{"id":29852,"date":"2016-04-15T16:43:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T20:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=29852"},"modified":"2016-04-15T17:32:31","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T21:32:31","slug":"new-christian-contemplatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2016\/04\/15\/new-christian-contemplatives\/29852\/","title":{"rendered":"New Christian Contemplatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

At St. Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, people from many religious and spiritual traditions gather on Sunday nights to encounter the divine through stillness, silence, music, meditation, prayer, and ancient liturgies and sacraments. Correspondent Kate Olson talked with worshippers and also with historian and author and speaker Diana Butler Bass about changes in people\u2019s understandings of God and why one-in-two Americans today say they have had a mystical experience.<\/p>\n

Read an excerpt from <\/b>Grounded: Finding God in the World<\/a> <\/b><\/i> (HarperOne, 2015) by Diana Butler Bass, about the Celtic evening service at St Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia:<\/b><\/h2>\n
\n

\"Untitled-1\"<\/b><\/h2>\n

The Celtic evening service is a sacred experiment in creating community on the horizon of faith. Is it possible to be a different sort of church, one not on the mountain of privilege but one that celebrates the living web of God and the world?<\/p>\n

The answer at St. Stephen\u2019s is a resounding yes. The power of the Celtic service is not in its programmatic pieces. Rather, its power comes from the simple fact that it addresses the question \u201cWhere is God?\u201d This vibrant gathering centers on theological transformation\u2014an encounter with the God who dwells here. And its particular liturgical experience enables people to touch the reality of the Spirit, to know that they are not alone in the journey to find God in the world, and to be strengthened to make the earth more habitable for the holy: As a community, they are living the spiritual revolution.<\/p>\n

Some congregations (and not just Christian congregations) are following the same path. But, if survey data is any indication, churches like St. Stephen\u2019s are the exception, not the rule, as the gap between the spiritual revolution and religious institutions both persists and widens. For the most part, the spiritual revolution challenges the church. It challenges the vision of a distant God that has been the basis of much of religious life for the last thousand years or so. The good news is that God is closer than ever before, and many people are making new connections with the spirit of love and life to heal the broken places of the world. The spiritual revolution does not destroy the church\u2014unless, of course, the church ignores it, denies it, dismisses it, or pushes it away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that there was a failure on the part of the church at all,\u201d says Millie Cain, a parishioner at St. Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. \u201cIt was just that I was hungry for a more visceral experience of the divine. And it\u2019s such a gift to experience that together in community, that awakening of the God within.\u201d More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":29961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videocast","topics-culture-and-society","topics-faith-and-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nNew Christian Contemplatives | April 15, 2016 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2016\/04\/15\/new-christian-contemplatives\/29852\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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