The Prophet Motive

Thanks to a tip from Peter Burnet, I read this article in the Telegraph profiling the Kids in Ministry organization that trains young evangelical children in the arts of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues:

At 9pm – a time when most of the children might have been expected to be in bed – the atmosphere in the Christ Triumphant Church was approaching fever-pitch. On stage, a teenage Christian rock band called Signs and Wonders was playing something sweet and exultantly hypnotic.

Some of the children were dancing, their bodies writhing and twisting, their arms flailing in the air, perspiration on their foreheads. Some had fallen to the ground, 'slain in the spirit', as the phrase has it, and were now crouching and kneeling in prayer, while the grown-ups moved among them laying on hands, some speaking in tongues.
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The event was hosted by an evangelical organisation called Kids in Ministry, founded by Pastor Fischer. Kids in Ministry describes its aims as to promote a vision of 'how God sees children as His partners in ministry worldwide'; with the purpose of equipping children 'to do the work of ministry and release them in their giftings and callings'.

What this means, in simple terms, is training child-ren, some as young as five, to use the 'gifts' of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues more commonly associated with Old Testament prophets and Jesus Christ Himself.

It is estimated that there are up to 70 million evangelical Christians in America, of whom about a third would describe themselves as Charismatics – which is to say, emphasising a belief in 'charismata', or the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, including healing, speaking in tongues (or glossolalia, as it is more properly known) and a belief in prophecy, the ability to communicate directly with and to 'channel' the word of God.

A heavy-set woman with a helmet of teased and tinted blond hair, and a cheerfully purposeful demeanour, Fischer, 55, grew up in a Pentacostalist family in North Dakota. Both her father and grandfather were ministers and as a child, she told me, she was always 'hungry for the things of God'.

Her early life was spent in business. She managed a motel and a country music radio station, where she would do her best to 'weed out the really ungodly songs, even if they were top 40. Things like Tight Fittin' Jeans by Conway Twitty – we wouldn't play that.'

For 13 years she managed her own sign company, called – inevitably – Signs and Wonders. At the same time she began working in children's ministry, first in a local church, and then in an organisation called MorningStar. It was there, Fischer told me, that she 'really got educated in the prophetic', and in the mission of nurturing 'prophetic gifts' among children. She travelled to Tanzania and South Africa as a missionary, and in 2001 returned to North Dakota and founded Kids in Ministry.

Now Peter was sure that I'd find plenty of grist for a full frontal secluarist rant, but to tell you the truth I can't muster a lot of spleen to vent on this group. To me the charismatic sects have never seemed all that threatening. They tend not to be as theologically rigid as some of the other evangelical sects, they seem more emotionally and experientially oriented. After reading the full article, which I think offers a very fair and somewhat sympathetic picture for a secular British newspaper, I'm almost tempted to think of them as pagans. The movements, the hypnotic dancing, shaking and rolling, the prophesying and speaking in tongues is downright shamanistic. And I'm not the only one to think so:

The Rev Chris Hand is an authority on the Charismatic movement. The pastor of a Baptist church in Derbyshire and editor of the Christian magazine Today's Contender, Hand is a former Charismatic who left the movement some 12 years ago, unable to find any Biblical justification for its prophetic claims.

'My feeling is these things are not from God,' he told me. 'It's more the grey area of psychic activity that the Bible calls mediumship and forbids.'

The emotional hysteria generated in Charismatic gatherings was also, Hand told me, 'alien to the Christian faith'; and, he thought, 'particularly questionable and at times dangerous' where children were involved. 'These kinds of experiences have immense potential to deceive both the children themselves and the adults who encourage them. For most of these children, they'll look back in 10 years' time and wonder what on earth it was all about.'

Hand is the father of two children, aged five and eight, whom he is trying to raise in the Christian faith, he told me, 'and I would not let them come within a million miles of Kids in Ministry'.

Spoken like a true sectarian. The Rev. Hand is afraid that young children are being deceived by a false faith. Well, he'd have to say that about every other religion or sect that is not his own. From the standpoint of someone who thinks that all religions are deceptions, I'd have to say that I'd prefer children learn from one that gives them energy and exuberance rather than dour premonitions of doom, gloom and guilt. You get the sense that the kids in the prophecy camp are having a lot of fun. This doesn't look like the kind of religious activity that is going to warp their minds for life. Fill them with mush, maybe, but fun mush.

But I can't say that our mainstream culture is offering children much more than mush. I don't think that im'ing their friends 24-7, or becoming engrossed in the virtual worlds of video games or online chat rooms is a better use of their time.

The other thing that struck me is how much this looks like some improvizational method-acting workshop. It doubly reinforces my contention that religion is a form of show business. These children are learning how to exercise their imaginations, to dramatize the small details of their lives. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these children find their way into show business later in life, if they can't make it in the prophesy game.