• • • • • • •
In his 1941 message to the United States Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke of four “essential” human freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom of worship. Taken together, they say much about the twentieth century.
The last century of the second Christian millennium was a time of extraordinary upheaval. Empires came and went, traditional beliefs were reconsidered, cultural barriers broke down, and social and personal liberation took flight. Unprecedented material comfort was accompanied by the rapid spread of revolutionary ideas. And freedom, or at least its promise, was the prevailing zeitgeist. It was no less so for spiritual and religious innovators.
In the United States, William J. Seymour and Aimee Semple McPherson challenged the Protestant establishment and in doing so helped make Pentecostalism the world’s fastest-growing Christian movement in the late twentieth century. Mary Baker Eddy, meanwhile, founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, commonly called Christian Science. Not only did this trio upset the applecart of accepted Christian “truths” but they also shattered race, gender, and social boundaries within the church world. Meanwhile, Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada forced the Western religious establishment to take notice of his Hare Krishna movement, a 1960s spiritual touchstone.
At different times during the century, three men may be said to have personified the period’s emphasis on freedom of expression and worship. They are Shirdi Sai Baba, a legendary Indian fakir (wandering ascetic) with a penchant for shocking others; G. I. Gurdjieff, a rogue figure who charmed many of Europe’s artistic and intellectual elite; and Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan lama who took delight in dashing monastic tradition. Each transcended conventional notions of how a spiritual teacher is expected to act. In doing so, all appealed to an unprecedented individualism adopted by many, and particularly in the West, as the twentieth century moved toward closure.
The iconoclasms of Bertrand Russell, Robert Funk, and Mary Daly also fall within the century’s recurring intellectual theme. Russell, a Nobel Prize winner in literature, employed his prodigious talents on behalf of reasoned atheism and broad antimilitarism. He coauthored a famous call for a halt to nuclear weapons development—at the height of cold war fervor for just such weapons. Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, employed twentieth-century marketing techniques to make academic reworking of Christianity’s most basic beliefs a public and media sport—angering traditionalists to no end. A product of the feminist movement, Daly not only questioned the Roman Catholic Church’s patriarchal hierarchy but also sought to rewrite its language—even if doing so meant creating idiosyncratic terminology of her own to make the point. Her radicalism forced sharp public conflict with the ecclesiastical establishment even as she inspired many another feminist theologian. Russell, Funk, and Daly—freethinkers all.
Freedom is also very much what Elijah Muhammad and Desmond Tutu are about. Both challenged the prevailing power structures of their homelands in efforts to lift their people out of degrading and debilitating economic, social, and political straits—although they certainly went about it in different ways. Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, adopted a controversial message of preferred religious and racial separateness, keeping his followers as societal outsiders while laying the groundwork for the large-scale African-American move toward Islam that marked the century’s final decades. Tutu was a mirror opposite. An Anglican archbishop, he worked from within the South African establishment to dismantle the system of racial separation known as apartheid, becoming a global symbol of nonviolent struggle for freedom and reconciliation between former enemies, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Starhawk, meanwhile, represent another perspective on freedom, one uniquely late twentieth century. Schachter-Shalomi came from a highly traditional Hasidic Jewish background, yet ended up teaching at a Buddhist university after becoming the guiding light of the spiritually oriented Jewish Renewal movement. Starhawk, a feminist “ecospiritual” writer-activist, is a leading figure within the Goddess and Wicca movements. Hers is an anticapitalist, politically oriented, earth-based spirituality drawn from pre-Christian pagan paths—an in-your-face worldview that one might think unlikely to draw serious attention from more establishment religionists.
Yet it often does. And that says volumes about contemporary attitudes toward Roosevelt’s four freedoms.
(1940–1987)
• • • • • • •
An important teacher of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, known for their emphasis on meditation practice and learning, Chögyam Trungpa was one of the most influential forces in spreading Buddhism to the West. Particularly attracting young people, he had an unusual talent for communicating with Westerners in their own idiom, speaking in terms of their own culture rather than Tibetan tradition, and linking Buddhist concepts with those of modern psychology. His uncompromising, nontheistic message about the dangers of “spiritual materialism” sounded an alarm amid the chaotic spiritual supermarket of the 1970s.
Chögyam Trungpa founded a network of meditation centers around the world as well as the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, Colorado. He also developed an original teaching called Shambhala Training, named after a legendary Himalayan kingdom said to represent the ideal enlightened society, as well as the inner state of enlightenment latent within everyone. This teaching is unique in its emphasis on a secular rather than a religious approach to spiritual practice. Other secular studies he fostered among his students include calligraphy, flower arranging, Japanese archery, tea ceremony, dance, theater, health care, psychotherapy, poetry, elocution, and translation.
Chögyam Trungpa had an unusual talent for communicating with Westerners in their own idiom, linking Buddhist concepts with those of modern psychology.
He was born in eastern Tibet into the Mukpo clan, descended from King Gesar of Ling. Following his identification as the eleventh descendant in the line of Trungpa tülkus (incarnations of teachers), he was addressed by the title Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. (Chögyam is a contraction of Chökyi Gyatso, which was part of his novice monk name. Rinpoche means “teacher.” Currently he is referred to as the Vidyadhara, “wisdom holder.”) Having already been enthroned as the abbot of the Surmang monasteries, Chögyam Trungpa fled to India at the age of nineteen when the Chinese invaded his homeland in 1959. Subsequently he went to Great Britain, where he studied at Oxford University in the mid-1960s and founded Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist practice center in the West, in Scotland in 1967.
After a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on his left side, he broke with tradition by abandoning his monastic vows and marrying an Englishwoman in 1969. The following year they moved to the United States, where he established meditation and study centers in Vermont and Colorado. In 1986 the center of his activities was moved from Boulder to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died the following year. Today Shambhala International, the umbrella organization connected with his work, is under the leadership of his eldest son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Chögyam Trungpa is honored by several commemorative shrines (stupas) containing his physical remains; the principal one, known as the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, was consecrated at Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center in 2001.
HIS WORDS
The genuine heart of sadness comes from feeling that your nonexistent heart is full. You would like to spill your heart’s blood, give your heart to others. For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. However, we are not talking about that street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.
—Shambhala, p. 46
Books by Chögyam Trungpa
Born in Tibet. 1966. 4th ed. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000.
Crazy Wisdom. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991.
Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. 1973. Reprint, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987.
The Essential Chögyam Trungpa. Edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999.
The Heart of the Buddha. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991.
Illusion’s Game: The Life and Teaching of Naropa. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1994.
Meditation in Action. 1969. Reprint, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996.
The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. 1976. Reprint, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988.
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. 1984. Reprint, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995.
Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving Kindness. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1993.
Organization
Shambhala International, 1084 Tower Rd., Halifax, NS B3H 2Y5, Canada; phone: 902-425-4275, ext. 10; e-mail: info@shambhala.org; web site: www.shambhala.org.
