The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions

FALSE PROPHECY. In the Bible, a prophet is someone who speaks authoritatively for God, so anyone who falsely claims to speak authoritatively for God, or who speaks on behalf of a false god, is a false prophet. A prophet who performs miracles is not to be followed if he represents other gods or seeks to sway God’s people from obeying his word (Deut. 13:1–5). Anyone who claims to speak for God, or for other gods, and who in that capacity utters false predictions concerning the future is also to be rejected (Deut. 18:20–22). Thus “false prophecy” in the narrower sense of a false prediction on divine authority is one indication, but not a necessary condition, that an individual is a false prophet. Even a prophet who claims to represent the Lord Jesus and who performs miracles in his name must be deemed a false prophet if his or her life and ministry are not faithful to Jesus’s teaching (Matt. 7:15–27). False teachers who arise within the church are also akin to false prophets (2 Pet. 2:1). Their false teachings deny the full deity or humanity of Christ or in some other way misrepresent Christ or his teachings (1 John 4:1–3; 2 John 7, 9; cf. 2 Cor. 11:2–4).

A wide variety of religious teachings meet these criteria of false prophecy. The claim of the Unification Church that the Messiah would come from Korea (generally understood to mean that the Unification Church’s founder, Sun Myung Moon, may himself be the Messiah) is an example of false prophecy in both the broad and the narrow senses. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, was a false prophet, and her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875) is in its entirety a work of false prophecy.

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, actually claimed to be a prophet of God. His doctrines that are contradictory to the Bible, such as Smith’s assertion that God was once a man like us and became a God, mark him as a false prophet according to the Bible (Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345–47). His erroneous predictions found in LDS scriptures also show him to be a false prophet in the narrow sense. These include his 1832 predictions that a temple would be built in Jackson County, Missouri, before the generation of his day passed away (there is still no temple there) and that a war between the northern and southern states (which did occur) would become a world war, which did not occur (Doctrine & Covenants 82:1–5; 87).

The Adventist tradition originated with false predictions of the second coming in 1843 and 1844, though these were presented not as authoritative prophecies but as earnest interpretations of the Bible. In the aftermath of that failed prediction, an Adventist visionary named Ellen G. White came to be regarded as a prophetess in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White’s aberrant interpretations of the Bible, her extensive plagiarism, and other errors mark her as a false prophet.

Originally an Adventist sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have published numerous speculations concerning the date of the end of the present age, as well as concerning events having to do with the “last days.” Their founder, Charles Taze Russell, taught that Jesus had become invisibly present in 1874 and would bring a final end to wickedness by 1914. After extending the deadline to 1918 and later to 1925, Russell’s followers revised the chronology so that 1914 was the date of Christ’s invisible return and the final end of wickedness was imminent. This is still the position of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have been taught these erroneous dates as part of the “food at the proper time” that God’s servant organization was serving and that the faithful were required to accept without question. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, then, meet the criterion of claiming to speak authoritatively for God; thus their teachings and speculative predictions are false prophecy.

Bibliography. R. Abanes, End-Time Visions: The Doomsday Obsessions; W. M. Alnor, Soothsayers of the Second Advent; E. C. Gruss, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Their Claims, Doctrinal Changes and Prophetic Speculation; What Does the Record Show?; J. R. Lewis, Doomsday Prophecies: A Complete Guide to the End of the World; Joseph Smith Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, edited by Joseph Fielding Smith.

R. M. Bowman Jr.

FANA (OR FANAA). Fana (Arabic, “to pass away” or “to cease to exist”), in Sufi Islamic theology, refers to the annihilation of the contingent aspects of the self that occurs when a person is united with the being of Allah in a higher mode of existence. The concept is derived from the Qur’an, sura 55:26–27.

The mystical state in which the Divine absorbs the personal identity of the devotee is called fana fi Allah (extinction of the self in God). Devotees attain this state by means of a demanding regimen of spiritual disciplines, including focused meditation, contemplation of the divine attributes, and the renunciation of all human (and thus contingent) qualities.

There are three types of fana in Sufism: of actions, of attributes, and of essence. Most versions of the doctrine maintain that fana consists not in the utter annihilation of the self but only in the obliteration of those aspects of the self that are contingent, of everything that is not God. This is often interpreted to mean that even after fana fi Allah, the person continues to exist as an aspect of Allah (since only Allah exists in an ultimate sense).

