(Un)spiritual Practices

(Un)spiritual Practices

I was talking with a friend about the way Christians in our culture have got interested in “spiritual practices” such as meditation, silence, and fasting. This development is taking place in a context where Christians don’t have as much sense of God as they used to have, and they’re trying to encourage one another’s “spiritual formation.” As it happens, tomorrow will be Pentecost, and a generation ago churches had experiences of God acting not unlike Pentecost and its aftermath—people spoke in tongues, prophesied, saw people healed, and saw demons cast out…