Other Resources
Audiotapes and videotapes: Kalapa Recordings, 1084 Tower Rd., Halifax, NS B3H 2Y5, Canada; phone: 902-420-1118, ext. 19; e-mail: recordings@shambhala.org; web site: www.shambhalashop.com/recordings/vctrbio.html. More than one hundred tapes are available.
School: Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO 80302; phone: 303-444-0202; e-mail: info@naropa.edu; web site: www.naropa.edu.
Retreat centers: Karmê Chöling Buddhist Meditation Center, 369 Patneaude Ln., Barnet, VT 05821; phone: 802-633-2384; e-mail: karmecholing@shambhala.org; web site: www.kcl.shambhala.org. Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center, 4921 County Rd. 68C, Red Feather Lakes, CO 80545; phone: 970-881-2184; e-mail: rmsc@shambhala.org; web site: www.rmsc.shambhala.org. Meditation retreats, educational programs, and contemplative conferences.
“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness.”
(1928–)
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Reborn in the tumult of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Mary Daly refines and redefines theological language to give new meanings and understandings to the Christian establishment she views as being in ruins.
Not only a feminist in the extreme, Mary Daly is also a scholar of theology and the author of several controversial but well-received books and papers. She holds three Ph.D. degrees—the first in religion from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Wanting to continue her education but unable to find a graduate school in the United States that admitted women into its theology programs, she studied at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in sacred theology. Her third Ph.D., also from Fribourg, is in philosophy.
Her reconstruction of Christian, primarily Catholic, theology led to constant struggle with the administration of Boston College, where she taught for twenty-five years until her forced retirement. The conflict began when she published The Church and the Second Sex in 1969. While her book received wide national acclaim, the college tried to fire her because of her unorthodox theological position and her attack on the Catholic Church. Following protests from students around the country, Boston College reinstated her with tenure. The pressures prompted her to shine ever brighter, as she published more radical books and lectured around the world. But in 1999 a male student to whom she had denied access to her class filed a discrimination suit, prompting the college to cancel her courses and to maintain that she voluntarily resigned—a claim she contests.
As one of the founding mothers of feminist theology, Daly claimed that “as long as God was male, then male was God.”
As one of the founding mothers of feminist theology, Daly claimed that “as long as God was male, then male was God.” In her second book, Beyond God the Father, she named and claimed that God is a verb. This radical shift in conceptualizing God fueled other feminist writers to uncover and denounce the impact of the church and the church’s language in keeping women subservient. She has made it her mission to identify how organized religion, primarily the institutional Catholic Church, gave birth to and perpetuates the oppression of women.
She lectures widely and continues to write in a unique style, changing spelling, capitalization, and hyphenation to shed new light on old words. As self-defined in Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, she is a “Positively Revolting Hag—a stunning, beauteous Crone; one who inspires positive revulsion from phallic institutions and morality, inciting others to Acts of Pure Lust.”
HER WORDS
Why indeed must “God” be a noun? Why not a verb—the most active and dynamic of all? Hasn’t the naming of “God” as a noun been an act of murdering that dynamic Verb? And isn’t the Verb intimately more personal than a mere static noun? The anthropomorphic symbols for God may be intended to convey personality, but they fail to convey that God is Be-ing. Women who now are experiencing the shock of nonbeing and the surge of self-affirmation against this are inclined to perceive transcendence as a Verb in which we participate—live, move, and have our being.
—Beyond God the Father, pp. 33–34
Gyn/Ecology n 1: knowledge enabling Crones to expose connections among the institutions, ideologies, and atrocities of the foreground; habit of Dis-covering threads of connections hidden by man-made mazes and mysteries; practical wisdom concerning the complex web of relationships among Spinsters and all Elemental beings.
—Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, p. 77
Hag n : a Witch, Fury, Harpy who haunts the Hedges/Boundaries of patriarchy, frightening fools and summoning Weird Wandering Women into the Wild.
—Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, p. 137
Books by Mary Daly
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. 1973. Reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
The Church and the Second Sex. 1969. Reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
Gyn/Ecology, the Metaethics of Radical Feminism. 1978. Reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.
Outercourse: The Bedazzling Voyage Containing Recollections from My Logbook of a Radical Feminist Philosopher. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
Quintessence—Realizing the Outrageous Contagious Courage of Women: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. With Jane Caputi and Sudie Rakusin. 1987. Reprint, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
“Why indeed must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb—the most active and dynamic of all?”
(1821–1910)
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Few women have started religious movements, and few religions—whether started by men or women—have been launched successfully in America, but Mary Baker Eddy and the Church of Christ, Scientist she founded are exceptions. Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, and her longtime leadership of the new church, resulted in a movement whose influence extends far beyond its membership rolls, evidenced in part by the wide readership of the venerable newspaper the Christian Science Monitor and by the explosion of interest among many in spiritual healing.
Raised on a New Hampshire farm, Eddy suffered from frequent bouts of nervous and spinal ailments. Ill health kept her largely out of school, but by her early teens she was writing poetry that reflected on issues such as death and immortality. Her health continued to deteriorate through two marriages—the first ended after six months with her husband’s death, the second lasted twenty years. A decade into her second marriage, she met Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a healer who believed sickness was a problem of the mind. Under his care, she recovered some of her strength, and she studied with him for several years.
Eddy herself dated the birth of Christian Science to an incident soon after Quimby’s death in 1866, when she injured her back falling on ice. Three days later, having read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ healing, she rose from bed and declared herself healed. By 1875 she had bought a home in Lynn, Massachusetts, which served as a meeting place for students. She held the first Christian Science service and soon after published her monumental Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. A year later the Christian Science Association was formed, and in 1879 the Church of Christ, Scientist formally came into being. Eddy soon moved the church to Boston, where its headquarters remain, and in 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, her third husband. In 1889 a Christian Science college opened; there Mary Baker Eddy planted the seeds for her mostly female students to open churches around the nation.
Sin and illness, in Eddy’s view, emanate from humans’ estrangement from God, and spiritual healing is considered a rediscovery of a key element of Jesus’ ministry.
Science and Health was, essentially, a biblical commentary, in which Eddy expounded on the underlying message of healing in the text. Sin and illness, in her view, emanate from humans’ estrangement from God, and spiritual healing is considered a rediscovery of a key element of Jesus’ ministry. In addition to publishing several new editions of Science and Health, she founded the daily Christian Science Monitor and the weekly Christian Science Sentinel, publications based on core Christian values. By the time of her death, Science and Health had sold 400,000 copies.
In the 1880s Eddy appeared less often in public, even as the church continued to grow. She rarely visited Boston, even for the dedication of the “Mother Church” in 1895. She continued to work at her New Hampshire home until her death in 1910.
HER WORDS
The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may say or think on this subject, I speak from experience. Prayer, watching, and working, combined with self-immolation, are God’s gracious means for accomplishing whatever has been successfully done for the Christianization and health of mankind.
