 45 years now, I am confident that mysticism’s detractors have not truly studied what the mystics themselves have to say. The overriding criticism of mysticism ultimately seems to be just this: that mystics promote a direct and unmediated personal experience of God, which taken to its logical conclusion makes the “chain of command” of institutional Christianity unnecessary.
In other words, the church won’t endorse the mystics because the church is built on the obedience and compliance of a dependent laity. If we all became mystics, that could put the church out of business. Oh the horror!
Of course, the church seems to be grinding itself out of business just fine without mystics to help it along. How many people today describe themselves as spiritual-but-not-religious or spiritually independent? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “According to a study conducted by Pew Research Center in 2012, the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion has increased from 15% in 2007 to 20% in 2012, and this number continues to grow… In 2017, Pew estimated that 27% of the population is spiritual but not religious.” (Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_but_not_religious, accessed 7-17-24).
That is rapid growth, friends. If mysticism were to be the hope for Christianity, one wonders if it is already too late — that the ship of Christian deconstruction has already sailed. That doesn’t mean that mysticism will die out: on the contrary, I expect mystical spirituality to retain its capacity to provide meaning to a small but interested segment of the population. But I am increasingly convinced that, while the Christian of the future needs mysticism, the mystic of the future does not need Christianity — at least not in its institutional form.
For years I hoped that mysticism would help to save institutional Christianity. I have begun to doubt whether that is even possible. I still radically believe in the wisdom teachings of Jesus and of his mystical followers, from Julian of Norwich to The Cloud of Unknowing to Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross all the way down to Evelyn Underhill and Howard Thurman. I still believe that meditation, contemplation and study of the words of the mystics can help a person cultivate a meaningful and life-giving spiritual practice. But I’m just not sure that the church is even relevant to mystical spirituality.
That’s not to say that there cannot be wonderful communities of faith, including churches, or that faith communities have no use whatsoever — I still love so much of the culture of Christianity, from art and architecture to monastic spirituality and the role that Christians have had in the establishment of schools, hospitals and other social services. But I’ve begun to see church as having a primarily social function in peoples’ lives.
If you are called to drink deep of the well of mysticism, perhaps church is meaningful to you, and perhaps not. Either way, that’s okay. Even five years ago, I probably would have argued against that viewpoint. But today, I accept it as just the way it is. Whether you are a churchgoing Christian or are spiritual but not religious, mystical wisdom has something to give you. And it won’t require you to join a group — any church or other institution. Community, yes, but institution? Completely optional. Mystical spirituality is not about obedience to some external authority: it is about discovering the authority of the divine, deep within.
