Non-Christian Mediums

[GNC]

Are there such things a non-Christian mediums and are there spiritualists from other religions too?

 

[James_H]

Well, arguably, Spiritualism is quite different from Christianity. I'm sure a lot of Christians wouldn't approve of the Spiritualist version of the afterlife. Also, a lot of it stems from Theosophy, which draws on all sorts of religions.

 

[Recycled1]

A medium is simply a person who has the ability to communicate with people who have died.
Therefore a medium doesn't have to belong to any particular religion -they can have whatever religious beliefs they like, or none at all!
All they have to believe in, is the continuation of life/intelligence after death -not necessarily any sort of God.

Spiritualism is a religion with its own seven principals,the first of which is the "Fatherhood of God" but they are definitely NOT orthodox Christian.
"Proper" Christians believe that Jesus died as "a sacrifice for the sins of mankind".
Spiritualists do NOT believe in Jesus's sacrifice, they believe in "Personal Responsibility" (another of their seven principals)

There ARE spiritualists who call themselves "Christian Spiritualists", who "try to follow the teachings and example "of Jesus, but that isn't the same as being a "proper" Christian.(ie believing in sacrifices for sins)

I was brought up in a strongly Christian ( Baptist ) family, who certainly didn't approve of Spiritualism!

After a long and difficult spiritual "journey", I am no longer a Christian.
I DO go to a local spiritualist church, but I haven't become a member, because, ironically, these days I'm not happy with the concept of "the Fatherhood of God".
I DO believe in the continuation of the human soul, at least for a while (not necessarily for "eternity"), and have had the occasional "message" from the medium taking a spiritualist service, that really rings true.

Having said all that, it remains true that a Spiritualist church service feels an awful lot like an ordinary non-conformist Christian church service! (Hymns, prayers, an address etc!) And where I am in Dorset, the same mediums take the services at both the Christian Spiritualist church, and the Spiritualiust Union church! About the only difference I can see, is that the Christian Spiritualist church still uses a Christian hymn book!!

On a personal note, I'm rather drawn to the Humanists, but I can't join them, either, because they don't believe in the contiuation of any sort of soul /intelligence after death, and I do! (If only from experiences with a ouja board in my teens, many many years ago!)
I can't win!

 

[GNC]

Thanks for the detailed reply. I was using the word "spiritualist" with a small "S" though, because I wasn't sure what else to call them. What I was wondering was whether other religions have a leaning towards contacting the dead through supernatural methods, as the Spiritualist Church does seem to me to be broadly Christian-based in style if not wholly in belief. Christians believe in life after death too, after all.

 

[Recycled1]

My own dear old Baptist mother was abit fearful of doing things that were "wrong".She used to quote to me a rather obscure passage from the Old Testament, where King David had "called up" the soul of either Samuel or Solomon to ask for advice, and shouldn't have done so!

In my innocence I'd happily told her about the exceedingly interesting experiences (at school!) with the ouija board, and I was quite surprised at her horrified reaction! She certainly believed in life-after-death, but she didn't think it was right to try to communicate.
I've learnt since that quite alot of Christians genuinely believe that messing about with ouija boards attracts bad entities who are not really who they say they are, and I think their attitude to mediums is along the same lines.

HOWEVER I went to a funeral a few years ago , taken by a young Roman Catholic priest, and his "sermon" was definitely along spiritualist lines, so maybe some Christians are more open -minded than others!

I'm sure there are people in every religion who act as mediums.
After all, Shaman(s) contact "the other side" , the Chinese venerate their ancestors, Buddists and Hindus believe in reincarnation, so have got to believe in some sort of after-life.
I don't know enough about other religions to know whether they APPROVE of "communication" any more than my mum did!