—Science and Health, p. 1
In Christian Science mere opinion is valueless. Proof is essential to a due estimate of this subject. Sneers at the application of the word Science to Christianity cannot prevent that from being scientific which is based on divine Principle, demonstrated according to a divine given rule, and subjected to proof. The facts are so absolute and numerous in support of Christian Science, that misrepresentation and denunciation cannot overthrow it.
—Science and Health, p. 342
“All my work, all my efforts, all my prayers and tears are for humanity, and the spread of peace and love among mankind.”
—New York American interview, 1907
Books by Mary Baker Eddy
Manual of the Mother Church. Rev. ed. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1897.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. 1875. Reprint, Boston: rev. ed., 1891. Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, 2000.
Books about Mary Baker Eddy
Gill, Gillian. Mary Baker Eddy. Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998.
Nenneman, Richard. Persistent Pilgrim: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy. Etna, N.H.: Nebbadoon Press, 1997.
Smith, Louise A. Mary Baker Eddy: Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1991.
Organization
First Church of Christ, Scientist, 175 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115; phone: 617-450-2000.
Other Resources
Web site: www.tfccs.com. Official web site of the Christian Science Church.
Library: The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity is slated to open in 2002 on the Mother Church grounds. www.marybakereddylibrary.org.
“The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God.”
(1926–)
• • • • • • •
As founder of the Jesus Seminar, the tradition-challenging group of Bible scholars, Robert Funk helped spark a new and intense late-twentieth-century wave of interest in the historical Jesus and the historicity of the Christian Gospel stories. His scholarship advocates for a rationalist approach to Christianity that recognizes the human hands—and their agendas—that shaped the Bible.
As a teenager Funk led revival meetings; today he says he is laying the groundwork for a new Reformation. After biblical studies at Vanderbilt University, he taught at Texas Christian, Harvard, and Emory Universities. Funk became a leader in the Society of Biblical Literature, an organization of Bible scholars, but broke with it in 1980 over frustration with what he viewed as members’ inability to bridge the gap between academic inquiry and what was taught in most churches.
He founded the Jesus Seminar in 1985. At its meetings Bible scholars use textual analysis and other scholarly methods to decide by vote issues such as the extent to which specific Bible passages represent Jesus’ actual words. Using colored beads, scholars vote in public meetings on whether Jesus undoubtedly said a particular statement (red); most likely said it (pink); probably did not say it though it represents ideas close to his own (gray); or definitely did not say it (black). These votes resulted in The Five Gospels, a translation of the four canonical Gospels and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, color-coded according to scholarly consensus.
The seminar’s public displays of academic consensus have drawn widespread media attention and constitute as radical an assault on the cloistered world of New Testament scholarship as they do on official church teachings. Seminar scholars have developed a portrait of Jesus that likens him to an iconoclastic sage, healer, and social activist. Many of the most familiar of Jesus’ sayings, including the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’ words from the cross, and any of his claims to being divine or the Messiah, are among those that Funk and his colleagues have dismissed as nonhistorical. Remaining are many of Jesus’ parables, his oftenunciated concern for the poor and marginalized, and his disdain for social divisions. From this effort, Funk hopes to see emerge a new Christianity that is suited for a rationalist age and incorporates the latest scholarship. In addition to the Jesus Seminar, he founded Polebridge Press, which publishes seminar scholars’ works, and the Westar Institute, a research center in California.
Funk hopes to see emerge a new Christianity that is suited for a rationalist age.
HIS WORDS
The plot early Christians invented for a divine redeemer figure is as archaic as the mythology in which it is framed. A Jesus who drops down out of heaven, performs some magical act that frees human beings from the power of sin, rises from the dead, and returns to heaven is simply no longer credible. The notion that he will return at the end of time and sit in cosmic judgment is equally incredible. We must find a new plot for a more credible Jesus.
—“Twenty-one Theses,” in The Fourth R, July–August 1998
In the minds of many, especially those who claim Christianity or Judaism as their heritage, Jesus is inseparably connected with the topic of institutionalized religion. When the name Jesus is mentioned, “religion” is assumed to be the subject. But, in fact, the Jesus of whom we catch glimpses in the Gospels may be said to have been irreligious, irreverent, and impious. The first word he said, as Paul Tillich once remarked, was a word against religion in its habituated form; because he was indifferent to the formal practice of religion, he is said to have profaned the temple, the Sabbath, and breached the purity regulations of his own legacy; most important of all, he spoke of the kingdom of God in profane terms—that is, non-religiously.
—Honest to Jesus, p. 303
The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.
The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.
Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.
New Gospel Parallels: The Gospel of Mark. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
For a more complete list of books by Robert Funk, see The Acts of Jesus.
Organization
Westar Institute and the Jesus Seminar, P.O. Box 6144, Santa Rosa, CA 95406; phone: 707-523-1323; fax 707-523-1350.
Other Resources
Web site: www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html. Official web site of the Jesus Seminar.
Videotape: The Search for Jesus, ABC News special report by Peter Jennings, aired in June 2000 and relied heavily on Jesus Seminar scholarship; available at www.abcnewsstore.com/jesus.html.
“The plot early Christians invented for a divine redeemer figure is as archaic as the mythology in which it is framed.”
(c. 1877–1949)
• • • • • • •
G. I. Gurdjieff adapted Eastern mystical teachings to create a spiritual path suitable for modern life in the West. An enigmatic figure characterized as a “rogue teacher” or a master of “crazy wisdom,” he often used shock tactics to awaken his pupils to the truth about themselves. He emphasized spiritual work in groups, rather than the guru-disciple relationship, as essential for Westerners.
Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff taught that most human beings lead a life of “waking sleep” and are slaves to mechanical habit. Fully identified with every passing thought, desire, and negative emotion, they are but a collection of “I’s” while having the illusion of a unified self. To remedy this condition, he created methods of working on the intellect, emotions, and physical body; his techniques included selfremembering and self-observation, “objective movements,” and sacred dance. Other important aspects of Gurdjieff ’s teaching were the ray of creation, the law of the octave, the law of three forces, and the enneagram, a nine-pointed diagram that expresses relationships in symbols.
Gurdjieff was born of Greek and Armenian parents in Alexandropol (now Gumri), Armenia. According to his memoir, Meetings with Remarkable Men, he studied in monasteries and esoteric schools in remote parts of Central Asia and the Middle East. He began to teach in Russia around 1912 and was soon joined by the philosopher P. D. Ouspensky and the composer Thomas de Hartmann, who later collaborated with Gurdjieff in creating musical works.
At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Gurdjieff went to the city of Essentuki in the Caucasus, and in 1919 he established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia. There he was joined by the artist and theatrical designer Alexandre de Salzmann and his wife, Jeanne de Salzmann, a teacher of rhythmic dance. In 1922 he settled in France, near Fontainebleau, and in 1924 suffered a near-fatal automobile accident. In 1933 he moved to Paris, where he met with pupils, wrote, and taught his system, known as “the Work,” until his death.
