Buddhism, mysticism, spirit guides; meditation, silence, contemplation; mind silencers, prayer walkers, faith builders; educational programs, Christian schools, Christian education; Christian churches, Bible institutes, religious colleges — do any of those not<\/b> belong together?<\/p>\n
Last month the Denver Post had this article: Buddhism strengthens ties to church<\/a>. I’ll quote extensively from it below.<\/p>\n I want to know: Is this alarming to you if you’re a Christian? Should it be alarming to me since I’m a Christian?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What in the recent past seemed exotic and foreign is now almost routinely folded into “the fold.”<\/p>\n Buddhism is not only accepted as a mainstream American religion, it is a path increasingly trod by faithful Christians and Jews who infuse Eastern spiritual insights and practices such as meditation into their own religions.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n “There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed,” said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age.”<\/p>\n People are hungry for a deeper spiritual experience \u2014 meditation, mindfulness, personal transformation, deep insight, union with God or the universe.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n Judaism, Catholicism and Islam have rich traditions in contemplative practices, yet these had all but disappeared from everyday congregational life.<\/p>\n For many Christians cut off from the past, or alienated from the faith of their upbringing, Buddhism has served as the bridge to ancient wisdom.<\/p>\n “The problem is the contemplative tradition in the Christian Church has had its ups and downs over the centuries,” said Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and leader in the Centering Prayer movement, a modern revival of Christian contemplative practice.<\/p>\n “We sensed that the Eastern religions, with their highly developed spirituality, had something we didn’t have,” Keating said. “In the last generation, 10 to 20 years, some didn’t even think there was a Christian spirituality, just rules \u2014 do’s and don’ts and dogma they didn’t find spiritually nourishing. It’s important to recover the mystical aspects of the gospel.”<\/p>\n Christian contemplative practices were lost or weakened in the Protestant Reformation and later in the Great Awakening \u2014 religious revolutions in colonial America that advanced the themes of Protestantism.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n Buddhist scholar Judith Simmer- Brown, a professor at Naropa, said Christian denominations are working hard to rediscover contemplative traditions as one way to combat people leaving their churches.<\/p>\n “They literally have rebuilt their Christian meditative forms,” Simmer- Brown said. “Some borrow heavily from Buddhism.”<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n The Buddha was non-dogmatic and non-authoritarian \u2014 a compassionate guide, not a god, Buddhist texts say. The Buddha was silent on the subjects of a supreme being and the immortality of the soul.<\/p>\n “Buddhism is more about spiritual practice than believing in certain doctrines,” Habito said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have another question for you: What Christian books and speakers do you think endorse or promote or practice the above?<\/p>\n Thanks for your help with this.<\/p>\n HT:<\/i> The Berean Call<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Buddhism, mysticism, spirit guides; meditation, silence, contemplation; mind silencers, prayer walkers, faith builders; educational programs, Christian schools, Christian education; Christian churches, Bible institutes, religious colleges — do any of those not belong together? Last month the Denver Post had this article: Buddhism strengthens ties to church. I’ll quote extensively from it below. I want to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[812],"class_list":["post-1714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-mysticism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-rE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}