 

[OldTimeRadio]

The majority of orthodox Christians, who tend to look upon all necromancy as essentially demonic, look upon mediums as non- or even anti-Christian.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

My own dear old Baptist mother was abit fearful of doing things that were "wrong".She used to quote to me a rather obscure passage from the Old Testament, where King David had "called up" the soul of either Samuel or Solomon to ask for advice, and shouldn't have done so!

This was King Saul entreating the Witch of Endor to conjure up the prophet Samuel. Solomon hadn't yet been born.

This is one of the best-known Old Testament stories, taught in almost every Sunday School, so I'd not describe it as "obscure."

I went to a funeral a few years ago , taken by a young Roman Catholic priest, and his "sermon" was definitely along spiritualist lines, so maybe some Christians are more open -minded than others!

What exactly did he say? All Catholic priests believe in the life-beyond-the-grave (or at least they are supposed to) and thus preach and teach accordingly.

 

[Recycled1]

My own dear old Baptist mother was abit fearful of doing things that were "wrong".She used to quote to me a rather obscure passage from the Old Testament, where King David had "called up" the soul of either Samuel or Solomon to ask for advice, and shouldn't have done so!

This was King Saul entreating the Witch of Endor to conjure up the prophet Samuel. Solomon hadn't yet been born.

This is one of the best-known Old Testament stories, taught in almost every Sunday School, so I'd not describe it as "obscure."

I went to a funeral a few years ago , taken by a young Roman Catholic priest, and his "sermon" was definitely along spiritualist lines, so maybe some Christians are more open -minded than others!

What exactly did he say? All Catholic priests believe in the life-beyond-the-grave (or at least they are supposed to) and thus preach and teach accordingly.

Hello Old Time Radio

I didn't mean to upset you by refering to the OT passage as "obscure"!
Is that particular bit of the King David story actually taught in Sunday School in the USA?
It wasn't mentioned when I was being sent to Sunday School as a child, nor did any of the young children I taught
(I was an infant teacher here for 20 years) ever mention it when the subject of witches cropped up at Hallowe'en.

The RC priest at the funeral said -among other things -that it was now the turn of the (dead) lady's relations to come and meet her and guide her to what happens next -or something along those lines!
I've obviously got to be careful what I say here -I don't want you to take things the wrong way -but the priest didn't talk as much as I was expecting about God /Jesus/forgiveness of sins/Heaven, although obviously being an RC priest he must believe in them!
The funeral was several years ago now, and alot has happened in my life since,so my memory is somewhat hazy!

 

[ramonmercado]

This RC priest sounds a little unorthodox even for Liberation Theology!

 

[PeniG]

Not necessarily. We'd have to hear the sermon. It's a standard comforting thought among Christians generally that when you die you get to be with your dead loved ones again, and this is sometimes a factor in decisions to be more religious: Granny got religion and if I want to go where she's gone when I die I need to get religion, too. Only in the Roman Catholic church it wouldn't be "getting religion," but you know what I mean. It's also a standard feature of the NDE that your dead loved ones meet you at the end of the tunnel.

Belief in an afterlife is a necessary prerequisite to believing that the living can and should communicate with the dead; but it exists independently. Almost every religious tradition believes in an afterlife.

Whether the Witch of Endor is taught in Sunday school and how the story is interpreted will vary widely with the Sunday school, but these passages are far from obscure in discussions of life after death and spiritualism specifically, as the Witch was acting as a medium, not as a spellcaster.

Whether any particular passage in the Bible can be called obscure depends on where you're coming from. If you live among Chrisitan Fundamentalists, like I do, there isn't a hole or corner in either testament that's really obscure, as citation is their primary form of argument, especially when they're arguing with each other, and you have to dig deep to find Biblical passages to apply to health care reform and illegal immigration.

 

[Recycled1]

OK -mea culpa - I shouldn't have used the word "obscure"!

The priest's sermon impressed me at the time BECAUSE of its "liberal" nature.Most of the people attending the funeral weren't church-goers.
I daresay he took this into consideration.