Gurdjieff emphasized spiritual work in groups, rather than the guru-disciple relationship, as essential for Westerners.
Many well-known individuals in the arts were attracted to Gurdjieff, and numerous teachers and heirs of the Work split into various submovements. Study continues today in groups throughout the world, the major schools being in Paris, New York, and London. Gurdjieff ’s writings are often difficult to read; he said that he deliberately made them demanding so that readers would have to make the effort. Works written by his pupils, especially Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, are more accessible.
HIS WORDS
Although to be either masters or slaves in a collective existence among children, like ourselves, of the COMMON FATHER, is unworthy of man, yet thanks at the present time to the conditions existing which have already been thoroughly fixed in the process of the collective life of people, the source of which lies in remote antiquity, we must be reconciled to it and accept a compromise that, according to impartial reasoning, should correspond both to our own personal welfare, and also at the same time not be contrary to the commandments specially issuing to us people from the “Prime-Source-of-Everything-Existing.” Such a compromise, I think, is possible if certain people consciously set themselves, as the chief aim of their existence, to acquire in their presences all the corresponding data to become masters among those around them similar to themselves.
—Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p. 1235
Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.—Inscribed by Gurdjieff above the walls of the Study House at his Institute in Prieuré near Paris.
—Views from the Real World, p. 273
Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man. All and Everything, ser. 1. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.
The Herald of Coming Good. Edmonds, Wash.: Holmes Publishing Group, 1987.
Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am. All and Everything, ser. 3. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.
Meetings with Remarkable Men. All and Everything, ser. 2. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1991.
Views from the Real World: Early Talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis, Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and Chicago. New York: Penguin Arkana, 1984.
Books about G. I. Gurdjieff
Hartmann, Thomas, and Olga de Hartmann. Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff. Rev. ed. London: Arkana, 1992.
Hulme, Kathryn. Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.
Moore, James. Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth. Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, 1991.
Ouspensky, P. D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Peters, Fritz. Boyhood with Gurdjieff. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.
Organization
Gurdjieff Society, London; e-mail: enquiry@gurdjieff.com.
Other Resources
Periodical: Gurdjieff International Review: web site: www.gurdjieff.org.
Film/Videotape: Meetings with Remarkable Men, directed by Peter Brook. 1979.
CD: The Complete Piano Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, performed by Cecil Lytle, 3 vols.
“Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.”
(1890–1944)
• • • • • • •
Among the earliest widely popular women Christian evangelists, Aimee Semple McPherson was the first to use modern culture to convey the Pentecostal Christian message through pageants, plays, and a popular radio broadcast of her sermons that brought her a nationwide following and, eventually, a new Christian denomination.
Sister Aimee, as her followers called her, arrived in Los Angeles in 1918 and began preaching a form of Christian Pentecostalism that emphasized a positive message about salvation. In the Pentecostal movement—with its fiery message of personal repentance and the coming Apocalypse—she was the first to establish a leading role for the woman evangelist. By 1925 she had a following of tens of thousands and built the 5,300-seat Angelus Temple, complete with an orchestra pit and a radio studio that carried her sermons far beyond Southern California.
She traveled widely, too, preaching in tent revivals from San Francisco to Philadelphia and New York. Her sermons were full of fire and brimstone and were often delivered in elaborate costumes, as she adapted her message to dramatic interpretations of Bible stories and morality plays she wrote. Her example influenced other Pentecostal women preachers, from Lucy Farrow to Tammy Faye Bakker.
McPherson was one of the first white Pentecostal preachers to cross the color line, often worshiping with and preaching to African Americans. The coming together of the races, she believed, was one of the surest signs that the “end times” promised by God were at hand. In 1936 she and a number of leading African-American preachers celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Pentecostal movement’s birth among black laborers worshiping at an Azusa Street mission.
McPherson was one of the first white Pentecostal preachers to cross the color line, often worshiping with and preaching to African Americans.
Scandal followed McPherson throughout her career. A third marriage ended in divorce, and in 1926 she reportedly drowned—only to turn up in Mexico several days later saying she had been kidnapped. The kidnapping story was disputed by those who claimed that she had been on a romantic getaway with a married engineer from her own radio station. She was charged with conspiracy to produce false testimony but the case never came to trial due to insufficient evidence. She died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in 1944.
Eventually, Angelus Temple spawned the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal denomination that, at the time of McPherson’s death, numbered 29,000 followers. It now claims some 3.5 million adherents worldwide.
HER WORDS
Sometimes when laboring in certain portions of the Master’s vineyard, we have felt that we were reaching many, but when, under the burden of prayer, the Lord catches us up in the Spirit, and with clarified vision and broadened horizon we see earth’s millions who are yet unconscious of the signs of the times and know not that the coming of the Lord is nigh at hand, we are overwhelmed with the desire to speed through the lands, and ring the message forth—“Jesus is coming soon—prepare to meet him!” Oh, that we might write it in flaming letters upon the sky.
—This Is That, p. 11
Let the giddy, laughing, thoughtless sinner, dancing on the brink of Hell, be sobered and come to Jesus in repentance, confessing his sins, or he will be eternally lost in that land where laughing and dancing are never known. The invitation is extended to all mankind, irrespective of race, creed, color, or age; all alike need Jesus, and without Him, all are undone.
—This Is That, p. 426
Books by Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee: Life Story of Aimee Semple McPherson. Los Angeles: International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, 1979.
In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927.
This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons, and Writings of Aimee Semple McPherson. Los Angeles: Bridal Call Publishing House, 1921.
Books about Aimee Semple McPherson
Blumhofer, Edith. Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993.
Epstein, Daniel Mark. Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993.
Organization
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Corporate Headquarters, 1910 W. Sunset Blvd., Ste. 200, Los Angeles, CA 90026-0176.
Other Resources
Web site: www.foursquare.org. Official web site of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
“The invitation is extended to all mankind, irrespective of race, creed, color or age; all alike need Jesus, and without Him, all are undone.”
(1897–1975)
• • • • • • •
Although his separatist and racist views outraged many, Elijah Muhammad brought large numbers of African Americans to Islam and provided many with a sense of self-esteem and self-reliance through the Nation of Islam, a militant religious faction he helped establish as a major force within the black community.
Born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, to sharecropper parents, he quit school at the age of nine and left home at sixteen. As a child, he said he witnessed three white men tormenting and lynching a black man. Blood from the hanged man is supposed to have dripped upon him, sealing the evil of the white men in his mind forever. In the 1920s Poole and his wife, Clara, left the South for Detroit as part of the great migration of rural blacks to urban areas in the North.
Unemployed during the Depression, Poole went to hear the preaching of Wallace D. Fard, who taught that African Americans were the “Original People,” royal Muslims transplanted by evil white slavers from the holy city of Mecca. Poole believed Fard was a human incarnation of God and became his disciple. Fard created the Lost-Found Nation of Islam and opened its first temple in Detroit. Fard later renamed Poole Elijah Muhammad, establishing him as Fard’s—and therefore God’s—Messenger.