The doctrine of fana is sufficiently complex that it is difficult to determine whether it consists primarily of an epistemological claim (the devotees’ knowledge of their fundamental identity with Allah) or of a metaphysical teaching (that the devotees undergo a substantial ontological change at the time of absorption into the divine being). In either case, fana fi Allah results in an eternal union with God known as baqa billah, wherein the devotees experience endless joy because of their intimate knowledge of (and participation in) the Divine.

See also SUFISM

Bibliography. J. Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism; J. Renard, trans., Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology.

J. Bjornstad

FENG SHUI. Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophy of construction and interior design dating back, at least in a primitive form, to perhaps three thousand years ago. It seems to have been well developed by AD 220. Astrology, numerology, the I-Ching, and other forms of divination also contributed to its maturation. Some feng shui consultants, in fact, still couple their practices with these divination techniques. Also known as “Chinese geomancy,” it is based on the belief that a universal energy, or life force, permeates and sustains all that exists. Many Eastern religions hold such a belief. In Taoism, for instance, this life force is called chi. In Hinduism it is referred to as prana.

In Chinese, the term feng shui means “wind, water,” and the concept comes directly from the idea that chi moves like the wind but can be trapped like water. It also can have its path interrupted or diverted in wrong directions. Trapped chi, if allowed to stagnate, supposedly will have negative ramifications not only for nearby structures but also for persons. Likewise, misdirected chi can cause all manner of unpleasant consequences. Unwanted results might range from minor inconveniences such as simple irritability and substandard work performance to far more serious fallouts such as physical injury or even death.

Feng shui consultants claim to guide their clients toward building a healthy and harmonious environment, whether it be by properly positioning flowers in a garden or arranging furniture in an office. Their task is to ensure the presence of a clear pathway through which chi can flow unhindered. This in turn will properly balance the yin and yang (negative and positive) aspects of the life force in the immediate area. According to feng shui proponents, good fortune, increased energy, emotional satisfaction, and mental wellness will surely follow.

Within feng shui, there are many theories and approaches, including Black Hat, Four Pillars, Flying Stars, and Nine Star Ki. All these techniques emphasize one or more of several variables. The basics of feng shui, however, primarily deal with four aspects of any given area: building, environment, time, and people. Their harmony with chi is evaluated through study of their interaction with nature’s five elemental energies: fire, wood, water, metal, and earth. Corrective measures are based on nine Eastern forms of traditional curing techniques adapted for modern use in the Western world: light, sound, life, movement, stability, electricity, symbolism, color, and transcendental solutions.

The twenty-first-century popularity of feng shui in major cities (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC) cannot be overstated. Especially fashionable has been the use of elite consultants by multimillion-dollar businesses (e.g., Merrill Lynch) and high-powered investors (e.g., Donald Trump), usually at exorbitant costs.

Bibliography. K. R. Carter, Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life: How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect, and Happiness; S. Post, The Modern Book of Feng Shui.

R. Abanes

FIQH. Fiqh (Arabic, “deep understanding” or “full comprehention”), the word for Islamic jurisprudence, refers to (1) the methods of legal reasoning used by Muslim legal scholars (faqihs) and (2) the legal rulings (fatwas) arrived at by those jurists. The purpose of fiqh is to derive binding precepts from authoritative Islamic sources such as the Qur’an, the Sunnah (practices of the Prophet Muhammad), and the hadith (traditions about the life of Muhammad). These derived statutes are intended to assist Muslims in obeying Allah and to guide them in the particular social contexts in which they find themselves. In Sunni Islam it is acknowledged that the decrees of the faqihs, though generally reliable, may be in error; in Shi‘ite Islam such edicts are deemed infallible. Sunni and Shi‘ite views of fiqh differ regarding the degree of authority vested in jurists and the perspicuity of the Qur’an. The four major schools of Sunni jurisprudence are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali. The Ja‘fari school of legal theory is prominent within Shi‘ism. Rashid Khalifa (1935–90) was the leading proponent of the “Qur’an alone” approach to jurisprudence until his assassination in January 1990.

Bibliography. W. B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usul al-fiqh; A. A. Sachedina, The Just Ruler in Shi‘ite Islam: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence; D. Waines, An Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed.