Not all Christians believe that they will see their loved ones straight away -
I come from a fiercely non-conformist (and fairly argumentative) background, where certain relatives believed that they would "sleep" until Judgement Day.

 

[GNC]

OK -mea culpa - I shouldn't have used the word "obscure"!

Don't worry, I went to Sunday School for years and never heard of this passage. I thought Endor was where the Ewoks came from.

It depends on what you're trying to teach, if it's all hellfire and brimstone then the anti-supernatural, Devil-equated stuff will come up a lot, I assume. I got the more love and peace-oriented stuff.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

OK -mea culpa I come from a fiercely non-conformist (and fairly argumentative) background, where certain relatives believed that they would "sleep" until Judgement Day.

That's called "soul sleep" and most (although not quite all) religions which hold that tenet tend to be viewed as cultic by Mainstream Christianity (Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and so on). The Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, hold strongly to "Soul Sleep."

 

[decipheringscars]

OK -mea culpa - I shouldn't have used the word "obscure"!

The priest's sermon impressed me at the time BECAUSE of its "liberal" nature.Most of the people attending the funeral weren't church-goers.
I daresay he took this into consideration.

Not all Christians believe that they will see their loved ones straight away -
I come from a fiercely non-conformist (and fairly argumentative) background, where certain relatives believed that they would "sleep" until Judgement Day.

I hesitate because I don't want you to feel like all the Christians are coming out of the woodwork and jumping on you about the little details... but...

FYI,

You say you grew up Baptist. There are lots of different kinds of Baptists, some very conservative and some rather liberal/mainstream. But the Baptist version of Christianity is by no means normative.

If your experience of Christianity was predominately Baptist, then hearing a sermon in or interacting with priests or adherents of any catholic (RCC, Anglican, Orthodox, even Lutheran) church might seem very surprising to you.

First of all, not all Christians believe Jesus died as a sacrifice for sins. In fact, the "undivided Church" has never defined precisely how salvation is effected through Jesus. The Baptist churches do tend to define it as a substitutionary sacrifice of some sort. The Orthodox (Eastern) Church focuses more on the Incarnation - God becoming human so that humans might become divine. It's a very complex issue and I won't derail this thread further on it, but I thought you might like to know (since beliefs about the significance of Jesus' death can be among the most repulsive part of some Christians' beliefs).

Anyway, you're right to describe the horror with which some Christians view contact with the dead. The Witch of Endor story is quite interesting, though - it actually problematizes the more conservative Christian take on the matter.

In my experience (raised Assemblies of God, attended conservative Baptist schools), such contact with the dead was really taken to be contact with demons purporting to be the dead. So a medium isn't conversing with your Aunt Jo or whoever; s/he's conversing with a demon pretending to be your Aunt Jo for the purpose of deceiving you and turning you away from the truth and from God.

However, in the OT story of the Witch of Endor, it really was Samuel who was called up from the dead (and the ancient Hebrew view of such things was similar to the Greeks' view of Hades, not at all like later Christian thought on the matter). Saul's sin in doing so (according to the text, which doesn't spell it out too clearly) was that he was looking for advice from someone other than God and through means other than those set out by the religious tradition. Witches were rivals to the prophets and priests in that system. The belief wasn't so much that they'd give you false information, but that you were being unfaithful to YHWH (God) by going through a different religious tradition. It was similar to if you had sought the advice of a different god's priest or prophet.

There's such a range in current Christian thought on this matter, and you should know that only the most conservative Christians are unwilling to criticize the biblical text. Lots of Christians would look at this text, for example, as being very politicized and sexist. But that's another potential derailment of this thread.