After Fard’s mysterious disappearance in 1934, Muhammad declared himself his successor. He soon established a second Nation of Islam temple in Chicago, and others followed on the East Coast. Wherever he went Muhammad taught that African Americans were a noble race held down by evil whites. He held that Fard’s appearance signaled the end of six thousand years of white rule and that American blacks needed to organize and fight to establish their own independent nation.
Muhammad held that American blacks needed to organize and fight to establish their own independent nation.
In 1942, during World War II, Muhammad was arrested and spent four years in jail for failing to register for the draft. His time in jail lent him a martyr’s air and made him the undisputed leader of the Black Muslims, as his followers were known. After his release, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Louis Farrakhan became his disciples.
Muhammad’s teachings were disseminated in the periodical Muhammad Speaks and in several books. At the time of his death it was estimated that he had 100,000 followers in seventy temples around the United States. After his death his son Wareth Deen Mohammed dropped the Nation of Islam name and led the bulk of its members into mainstream Sunni Islam. Farrakhan continues to lead a smaller organization that still calls itself the Nation of Islam.
HIS WORDS
Why do I stress the religion of Islam for my people, the so-called American Negroes? First, and most important, Islam is actually our religion by nature. It is the religion of Allah (God), not a European organized white man’s religion.… It dignifies the black man and gives us the desire to be clean internally and externally and for the first time to have a sense of dignity.… Islam will put the black man of America on top of the civilization.
—A Message to the Blackman in America, pp. 84–85
Let us make this clear. I am not begging. For, it please Allah, He will give us a home, and I am with Him. Today, according to Allah’s word, we are living in a time of the great separation of blacks and whites. The prophecy—400 years of slavery—as to the time the so-called Negroes would serve white people ended in 1955. The so-called Negroes must return to their own. The separation would be a blessing for both sides. It was the only solution, according to the Bible, for Israel and the Egyptians. It will prove to be the only solution for America and her slaves.
—A Message to the Blackman in America, p. 24
The Fall of America. 1973. Reprint, Atlanta: Secretarius Publications, 1997.
A Message to the Blackman in America. 1965. Reprint, Newport News, Va.: UB & US Communication Systems, 1992.
The Secrets of Freemasonry. Atlanta: Secretarius Publications, 1997.
The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the So-Called Negroes’ Problem. 1957. Reprint, Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1990.
Books about Elijah Muhammad
Evanzz, Karl. The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999.
Gardell, Mattias. In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.
Organization
Nation of Islam, 7351 S. Stoney Island Ave., Chicago, IL 60649.
Other Resources
Web site: www.noi.org. Official web site of the Nation of Islam contains official history of the Nation and an official biographical sketch of Elijah Muhammad.
Periodical: Final Call Online. Official newspaper of the Nation of Islam; web site: www.finalcall.com.
“Islam will put the black man of America on top of the civilization.”
(1896–1977)
• • • • • • •
As founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—ISKCON, commonly called the Hare Krishnas—Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada brought to the West a unique interpretation of Hindu worship by creatively tapping into the 1960s spiritual zeitgeist. With a simple mantra oft repeated, he and his disciples made an indelible image on the culture of the period.
After earning a degree in chemistry and starting a pharmacy business, in 1922 Prabuphada met a spiritual leader, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, who changed his life by urging him to spread Vaishnava Hinduism, a devotional practice centered on incarnations of the god Vishnu, especially Krishna, throughout the Western world. He was formally initiated as a disciple a decade later and threw himself into writing, lecturing, and teaching in English. In 1944 he started the still-published magazine Back to the Godhead. In the 1950s he renounced all family ties and by the end of the decade took vows of renunciation of the material world.
In 1965 he left for America, believing that if he could successfully preach Vaishnavism here, it would spread throughout the Western world. After six months of rootlessness he rented a storefront on New York’s Lower East Side, where spiritual seekers began to gather to hear him teach the Vedic path to freedom from material want. His books became popular among college students, who increasingly sought him out, and he and his disciples began to hold outdoor chanting sessions in Tompkins Square Park.
Prabuphada’s teachings rely, in part, on the powerful experience of repetitive chanting to achieve closeness with the divine.
A year after arriving in America, Prabuphada incorporated the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He began to hold Sunday “feasts” after services as a means of distributing prasada, food consecrated to Krishna and distributed to devotees; these feasts would grow into a signature tradition of ISKCON. Soon the ISKCON mantra—“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”—was part of America’s countercultural lexicon.
Prabuphada’s teachings were a direct outgrowth of the bhakti yoga tradition in which he was taught, which dates to the sixteenth century and relies, in part, on the powerful experience of repetitive chanting to achieve closeness with the Divine. ISKCON also mandated strict vegetarianism and allowed sex only within marriage for procreation. Male devotees shaved their heads, except for one tuft, called a sikha, at the crown of the head. Initiated devotees lived in the temples and dedicated themselves to serving Krishna and proselytizing, quickly building the movement while garnering criticism and controversy over missionary tactics. After establishing temples in San Francisco, London, Berlin, and elsewhere, disciples brought the movement to India.
By the time of Prabuphada’s death, there were 108 ISKCON temples worldwide, and he had published fifty-one volumes of transcendental literature. Although the movement was enmeshed in several controversies and scandals following Prabuphada’s death—some involving sex abuse, drugs, and weapons—by the late 1990s there were 225 ISKCON temples worldwide.
HIS WORDS
The real disease is in the heart. If the mind is cleansed, however, if consciousness is cleansed, a person cannot be harmed by material disease. To cleanse the mind and heart from all misconceptions, one should take to this chanting of the Hare Krṣṇa maha-mantra. This is both easy and beneficial. By chanting the name of the Lord, one is immediately freed from the blazing fire of material existence.
—The Nectar of Instruction, p. 68
Books by Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada
The Bhagavad-Gita as It Is. London: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1985.
Easy Journey to Other Planets: By Practice of Supreme Yoga. Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1985.
Krsna Consciousness: The Topmost Yoga System. Boston: ISKCON Press, 1970.
Krsna Consciousness: The Matchless Gift. New York: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1995.
The Lord in the Heart. Boston: ISKCON Press, 1970.
The Nectar of Instruction. Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1997.
Teachings of Lord Chaitanya: A Treatise on Factual Spiritual Life. New York: ISKCON Press, 1968.
Book about Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada
Judah, J. Stillson. Hare Krishna and the Counterculture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974.
For a more complete list of books by and about Bhaktivedanta Prabuphada, see Judah, Hare Krishna, pp. 207–210.
Organization
International Society for Krishna Consciousness, 3764 Watseka Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90034; phone: 800-927-4152.
Other Resources
Web site: www.ISKCON.com. Official web site of ISKCON.
“If the mind is cleansed, however, if consciousness is cleansed, a person cannot be harmed by material disease.”
(1872–1970)
• • • • • • •
Logic, philosophy, mathematics, education, and religion were all fields that grew and changed because of the contributions of Bertrand Arthur William Russell. His committed atheism made him a spokesman for a secular age whose goal was to wrest ethics and morality from the religious world.
