If you think today's politics have conservatives downing double doses of Mylanta, how about today's religion?
Some Christian leaders feel annoyed, perplexed and even angered by what’s happening at Bethel Church in Redding, California, according to articles I found while searching for information about the church.
Bethel is the hub of an international movement. And it is as offbeat as a Donald Trump rally.
At Bethel, people are said to heal, speak in tongues and even raise the dead. Yet according to a recent cover story in Christianity Today titled "Inside the Popular, Controversial Bethel Church," no one is ever called to repentance there and faith in Christ is never preached. In fact, the name of Jesus seldom comes up, according to the article.
As I see it, Bethel is all about spiritual signs and wonders. To me, it is, in a way, part of the “new spirituality” practiced by millennials these days. It is religion without borders, belief without barriers.
Still, the spiritual manifestations at Bethel can be, for some, rather frightening.
According to Martyn Wendell Jones, author of the Christianity Today article, what drives the 9,000 people to attend services at Bethel are the odd and otherworldly practices there.
And topping the list of “things that give ministers heartburn” is the Bethel practice of “grave sucking” or "grave soaking."
Bethel parishioners (a quaint term for the frenzied, ecstatic believers Bethel attracts) will find the grave of a famous religious leader, say C.S. Lewis, and lie on top of it, hoping to draw spiritual strength and purpose from the bones below, according to the article. Grave soakers point to 2 Kings 13:21 as a precedent, a verse that tells of a man being healed after touching the bones of Elisha.
Needless to say, soakers have a folder full of miracles to share.
So do those who pass through a famous Bethel fire tunnel. In that one, fervent believers form two rows facing each other while those in need of spiritual help pass between them as those in the rows sing, pray, praise and lapse into trances.
It all leads to this question: Can there be Christian signs and wonders without Christ getting involved?
The Bethel folks would say “yes.”
Members of more staid Protestant congregations would likely say “no.”
And many who don’t have a dog in the fight come away from Bethel with mixed emotions.
Jones, of Christianity Today, left Bethel feeling moved and invigorated.
He also came away feeling sad for the people who go to the Bethel healing sessions on crutches and in wheelchairs and come away unhealed. He witnessed no miracles at Bethel, he writes.
Still, he says, “Bethel, in my mind, does not cleanly resolve. It is too big and complicated a place for me to collapse into a single theme.”
He does say visiting Bethel made him want to attend his own church.
And, fire tunnels and grave sucking aside, perhaps something might be said for that.
Email: jerjohn@deseretnews.com