Furthermore, catholic (RCC, Orthodox, Anglican, and many mainline Protestants) tradition encourages praying for the dead and "praying to" the dead (asking Saints to intercede on your behalf, or even talking to your dead relatives). The idea there is that Christ has conquered death. If you can ask someone alive on earth to pray for you, then why can't you ask someone who's died to pray for you? If you sought advice from your Aunt Jo while she was alive, why can't you ask her for advice after she's dead? Exactly what constitutes a response from the dead will be looked at differently by different Christians; some will be more open to going to a psychic, others won't. I think the most common attitude is simply one of being open to the way insights come to you in your life.

And that's why psychics can be Christian. Their take on what it means to be psychic will be informed by their Christian beliefs. However, I doubt many Christians in mainline churches (including catholic strands) will set up shop as psychics per se. There's a story in the NT book of Acts about a magician named Simon who wanted the Apostles to teach him how to do the "tricks" (miracles of healing and exorcism) they were doing. They refused, because he was in it for financial gain. The term "simony" comes from that story, and refers to making money off spiritual gifts - e.g., selling an object that's been blessed as such - selling the blessing. Most Christians will want to steer clear of such things. "Freely you have received; freely give" is the instruction Jesus gave to his followers regarding things spiritual.

(I should also point out that many Christians today don't take the miracle stories in the Bible literally. "Exorcism" in some senses refers beyond the official rite to a more general sense of purification. Baptism is, in part, exorcism - Justin Martyr in the 2nd century CE wrote of Baptism as exorcism - and this is retained in baptismal rites as the renunciation of Satan and all evil that opposes God. Even Christians like myself who don't believe in a literal Satan or literal demons/angels can speak of exorcism as a cleansing from evil.)

Disclosure: I'm an Anglican on the Catholic end of the spectrum, and a PhD student in theology. I wrote my Master's thesis on soteriology - the question of salvation (which many Christians associate predominately with the Cross but I find that to be an unfortunate narrowing of the subject).

 

[decipheringscars]

After my long post, I want to post separately about the OP - "can there be non-christian psychics".

Mid-20th-century theologian Paul Tillich argued that the supposedly post-Christian West continues to be "Christian" in that Christianity has shaped and informed its world view and indeed the very questions it asks. I think that's a relevant insight here.

I think the OP is trying to say, are there psychics whose world view, whose starting point, whose outlook is other than what we have in the West as a heritage of Christianity?

While it's not unique to Christianity, it definitely is a Christian outlook to believe in the continuation of individual consciousness after death. But what if you come from a culture and religion shaped by belief in reincarnation? or in an idea that all souls return to the One (i.e., individual consciousnesses don't continue to exist as such)? In the West, even views like that tend to be affected by the prevailing "Christian" way of looking at questions of death, life after death, the human being, the soul/spirit, and so forth.

What if the terms are defined in radically different ways?

So I second the question: are there "psychics" as such in radically different traditions?

(I recently met a woman from Scotland who lives in the US now and is a Buddhist monk, who claimed she had "second sight" and used to go with her grandmother to spiritualist churches back in Scotland when she was a kid. I didn't have time to ask her deeper questions, but I would be curious if her imagination - that is, the faculty that interprets data, images it, retains it, and puts it back together for use in other contexts - is more shaped by growing up in the Church of Scotland, spiritualist churches, and a Western outlook, or if it has been re-formed by her adopted Buddhist practices and beliefs.)

Where and in what traditions you grow up will affect how you take the world in, how you remember it, how you interpret it, and how you bring your interpretations and memories to bear on new experiences and ideas. I think that's probably the issue behind the OP.

Correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[OldTimeRadio]

However, in the OT story of the Witch of Endor, it really was Samuel who was called up from the dead....

There's not as much agreement there as you seem to think. Some sects regard the apparition as being a demon impersonating Samuel. And some others leave the matter up for grabs.

Correction - changed "Satan" to "Samuel," as was of course originally intended.

 

[GNC]

Correct me if I'm wrong!

I think you got it spot on! Particularly if the "Christian" upbringing is more likely to draw out the contacting the dead business more than other religions and societies.

 

[Kondoru]

They used to be very common in Japan.