Born in Wales and educated in Cambridge, England, Russell received his bachelor of arts in mathematics and went on to garner prestigious prizes such as the Order of Merit and, in 1950, the Nobel Prize in literature. Although he wrestled with religious questions in his philosophical studies, Russell was an atheist and wrote extensively on his belief that faith in God is unjustifiable in the face of the depth and perpetuity of evil in the world. Deeply committed to the scientific method and logical and mathematical formulations, Russell struggled with the question of whether, and to what extent, it is possible to “know” anything. His scientific pursuit of a theory of knowledge led him to abandon the idealistic philosophy of his student days and develop a “new realism” and a “new philosophy of logic.”
In addition to being a mathematician, logician, and philosopher, Russell was a long-standing social activist for progressive causes, and during the 1950s and 1960s he became a public opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the war in Vietnam. His commitment to social justice had extended to his youth, though, when he experienced two convictions and six months of jail time for antiwar protests during World War I.
Deeply committed to the scientific method and logical and mathematical formulations, Russell struggled with the question of whether, and to what extent, it is possible to “know” anything.
In 1955 Russell released, with Albert Einstein, the Einstein-Russell Manifesto, which called for an end to the development of nuclear weapons. A year earlier he had delivered a famous broadcast on the BBC titled “Man’s Peril,” in which he warned of the dangers of the so-called Bikini H-bomb tests. In 1961 he was imprisoned for one week for his protests of nuclear weapon development. Russell died at the age of ninety-eight in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.
HIS WORDS
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.
—“Why I Am Not a Christian,” in Why I Am Not a Christian, p. 22
1888. March 3. I shall write about some subjects, especially religious ones, which now interest me. I have, in consequence of a variety of circumstances, come to look into the very foundations of the religion in which I have been brought up. On some points my conclusions have been to confirm my former creed, where others I have been irresistibly led to such conclusions as would not only shock my people, but have given me much pain. I have arrived at certainty in few things, but my opinions, even where not convictions, are on some things nearly such. I have not the courage to tell my people that I scarcely believe in immortality.
—“First Efforts,” in My Philosophical Development, p. 21
Books by Bertrand Russell
Atheism: Collected Essays, 1943–1949. New York: Arno Press, 1972.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. New York: Routledge, 2000.
A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945.
Marriage and Morals. New York: Horace Liveright, 1929.
My Philosophical Development. New York: Routledge, 1995.
On Education, Especially in Early Childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926.
The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams & Norgate, 1912.
The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell. Vol. 2, The Public Years, 1914–1970. Edited by Nicholas Griffin. New York: Routledge, 2001.
What I Believe. London: Kegan Paul, 1925.
Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957.
Books about Bertrand Russell
Blackwell, Kenneth, and Harry Ruja. A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell. 3 vols. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Clark, Ronald William. The Life of Bertrand Russell. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975.
Jager, Ronald. The Development of Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972.
Monk, Ray. Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude. New York: The Free Press, 1996.
Organization
The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, TSH-619, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M2, Canada; phone: 905-525-9140, ext. 24896; fax: 905-577-6930; e-mail: bertruss@mcmaster.ca.
Other Resources
Web sites: www.users.drew.edu/jlenz/brs.html. Official web site of the Bertrand Russell Society. Information on meetings, publications, archives, and links to relevant web sites.
www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~russell/brhome.htm. Web site of the Bertrand Russell Research Centre. Research on his life and work; largest collection of his papers.
Periodical: Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies; web site: www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~russell/journal.htm.
“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown.”
(1924–)
• • • • • • •
Best known for his ability to bring Jewish spirituality to disparate audiences, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is considered the father of the contemporary Jewish Renewal movement, blending the rootedness and depth of Hasidic Judaism with a zestful exploration of other forms of spirituality, meditation, and mysticism.
Schachter-Shalomi was born in Poland and raised in Vienna, Austria. The rise of Nazism led him and his family to flee Europe, landing them in New York in 1941. Ordained by the Lubavitch Hasidic movement in 1947, he later pursued graduate degrees at Boston University and Hebrew Union College.
The range of his Jewish education—from the traditional Lubavitch yeshiva to the liberal Reform seminary—led Schachter-Shalomi to think in new ways about how to make Judaism accessible and attractive to Jews who were intimidated by Orthodoxy yet uninspired by the less observant denominations. To achieve his goals, in 1962 he founded the P’nai Or (Faces of Light) Religious Fellowship, now called ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
The range of his Jewish education led Schachter-Shalomi to think in new ways about how to make Judaism accessible and attractive to Jews who were intimidated by Orthodoxy yet uninspired by the less observant denominations.
Jewish Renewal is based on principles of equality, feminism, and environmentalism, infused with the spiritual resources of Judaism, particularly the Kabbalah mystical tradition. However, Schachter-Shalomi’s openness reaches beyond Judaism’s confines. By practicing meditation with Buddhists and drawing on Sufi mystic tradition, he has forged interfaith dialogue about issues of spiritual renewal and the pursuit of social justice.
In 1978, when the Camp David peace accord was signed, Schachter added “Shalomi” (Hebrew for “my peace”) to his name to demonstrate solidarity with the Middle East peace process. He has said that he will drop “Schachter” from his name when peace comes to the region.
The latest chapter in Schachter-Shalomi’s career is his spiritual reflection on the experience of aging. In 1989 he founded the Spiritual Eldering Institute to help people understand the aging process in terms of expanded consciousness and spiritual growth.
HIS WORDS
I do not consider it to be dangerous for persons of Jewish background to experience and explore Eastern mysticism, provided they check it out for technique and content, rather than for ritual, dogma, and ethnic lifestyle. The process of a soul’s way to God is often initiated by an excursion into the realms of the Eastern religions.
—Fragments of a Future Scroll, p. 7
Books by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
The Dream Assembly: Tales of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Collected and retold by Howard Schwartz. Illustrated by Yitzhak Greenfield. Nevada City, Calif.: Gateways/IDHHB, 1989.
The First Step: A Guide for the New Jewish Spirit. With Donald Gropman. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
Fragments of a Future Scroll: Hassidism for the Aquarian Age. Edited by Philip Mandelkorn and Stephen Gerstman. Germantown, Pa.: Leaves of Grass Press, 1975.
From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older. New York: Warner Books, 1995.
Paradigm Shift: From the Jewish Renewal Teachings of Reb. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Edited by Ellen Singer. Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1993.
ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, 7318 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19119.
Spiritual Eldering Institute, 970 Aurora Ave., Boulder, CO 80302; phone: 303-449-7243; fax: 303-938-1277; e-mail: info@spiritualeldering.org.
Other Resources
Web sites: www.aleph.org. Official web site of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. www.spiritualeldering.org. Official web site of Spiritual Eldering Institute.