J. Bjornstad

FIRST VISION. According to the official account of Joseph Smith Jr.’s first vision in Joseph Smith—History (part of the LDS scripture Pearl of Great Price), in 1820 Smith witnessed spiritual renewal taking place in various denominational churches. Given their differing doctrinal views and varied practices, Smith struggled to understand which church had the truth. Upon reading James 1:5, which promises wisdom to anyone who asks, Smith went into the woods and asked God to show him the true church. According to Smith, two personages appeared to him in a vision, God the Father and Jesus Christ. They told him to join none of the churches because they were all wrong and their creeds were all an abomination.

The First Vision is considered one of the fundamental truths that missionaries present to prospects, and to which faithful Mormons give assent. An important theological point that Mormons derive from the First Vision is that God the Father is a personage who possesses a physical body, in contradistinction to the position of historic Christianity, which has a strictly immaterial understanding of the Godhead. Furthermore, the theology of the Godhead presented in the First Vision as understood in LDS teaching is not monotheistic but polytheistic, given Smith’s later explicit claim that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three distinct deities. The official account does not, however, make these points clear, and it was not until long after Joseph Smith’s death that Mormons began assigning fundamental importance to the First Vision.

The First Vision has come under careful scrutiny by evangelical apologists. They note that the vision, which was allegedly received in 1820, appears to have been completely unknown in the 1820s or through much of the 1830s, even years after the LDS Church was founded. A second significant issue that has been raised concerns the discrepancies in the various early accounts of the First Vision. The official account was written in 1838 (dictated by Joseph Smith). As noted, it claims that Smith did not know which church was right, asked God in 1820 which church to join, and was answered with a vision of the Father and the Son. The earliest account, which was written in 1832 in Smith’s own handwriting but did not come to light until 1965, indicates that Smith was in his “sixteenth year” (i.e., the year 1821) and was already fully convinced that all the churches were wrong before he prayed. Smith’s prayer in this account was not to know which church to join but an appeal for forgiveness of his sins. He was answered by a vision in which “the Lord” Jesus appeared to him—with no mention of the Father. In late 1834 and 1835, Oliver Cowdery recorded an account in three installments in which there is some confusion. Cowdery first states that Smith was in his fifteenth year, then corrects himself and says Smith was in his seventeenth year, but then says the event took place in 1823, when Smith was actually eighteen years of age. According to Cowdery, Smith was not sure if God existed but sought forgiveness of sins and was visited by a single messenger from the Lord. In late 1835, Smith gave a different account to “Joshua the Jewish minister.” In this account, Smith was not sure which church was right and which was wrong, and he saw one personage and then another who told him that his sins were forgiven and that Jesus was the Son of God; these personages were evidently angels, not the Father or the Son. Several other versions were told during Smith’s lifetime, but these are the most notable. They show confusion over the date and contradict one another as to Smith’s purpose in praying and who appeared to him in the vision.

Mormon explanations of the various versions of the First Vision vary. Milton Backman Jr. claims that Smith dictated to different scribes for differing purposes and perspectives. In his article titled “Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” LDS historian James Allen describes eight of the accounts (1831–32; 1835; 1838–39; Orson Pratt account of 1840; Orson Hyde account of 1842; Wentworth Letter of 1842; New York Spectator version published in 1843; Alexander Neibaur’s personal diary entry dated 1844) and contends that the discrepancies are not as substantial as some have made them. When it comes to the details, he concludes, there is general agreement.

Bibliography. J. Allen, “Eight Contemporary Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” Era; Allen, “The Significance of Joseph Smith’s ‘First Vision’ in Mormon Thought,” in The New Mormon History: Revisionist Essays on the Past, edited by D. M. Quinn; R. M. Bowman Jr., “How Mormons Are Defending Joseph Smith,” Christian Research Journal; B. McKeever, “The First Vision’s Slow Entrance into the LDS Story,” Mormonism Researched; J. and S. Tanner, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?; K. Van Gorden, Mormonism.

S. J. Rost

FORTY IMMORTALS. The Forty Immortals (known among Sikhs as the Chali Mukte) are a group of forty Sikh warriors who are thought to have attained liberation as a result of their bravery in dying as martyrs during a lopsided battle against a Mughal army in the Muktsar region of northwestern India in December 1705. These forty men previously had abandoned Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708) but had a change of heart and proved their loyalty to him by their willingness to sacrifice their lives for his safety. Today devoted Sikhs keep alive the memory of these fighting men by singing sacred hymns (kirtan) and offering petitions (ardas) during religious ceremonies at Sikh temples (gurdwaras).

