Re: Arthurs Will -- Dunfermline ASK (Association of Spiritualists)

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Subject: Re: Arthurs Will

Author:
Jock

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Date Posted: 11:38:49 06/21/11 Tue
In reply to: Seoc Colla 's message, "Re: Arthurs Will" on 04:54:59 06/21/11 Tue

Posted on spirit of PN

The “Rock of Truth” is certainly a good starting point. I am reading it right now. On page 179 there’s a very interesting paragraph: “It is because I believe that Spiritualism is being handicapped and thwarted by orthodox Christians through ignorance, that I have tried to show that there is no basis for the beliefs of Christianity. Christians, greatly as they err, certainly take life seriously, and are the very people who should be Spiritualists, because they, like Spiritualists, take the view that life on earth is more than it really seems to be”.
Posted on spirit of PN
And Volume 2 Chapter 10 of his History of Spiritualism, Conan Doyle, draws lots of parallels between Christianity and Spiritualism and suggested that the current (ie in his time) Spiritualist services were similar to early Christian services.

So on the surface, there would seem to be a good argument for having more Christians in Spiritualism. And if Christianity had remained as it was in the early days there would be no problem. However as Lis says, and as Arthur Findlay hammers out time after time, current mainstream Christianity and Spiritualism are poles apart, and indeed Christianity has been an active persecutor of Spiritualists and continues to be so in some, (not all) Christian quarters.

Of course it depends on what you mean by Christians, and when is a person Christian and when is a person not a Christian. Do we mean liberal Christians? My main church is Unitarian and we are always grappling about to what extent we are Christian and to what extent we are not. If being a Christian means following the example of Jesus Christ and believing that he lived to guide us in life, rather than died to save us from sin, and rejecting the idea that he died in order to provide us with eternal life, then yes, it might be possible to combine elements of that with Spiritualism, and Spiritualist services might benefit from occasionally including mention of Jesus as a great teacher and medium, and of parts of the Bible as great pieces of Spiritualist evidence. It would seem from Rev Catherine Yronwode’s posting that some liberal Christians are working together well with Spiritualism, and presumably they do so in Greater World Spiritualist churches. But I do not see how traditional mainstream Trinitarian Christianity with its doctrine of the Atonement, its belief in a Personal Saviour God, and its history of persecution of mediums could combine comfortably with SNU Spiritualism. You cannot serve two different masters.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: Arthurs Will	hiorta (We go ever deeper)	04:26:48 06/22/11 Wed