Audiotape: Davening with Reb Zalman: An Audio Siddur. New York: P’nai Or Religious Fellowship, 1989.
“The process of a soul’s way to God is often initiated by an excursion into the realms of the Eastern religions.”
(1870–1922)
• • • • • • •
William J. Seymour was a minister instrumental in spreading the Holiness-Pentecostal movement, which stresses healing, prophecy, and glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues.” His church in Los Angeles became the center of a great revival and helped make Pentecostalism one of the most influential religious movements of the twentieth century. Blacks and whites worshiped side by side in Seymour’s church during a time of racial segregation.
Seymour was born to former slaves in Centerville, Louisiana, and raised as a Baptist. He moved to Cleveland in 1900 and was introduced to Holiness theology, which stressed John Wesley’s teachings of sanctification and Christian perfection (the belief that it is possible to liberate human beings from the flaw in their moral nature that causes them to sin), divine healing, premillennialism (the belief that Jesus would return to the earth before the millennium began), and belief in the revival of the Holy Spirit before the “rapture.”
In 1903 Seymour moved to Houston, Texas, where he met Charles Fox Parham, the white founder of the modern Pentecostal movement. Although local law prevented blacks and whites from studying in the same classroom, Parham encouraged Seymour to listen in on his Bible classes by standing outside the open door. Among Parham’s teachings was the idea that speaking in tongues is evidence of a “true baptism in the Spirit.”
In 1906 Seymour arrived in Los Angeles, where he was invited to preach at a Holiness church. The established Holiness churches rejected the notion of “tongues,” however, so he began to preach in private homes. His ministry attracted larger and larger crowds as word of the services spread. Eventually he took over an abandoned African Methodist Episcopal church on Azusa Street, which he called the Apostolic Faith Mission. The little church was soon jammed with worshipers, who engaged in traditional African-American practices such as shouting, singing, trances, and ecstatic dance. Seymour published a magazine, Apostolic Faith, which quickly grew from five thousand to fifty thousand subscribers.
Blacks and whites worshiped side by side in Seymour’s church during a time of racial segregation.
Seymour’s leadership began to decline after his mentor, Charles Parham, visited the church in 1906 and denounced what he referred to as the “fits and spasms of spiritualists.” A further blow came when two white women in the movement objected to Seymour’s 1908 marriage (ostensibly on the grounds that the “rapture” was approaching) and moved to Oregon, taking the magazine’s subscriber list with them. That left Seymour cut off from his followers. Few of his writings survive today. Nonetheless, within just a few years he made a lasting impact, especially on African-American worship styles.
HIS WORDS
Don’t go out of here talking about tongues; talk about Jesus.
Book by William J. Seymour
The Azusa Street Papers: A Reprint of the Apostolic Faith. Foley, Ala.: Together in the Harvest Publications, 1997.
Books about William J. Seymour
Bartleman, Frank. Azusa Street. Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge Publishing, 1980. First published in 1925 as How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles.
Hollenweger, Walter J. Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997.
Martin, Larry. The Life and Ministry of William J. Seymour: And a History of the Azusa Street Revival. Joplin, Mo.: Christian Life Books, 1999.
———. The Words That Changed the World: Azusa Street Sermons. Joplin, Mo.: Christian Life Books, 1999.
Martin, Larry, ed. Holy Ghost Revival on Azusa Street: The True Believers: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Revival That Shook the World. Joplin, Mo.: Christian Life Books, 1998.
“Don’t go out of here talking about tongues; talk about Jesus.”
(c. 1835–1918)
• • • • • • •
Shirdi Sai Baba’s life demonstrated that great spiritual personalities transcend traditional concepts of how saints and gurus accomplish their work. Known for his eccentric behavior, Sai Baba appeared mad to some but was widely recognized as a master of the highest caliber. His emphasis on the unity of all religions was an early model for today’s ideal of religious tolerance and universalism.
His personal history is unknown, but it is thought that Sai Baba was born a Hindu of the Brahmin caste in a village of Hyderabad State, India. He appeared one day in the quiet farming village of Shirdi, Maharashtra State, as a nameless fakir (wandering ascetic) around sixteen years old. After living for some months under a tree, he took up residence in a local mosque. People began to call him Sai Baba; Sai meaning “Lord,” and Baba meaning “Father.” This might be translated as “Holy Father.”
His magnetic presence and luminous eyes attracted devotees from both Hindu and Muslim communities. Combining traits of the two faiths, he dressed in Muslim fashion while wearing Hindu caste marks on his forehead and burned a continuous sacred fire (dhuni) in the mosque, a practice associated more with Hinduism (and Zoroastrianism) than with Islam.
Shirdi Sai Baba’s emphasis on the unity of all religions was an early model for today’s ideal of religious tolerance and universalism.
Instead of giving conventional teachings, Sai Baba bestowed his grace and help symbolically through cryptic actions, stories, and parables. He employed shock tactics, such as displaying a fiery temper or ordering a strict vegetarian to eat meat. He would demand money from visitors, then give it away or use it in mysterious rituals intended to aid the spiritual advancement of devotees. He gained renown as a wonder-worker and for his supernatural powers. On one occasion, he used his arm to stir a boiling pot without injury; on another, he deliberately burned his hand in the dhuni fire, explaining that he did this to save a baby who had fallen into flames in a distant village. But though his healings and miracles (such as granting progeny to childless couples) were flamboyant, he discouraged devotees from seeking powers and visions. He trained his followers to attract the grace of God through devotion and obedience to the guru, and encouraged normal family life rather than renunciation and asceticism. His other characteristics included a delight in music and dance, habitual smoking of a clay pipe, and a love for dogs.
Shirdi Sai Baba named no successor, but among his well-known disciples were Meher Baba and Upasni Maharaj, who became masters in their own right. Many accept the contemporary teacher Sathya Sai Baba as his reincarnation, while others believe that Shirdi Sai Baba himself continues to bless his devotees, who are estimated at up to 10 million people worldwide. His tomb-shrine at Shirdi is a major pilgrimage site.
HIS WORDS
He often spoke symbolically.… Once Deshpande, a devotee …, was bitten by a snake and, in his terror, rushed straight to the mosque. When he reached the steps, however, Baba shouted: “Don’t come up, Brahmin! Go back! Get down!” Even in his fear of death, he did not dare disobey Sai Baba but stood there in mute supplication. A moment later Baba spoke again, this time in a gentle, kindly voice: “Come up now. The Fakir is gracious to you. You will recover.”
“The Fakir” … was Sai Baba’s way of referring to God. Deshpande now found that in the command not to come up Baba had been speaking not to him but to the poison which was entering his bloodstream.
He would sometimes speak in parables, leaving his devotees to work out the answer.
“Some robbers came and took away my money. I said nothing but quietly followed them and killed them and so recovered my money.” The money is the faculties natural to man in his pure state, to Primordial Man or Adam before the Fall; the robbers are the desires; killing them and recovering the wealth is destroying desires and realizing the Self.