(Not so these days, as it requires a lot of purification to be one, in fact anyone sufficiently pure can act as a Medium)

Im not sure if thats a Shinto or Buddist view...I think its pretty much both.

 

[GNC]

They used to be very common in Japan.

(Not so these days, as it requires a lot of purification to be one, in fact anyone sufficiently pure can act as a Medium)

Im not sure if thats a Shinto or Buddist view...I think its pretty much both.

Interesting. But what do you mean by purification? Does it involve lots of meditation or lots of glasses of water?

 

[Kondoru]

Um, more like, buckets of cold water

over the head

Or for the real enthusiast

a waterfall

 

[OldTimeRadio]

The most common Christian purification ritual is at least a lot simpler than standing under a waterfall:

"Lord, I messed up and I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you."

 

[OldTimeRadio]

My own dear old Baptist mother was abit fearful of doing things that were "wrong".She used to quote to me a rather obscure passage from the Old Testament, where King David had "called up" the soul of either Samuel or Solomon to ask for advice, and shouldn't have done so!

That was King Saul, not David. IIRC, Saul was at the time plotting to KILL David.

And at the time Solomon, who was David's s son, hadn't yet been born.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

To the Origins; Poster - Since the majority of historic Christian churches flatly reject direct communications with the dead (with the exception of Catholics, whose post-mortem prayer communication is pretty much limited to recognized saints), wouldn't most mediums be non-Christian?.

 

[GNC]

To the Origins; Poster - Since the majority of historic Christian churches flatly reject direct communications with the dead (with the exception of Catholics, whose post-mortem prayer communication is pretty much limited to recognized saints), wouldn't most mediums be non-Christian?.

That was covered on page one of the thread, I'd say. But mediumship is mostly practiced through a faith derived from a Christian origin, like a splinter group.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

That was covered on page one of the thread, I'd say. But mediumship is mostly practiced through a faith derived from a Christian origin, like a splinter group.

But "a faith derived from a Christian origin" may no longer be Christian. Many authorities claim that Satanism is "derived from Christianity."

 

[Recycled1]

I'd forgotten this thread existed! I hadn't even read Decipheringscars' interesting contributions, but I see by the date that I was on holiday at the time and had no computer access.

OldTimeRadio, how would YOU define "Christian"? it's a case of "How long is a piece of string?"

There's been a development in my own "spiritual journey".
Back at Christmas I actually JOINED my local Christian Spiritualist group.
I have to admit that I woke up next morning thinking "What have I done?"!

But it WAS good last Sunday to sit in a Spiritualist group and listen to an address all about Doubting Thomas and the Resurrection! (A foot in both camps, so to speak!)

 

[GNC]

That was covered on page one of the thread, I'd say. But mediumship is mostly practiced through a faith derived from a Christian origin, like a splinter group.

But "a faith derived from a Christian origin" may no longer be Christian. Many authorities claim that Satanism is "derived from Christianity."

You can't have Satanism without Christianity. I suppose you can't have Spiritualism without it either.

 

[Recycled1]

You can't have Satanism without Christianity. I suppose you can't have Spiritualism without it either.

I'm not so sure about that, gnccx!
Christianity,surely, involves Jesus Christ at its centre
The "mainstream" Spiritualists believe in God but are not concerned with Jesus.
The Spiritualist National Union has seven "principles" but there's no mention of Jesus in any of them.

 

[GNC]

Interesting, but do they believe in the Christian style of God or do they have their own version?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

OldTimeRadio, how would YOU define "Christian"?

I would define it as any religion which holds to the salvation doctrines which the Historic Church has held for the past 2000 years. That would include the Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Calvinists, (mos0 Penetcostals, Episcopalians and Anglicans, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Campbellites, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Methodists, Amish and Mennonites, Salvation Army, Plymouth Brethren,

It would probably NOT include most of the cultic religions which arose during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, mainly here in ther United States.