In the 1980’s, a wave of spiritual warfare hit the USA. It seemed as though one could read about spiritual warfare everywhere. It was in those days that the C.S. Lewis series and the Tolkien books became big. Peretti wrote his series that included muscular angels. John Wimber did training seminars on spiritual warfare. The spiritual warfare prayer movement grew prominent. I am sure that it had a name, but I cannot remember it. It was the movement in which you either walked around your neighborhood (or city) praying and claiming the land for God, or you traveled to various distant locations, prayed over them, and claimed that your prayer was sure to bring about a clearly discernible spiritual change in the atmosphere. Sadly, I have never seen any correlation between that type of travel prayer over neighborhoods and serious spiritual change.
I still will re-read Lewis and Tolkien on a regular basis, but I have not read Peretti or Wimber for years, and I stopped buying into the prayer over neighborhoods in the very early 1990’s. Here is the problem. Both Lewis and Tolkien picture spiritual warfare in reasonably realistic terms. Mind you, Lewis pictures it in terms appropriate for children, while Tolkien gives you an unexpurgated version of spiritual warfare. But, Peretti’s early books picture a Rambo Christianity in which spiritual warfare results in only “flesh wounds.” And, Wimber’s best work was actually that of teaching American Christians about worldviews and what that meant to our interpretation of Scripture, Tradition, and history. Nevertheless, it must be said that Wimber’s works actually helped feed into the modern American conservative Christian attitude that takes it for granted that everyone who disagrees with you has a veil over their face and does not understand Truth because they are incapable of understanding it until that veil is removed. While that is absolutely true in the sense of salvation, it is not anywhere near true when it is applied to the interpretation of Scripture and to life within the Body of Christ.
Sadly, some of that latter attitude has crept into American Orthodoxy. What do I mean? Too much of convert American Orthodoxy reflects a world in which strict fasting and prayer will automatically result in glorious victories over the flesh with little pain other than a “flesh wound.” More than that, American Orthodoxy is beset by monks who seem to believe that their fasting and prayer gives them the automatic right to question and contradict the decisions of any and all hierarchs. In fact, those monks are appropriating the heritage of the monks of yore who really did uphold the faith in the face of terrible opposition and spiritual warfare. But, the monks today are not willing to listen to the hierarchs and are most certainly not facing terrible opposition. And, most of the spiritual warfare is of their mind’s own creation rather than the result of a serious encounter with the demonic.
So, how ought we to think of spiritual warfare? And, what mistakes did we make in the 1980’s?
===MORE TO COME===
Fr. Ernesto, in line with your previous post concerning the price that you and your khouria have paid as a result of your ministry, anyone with any interest whatsoever in spiritual warfare simply MUST read Malachi Martin’s “Hostage to the Devil”.
First released in the mid-seventies, it remains in print, and very clearly documents, among most other matters related to demonic possession and exorcism, the steep personal price paid by each exorcist so documented for having taken on this ministry. As Jesus told us, “Count the cost”. (And Martin, apparently himself also an exorcist, also paid a heavy price for that, as have others who have undertaken this most direct form of spiritual warfare. It seems he pretty much lost this mind before he died.)
Yes, towards the end one needs to take some of what he said with some care for its content.
It was the movement in which you either walked around your neighborhood (or city) praying and claiming the land for God, or you traveled to various distant locations, prayed over them, and claimed that your prayer was sure to bring about a clearly discernible spiritual change in the atmosphere. Sadly, I have never seen any correlation between that type of travel prayer over neighborhoods and serious spiritual change.
These guys should really have gone into D&D instead. Then they could role-play their high-level Mages and Clerics and set Wards around their neighborhoods and sling their high-level Rebuke spells and go mano-a-mano with Type I though VI Demons (Vrocks to Balors) without all the rest of us in RL becoming their Red Shirt NPCs and taking the collateral damage. I am not an unpaid extra in your production of My Spiritual Warrior’s Life.
My writing partner knew some Mighty Spiritual Warrior type who was so far gone that if a light bulb burned out, instead of changing the light bulb he’d dig out his Bible and start Rebuking the Demon of Burned Out Lightbulbs. Did lotsa exorcisms to, whether the exorcisee wanted to or not. Casting out Demons right and left, until the day he ran into a REAL possession case — can you say “Seven Sons of Sceva”?
Too much of convert American Orthodoxy reflects a world in which strict fasting and prayer will automatically result in glorious victories over the flesh with little pain other than a “flesh wound.” More than that, American Orthodoxy is beset by monks who seem to believe that their fasting and prayer gives them the automatic right to question and contradict the decisions of any and all hierarchs.
When Evangelicals flake out, it’s usually some Pin-the-Tail-on-The-Antichrist end-of-the-world trip.
When Catholics flake out, it’s usually some form of Mary Channeling (including Mary-in-the-Tortilla).
Looks like when Orthodox flake out, it’s More Monkish Than Thou — longest beard, most monkish robes and all.
ROFL, it must be time for another Pithless Thoughts cartoon.
I think things really got out of hand when the 1980s spiritual warfare fad cross-bred with the 1990s fad of repressed memories of abuse and recovered memory as a spiritual ministry. I know someone who combined both the spiritual warfare movement with the healing of memories angle and it was … bewildering to see.
Yes, the cutting of generational curses that could be discerned by uncovering repressed memories. Indeed, I remember that.
“Repressed Memories” that always seemed to be of Satanic Ritual Abuse and Incest (JUICY! JUICY! JUICY!)? That ten years (and lots of court cases later) ended up renamed “False Memory Syndrome”?
A few years ago a group of us had a synchroblog on spiritual warfare. It was interesting to see the different ways in which people interpreted the concept. My contribution is here, and some of the links may still work.