—Osborne, The Incredible Sai Baba, pp. 80–81
Books about Shirdi Sai Baba
Osborne, Arthur. The Incredible Sai Baba. 1958. Reprint, York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1972.
Rigopoulos, Antonio. The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Organization
Sai Baba Sanasthan, P.O. Shirdi 423109, Kopargaon, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State, India. Established in 1922 to conduct service activities, publishing, and other work connected with Sai Baba.
Other Resources
Web site: saibaba.org/arathi.html. Archive of music and resources to promote the life and teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba.
He would sometimes speak in parables, leaving his devotees to work out the answer.
(1951–)
• • • • • • •
A leading figure of the Goddess and Wicca movements, Starhawk is an activist for feminist, antimilitary, and “ecospiritual” environmental causes; a spiritual teacher who gives talks and workshops in North America and Europe; and the author of books on the Pagan religion, magick, and politics, as well as visionary fiction. Starhawk (born Miriam Simos) is a cofounder of Reclaiming, a San Francisco collective that seeks to unify earth-based spirituality and politics. The group offers classes, intensives, public rituals, and training in the Goddess and magical traditions.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and of Jewish heritage, Starhawk holds an M.A. in psychology from Antioch West University and has been committed to principles of nonviolent activism since her high school days during the Vietnam war. She is involved in support work for sustainability programs and practices the system of ecological design known as permaculture.
Starhawk has been a collaborator with the director Donna Read (with whom she formed a film company, Belili Productions) on several films, including Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times, and a documentary on the life of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. Her commentaries are published widely, and she is a columnist for the journal Reclaiming Quarterly.
Starhawk is a cofounder of Reclaiming, a San Francisco collective that seeks to unify earth-based spirituality and politics.
HER WORDS
The law of the Goddess is love: passionate sexual love, the warm affection of friends, the fierce protective love of mother for child, the deep comradeship of the coven. There is nothing amorphous or superficial about love in the Goddess religion; it is always specific, directed toward real individuals, not vague concepts of humanity. Love includes animals, plants, the earth itself—“all beings,” not just human beings. It includes ourselves and all our fallible human qualities.
—The Spiral Dance, p. 97
Unconditional love means that regardless of the conflict we might have had with our friend, regardless of whatever still lies unfinished between us, we can honor our deep connection of spirit. Unconditional love means that we recognize the Goddess in our friend’s eyes, that we allow ourselves to accept her failures, her annoying behaviors, her mistakes and weaknesses, as part of the rich brew of her personality. When my mother was dying, I remember an enormous pang of grief at the thought that she would never yell at me again.
—The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, p. 62
Books by Starhawk
Circle Round: Raising Children in the Goddess Tradition. With Anne Hill and Diane Baker. New York: Bantam Books, 1998.
Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.
The Fifth Sacred Thing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.
The Pagan Book of Living and Dying. With M. Macha Nightmare and the Reclaiming Collective. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. 1979. Reprint, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988.
The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey into Magic, Healing, and Action. With Hilary Valentine. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000.
Walking to Mercury. New York: Bantam Books, 1997.
Organization
Reclaiming, P.O. Box 14404, San Francisco, CA 94114; web site: www.reclaiming.org.
Web site: www.starhawk.org.
Videotapes: Women and Spirituality: The Burning Times (1990), Women and Spirituality: Goddess Remembered (1993), directed by Donna Read; available from Belili Productions.
Audiotape: Magic, Vision, and Action: Changing Consciousness, Healing the Earth, Sounds True, 1990.
Periodical: Reclaiming Quarterly; web site: www.reclaiming.org/newsletter/index.html.
Film company: Belili Productions, P.O. Box 410187, San Francisco, CA 94141-0187; web site: www.webcom.com/gimbutas/belili/about.html.
“Love includes animals, plants, the earth itself—‘all beings,’ not just human beings.”
(1931–)
• • • • • • •
A leader in the ecclesiastical opposition to apartheid in South Africa, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu earned worldwide recognition for his nonviolent activism for peace and racial harmony. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to establish an international boycott of trade and investment in South Africa. He has inspired the world with his courageous moral stance, rooted in his Christian faith.
Born to Xhosa and Tswana parents in Klerksdorp, Transvaal, Desmond Mpilo Tutu grew up in a shack without plumbing or electricity. Emulating his father’s career, he received a teacher’s diploma at Pretoria Bantu College and went on to earn a bachelor of arts from the University of South Africa.
Tutu worked as a teacher for three years and then entered Saint Peter’s Theological College in Rossettenville, Johannesburg. He was ordained a priest in 1961. For the next few years he studied in England, where he received a master of theology degree. He returned to South Africa and in 1975 became the first black person to be appointed Anglican dean of Johannesburg.
In 1979 Tutu called for sanctions against South Africa, saying they were a form of nonviolent protest that would help to end apartheid. His global popularity made him a threat to the South African government at a time when political dissenters often faced arrest, violence, or even death. For many years the South African government denied him a passport to travel abroad, but it relented in 1982 in response to international pressure.
This winner of the Nobel Peace Prize grew up in apartheiddivided South Africa in a shack without plumbing or electricity.
In 1986 Desmond Tutu was elected archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the South African Anglican Church. Between 1996 and 1998 he led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated human rights abuses during apartheid. A skilled orator, he has continued to speak out against oppression and injustice even after the defeat of apartheid.
HIS WORDS
We shall be free, all of us, black and white, for it is God’s intention. He enlists us to help him transfigure all the ugliness of this world into the beauty of his kingdom.
—The Rainbow People of God, p. 127
Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.
—quoted in James B. Simpson, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations
Revolution! They think we run away from revolution, but the people in this country do not think revolution is necessarily a bad thing. Revolution means a radical change. If it is revolution to say I work for a South Africa that is nonracial; if it is revolution to say I am working for a South Africa that is truly democratic; if it is revolution to say I am working for a South Africa where black and white and yellow and green can walk together arm in arm, then, friends, I am for that.
—The Rainbow People of God, p. 142
Books by Desmond Tutu
The African Prayer Book. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
No Future without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 2000.
The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Beautiful Revolution. New York: Doubleday, 1984.
The Words of Desmond Tutu. New York: Newmarket Press, 1996.
Battle, Michael. Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1997.
———, comp. The Wisdom of Desmond Tutu. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
Hulley, L. D., ed., et al. Archbishop Tutu: Prophetic Witness to South Africa. n.p.: BHB International, 1997.
Pieterse, H. J. C., ed. Desmond Tutu’s Message: A Qualitative Analysis. Empirical Studies in Theology, vol. 5. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001.
Other Resources
Videotapes: Bishop Desmond Tutu, Vision Video, 2001; The Church of God Goes On, Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation, 1982; Tutu and Franklin: A Journey toward Peace, dialogue between Bishop Desmond Tutu and John Hope Franklin, PBS, 2001.
“[God] enlists us to help him transfigure all the ugliness of this world into the beauty of his kingdom.”