See also AHURA MAZDA; ZOROASTRIANISM

Bibliography. S. A. Nigosian, The Zoroastrian Faith: Tradition and Modern Research; Farrokh Vajifdar, “The Descent of the Fravashis,” http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Zara thushtrian/decent_fravashis.htm.

R. L. Drouhard

FRIENDS OF THE WESTERN BUDDHIST ORDER. Dennis Lingwood (1925–) is an English-born Buddhist monk who is best known today as Urgyen Sangharakshita (meaning “protected by the spiritual community”). In 1967 he created the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) in London, a movement that now has sixty-five centers worldwide, with eleven centers in the US. At the age of fifteen, Lingwood read the Diamond Sutra, or Vajracchedika, which is a fourth-century AD text of the Buddhist Mahayana tradition, and he felt an immediate affinity with Buddhism. During the Second World War, he served in India, and in 1946 he traveled through Sri Lanka and Singapore. In 1949 he went to Kusinagara in India, where he became a samanera, or novice, in the Theravadin tradition and was ordained a monk the following year. His first teacher was Jagadish Kashyap in Benares, who then requested that Sangharakshita establish a Buddhist monastery in Kalimpong in the eastern Himalayas.

Kalimpong became Sangharakshita’s home base and remained so for fourteen years, and from there he established a magazine, began writing books, and served as an itinerant teacher of Buddhism in every state of India except Kashmir. Much of his work was centered on spreading Buddhism among the dalits, or “untouchables” of India. He also spent time learning about other Buddhist traditions, such as the Chinese tradition of Cha’an, and received training from seven Tibetan Buddhist lamas, including Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche and Dudjom Rimpoche. These experiences enabled Sangharakshita to develop a very broad and nonsectarian attitude concerning the various traditions and schools of thought in Buddhism. In 1964 he returned to England, where he began to adapt the unifying essence of Buddhist practice and teaching found in all the various traditions. He felt that there are universal elements to Buddhism but that it has been expressed in different cultural forms through history. According to Sangharakshita, the principal teachings and precepts of Buddhism must be distinguished from its cultural forms, and these teachings must be suitably contextualized for living in the modern Western world.

The FWBO is the tangible outworking of that project of the adaptation of Buddhism. Those who belong to the FWBO are women and men for whom the Buddhist path is their central spiritual commitment. That commitment is grounded in the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism: taking refuge in the Buddha, the teachings (dharma), and the community (sangha).

In the FWBO, there is no belief in a creator god, and hence there are no divinely revealed laws to be obeyed. However, there are traditional ethical precepts that are incumbent on ordained members and must be applied in the body, in the mind, and in speech. Members are taught two basic forms of meditation: the Theravadan approach to mindfulness in breathing and loving-kindness and the insight into the emptiness of the self and reality, leading to the death of self/ego and a rebirth. The FWBO is responsible for operating the movement’s city centers, retreat centers, residential communities, and team-based forms of ethical businesses. In 2000 Sangharakshita retired from the leadership of the FWBO. He has written over fifty books on various aspects of Buddhism and maintains an interest in the fine arts and classical music.

Bibliography. Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Methods through the Ages; Sangharakshita, Who Is the Buddha?; Subhuti, Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition.

P. Johnson

FUNDAMENTALISM, CHRISTIAN. The term fundamentalism was originally coined in 1919 by Curtis Lee Laws to denote a theologically conservative standpoint taken by orthodox Christian Protestant believers. That conservative standpoint was initially expressed in the twelve-volume series titled The Fundamentals (1910–15). This series of booklets written by prominent academics such as James Orr (1844–1913) presented scholarly arguments in popular language against the growing influence of German theology that denied many traditional Christian doctrines. An early study of the fundamentalist movement was James Barr’s Fundamentalism (1977), which is marred by his disparaging of well-respected Christian scholars such as the archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen. A more balanced study is George M. Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture (2006).

The term has subsequently been occasionally applied to traditional Roman Catholic believers who disapprove of the church’s theological stances taken since Vatican II (especially the stance of the Pious Brotherhood). It denotes a reiteration of orthodox doctrine in reaction to secular and liberal theological views.

Bibliography. J. Barr, Fundamentalism; George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture; Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism; E. R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism.

P. Johnson