Qyöt27
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- Apr 2, 2004
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Understanding things from a spiritual POV and hyperspiritualizing are not the same thing. I've only really seen the latter when dealing with people that have basically decided they need to disengage from anything that's not explicitly labelled 'Christian' and cordon themselves off inside the Evangelical/Fundamentalist/Charismatic echo chamber. Very very rarely (if ever) have I seen it occur in Mainline Protestants, or within like-minded Catholics and Orthodox.
But there is a difference: Catholics, Orthodox, and Mainline Protestants all do have a spiritual worldview, but that doesn't mean they hyperspiritualize things. The hyper is the important part of the word here, not the spiritual part of the word. The Orthodox in particular are very experientially spiritual in their worldview, but theirs is equally as distant from what we're talking about here.
It's an impulse to make everything, no matter how mundane, into a morality play of Biblical consequences, because it's an outcropping of 'spiritual warfare' ideas. As far as I can see there's nothing positive about that outlook at all; it's motivated by constantly being in fear of not being vigilant or militant enough with your congregation's list of do's and don'ts, because their 'don'ts' are inevitably the things where they believe demons lurk. But usually those subjects are extremely subjective and not shared by other local congregations or the major denominations. It's far more likely to be found in churches with high levels of denominational autonomy or absolutely no denominational hierarchy at all, because ecclesiastical structure provides a system of checks and balances against this sort of tendency.
But there is a difference: Catholics, Orthodox, and Mainline Protestants all do have a spiritual worldview, but that doesn't mean they hyperspiritualize things. The hyper is the important part of the word here, not the spiritual part of the word. The Orthodox in particular are very experientially spiritual in their worldview, but theirs is equally as distant from what we're talking about here.
It's an impulse to make everything, no matter how mundane, into a morality play of Biblical consequences, because it's an outcropping of 'spiritual warfare' ideas. As far as I can see there's nothing positive about that outlook at all; it's motivated by constantly being in fear of not being vigilant or militant enough with your congregation's list of do's and don'ts, because their 'don'ts' are inevitably the things where they believe demons lurk. But usually those subjects are extremely subjective and not shared by other local congregations or the major denominations. It's far more likely to be found in churches with high levels of denominational autonomy or absolutely no denominational hierarchy at all, because ecclesiastical structure provides a system of checks and balances against this sort of tendency.
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