RE: Rethink 2009 at Crystal Cathedral in February 2009
A notice has been placed on the Rethink Conference website stating the following:
At the request of Crystal Cathedral, Rethink 2009 has been postponed to 2010. If you have already registered for the event, you will receive a full credit for your payment. We sincerely regret any inconvenience. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at: info@rethinkconference.com.
Lighthouse Trails is reporting this information as a follow up to previous articles we have posted regarding the Rethink Conferences at Crystal Cathedral. Our first article (in January 2008) “RethinkConference: Christian Leaders Help Bring About Robert Schuller’s Dream of an All-Inclusive Spirituality” brought out Robert Schuller’s dream of an all-inclusive work of God that would include Muslims, Christians, and every religion.
The 2008 event was hosted by both Schuller Sr and emerging church futurist Erwin McManus. In addition to Schuller and McManus, the conference had several other Christian figures speaking–Gary Smalley, Henry Cloud, Dan Kimball, Chuck Colson, and Kay Warren–along with several non-Christian speakers. Many of the speakers, including Kay Warren, Dan Kimball, and Erwin McManus are proponents of contemplative mysticism. The reason this is important to know is because Schuller’s vision of an all-inclusive global religious body cannot happen without mysticism. It is in fact the vehicle through which Schuller’s dream will occur. He discloses a little more of this vision in his book, My Journey:
I met once more with the Grand Mufti (a Muslim), truly one of the great Christ-honoring leaders of faith…. I’m dreaming a bold impossible dream: that positive-thinking believers in God will rise above the illusions that our sectarian religions have imposed on the world, and that leaders of the major faiths will rise above doctrinal idiosyncrasies, choosing not to focus on disagreements, but rather to transcend divisive dogmas to work together to bring peace and prosperity and hope to the world. (p. 502).
In order for this “bold impossible dream” to occur, change agents such as Schuller and McManus realize that Christianity needs to be redefined. Thus, the term rethink. McManus has believed this for some time. In an interview, he stated:
My goal is to destroy Christianity as a world religion and be a recatalyst for the movement of Jesus Christ…. Some people are upset with me because it sounds like I’m anti-Christian. I think they might be right!(1)
Our second article (August 2008) was titled ““Ravi Zacharias Joins Robert Schuller for Rethink 2009” when it became known that evangelical leader Ravi Zacharias was going to be one of the speakers at Schuller’s 2009 Rethink. Zacharias is not without his own contemplative leanings. Ravi Zacharias International Ministry website carries numerous articles (some by Zacharias), which speak favorably of Catholic mystic Henri Nouwen, Catholic monk and mystic, Thomas Merton, and contemplative Richard Foster. A summary statement on Zacharias’ website says they are “aimed at reaching into the culture with words of challenge, words of truth, and words of hope.” Unfortunately, by pointing people to Nouwen, Merton, and Foster, the message of truth and hope will be compromised with mysticism and spiritual danger.
In a 2001 article titled “September 11, 2001: Was God Present or Absent?” written by Zacharias, he spoke of Henri Nouwen:
But this is where we break free from the entanglements and distractions to find the hand of God. Communion with God takes place in our solitariness before it takes effect in community. Henri Nouwen captured this profound truth: “In solitude we can unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discern in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. Through that solitude He leads us to communion.”In other words, it is not our victories that make us who we are; it is His divine presence that carries us through both victory and defeat, and defines us.
Does Zacharias know what Nouwen meant by “the center of our own self”? Does he know that Nouwen was referring to the Higher Self in which divinity dwells (in all humans). And this “communion” reached with solitude is the altered state that is produced through contemplative prayer. Ray Yungen explains a little about Nouwen’s spirituality:
Nouwen’s endorsement of a book by Hindu spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran, teaching mantra meditation, further illustrates his universalistic sympathies. On the back cover, Nouwen stated, “This book has helped me a great deal (from p. 62, ATOD, from Meditation, back cover). Nouwen also wrote the foreword to a book that mixes Christianity with Hindu spirituality, in which he says:
[T]he author shows a wonderful openness to the gifts of Buddhism, Hinduism and Moslem religion. He discovers their great wisdom for the spiritual life of the Christian … Ryan [the author] went to India to learn from spiritual traditions other than his own. He brought home many treasures and offers them to us in the book.(Disciplines for Christian Living, Ryan, pp. 2-3)
Nouwen apparently took these approaches seriously himself. In his book, The Way of the Heart, he advised his readers:
The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart … This way of
simple prayer … opens us to God’s active presence.(p. 81, The Way of the Heart, 1991)But what God’s “active presence” taught him, unfortunately, stood more in line with classic Hinduism than classic evangelical Christianity. He wrote:
Prayer is “soul work” because our souls are those sacred centers where all is one … It is in the heart of God that we can come to the full realization of the unity of all that is. (Bread for the Journey, 1997, 1/15 & 11/16)
It is critical to note here that Nouwen did not say all Christians are one; he said “all is one,” which is the fundamental panentheistic concept of God–the God in everything unites everything. Like Thomas Merton, it was Nouwen’s intent to make mystical prayer a pervasive paradigm within all traditions of Christianity. He felt the evangelical church had many admirable qualities but lacked one vital one: mysticism. He sought to remedy this by imploring, “It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.”
It is unsure at this time why Crystal Cathedral requested that Rethink 2009 be cancelled, but it looks like Ravi Zacharias and other evangelical figures will have to wait until 2010 to share a platform with Robert Schuller. In the meantime, Dan Kimball (who was a speaker with McManus at Rethink 2008 and was scheduled for 2009) will be joining McManus and other emerging leaders to form a new emerging network/alliance. One can only wonder if this new network will have any affinity with their co-comrade Robert Schuller and his universal, global dream to bring all religions together.
Related News:
Kimball and McManus Form New Network – From the Frying Pan into the Fire
Rethinking Robert Schuller by Warren Smith
