Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts is a non-denominational college founded in 1889 to train Protestant missionaries. It has approximately 2000 students from 40 states and 23 countries. Unfortunately, the school has now been added to a growing list of Christian colleges that incorporate contemplative spirituality into their schools’ programs and students’ lives.
In the case of Gordon College, the school has integrated contemplative/emerging spirituality into the very heart of its mission in a number of different ways. This article will examine of few of those ways so that those considering attending Gordon College this coming fall will have some vital facts before them.
On the Gordon College website, Gordon’s chapel dean, Dr. Greg Carmer, tells how the chapel staff at Gordon was trying to decide which book they would hand out to each Student Ministry leader for summer study. Carmer said they had considered Shane Claiborne’s book, Irresistible Revolution and Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change but in the end they chose Tony Campolo’s book, The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice. Carmer states:
As the title implies, this text is concerned with the relation between intimate communion with God and right-relations with others. “[B]eing ‘fully devoted followers of Christ” . . . writes Campolo, “involves commitment to what Jesus was committed to: maintaining a deep, mystical connection to God that empowered him to be compassionately connected to others.” (p. 15)
Carmer purchased 80 copies of Campolo’s book (co-written with Mary Albert Darling) in order to help these ministry leaders have more intimacy with God and at the same time learn to serve God. However, Campolo’s book is a treatise for contemplative mystical spirituality and clearly advocates the use of mystical prayer practices such as centering prayer and lectio divina. Campolo admitted in his other book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, that he “came to Christ” through mysticism.1 On page 26 of that book, he states:
In my case intimacy with Christ has developed gradually over the years, primarily through what Catholic mystics call “centering prayer.” Each morning, as soon as I wake up, I take time–sometimes as much as a half hour–to center myself on Jesus. I say his name over and over again to drive back the 101 things that begin to clutter up my mind the minute I open my eyes. Jesus is my mantra, as some would say.
The book that Gordon College is using for their Student Ministry leaders The God of Intimacy and Action is of the same caliber as Letters to a Young Evangelical, pointing readers to eastern-style meditation practices. Campolo is no stranger to Gordon. In 2000, he spoke at Gordon’s graduation services.
Campolo’s contemplative spirituality isn’t the extent of Gordon’s move toward the contemplative approach. Gordon College president R. Judson Carlberg has a recommended list of books (books he wishes “Every Gordon Student Would Read”) in which he includes a book by Henri Nouwen.2 This certainly doesn’t mean Carlberg is a contemplative; however, at the very least it means he is not aware of the very mystical spirituality that is being introduced to his Student Ministry leaders through Campolo. Nouwen was a mystic proponent who eventually absorbed Thomas Merton’s universalistic and panentheistic views of God. Interestingly, on Dr. Carlberg’s wife’s college page, there is mention that in May 2008 Rick Warren and his wife Kay took part in Gordon’s commencement program.3 Both Rick and Kay Warren are advocates of Henri Nouwen (see A Time of Departing, ch. 8).
“Gordon in Lynn,” a Gordon College program that is an “intensive leadership development opportunity for those students wishing to dig deeper into urban engagement and community development” is not only introducing students to contemplatives such as Nouwen, Thomas Merton, and Richard Foster, but is bringing in emerging authors as well. Saying that these authors “serve to inspire and motivate” the students, Gordon is pointing students to people like substitutionary-atonement denier, Walter Wink, as well as emerging church figure Shane Claiborne and a number of other emerging-type authors and activists. The “Gordon in Lynn” program also points participating students to Jim Wallis’ SoJourner’s magazine and the “New Monasticism.” Students in the “Gordon in Lynn” program may not understand the seriousness of the spirituality being represented here because this is cloaked by a “missional” focus (helping the poor and needy, etc). But they should be reminded about the Scripture that says Satan’s ministers can come as ministers of righteousness. While doing good works and helping the needy is important, embracing a mystical, emerging spirituality is detrimental.
Gordon’s summer recreation program will be including Relaxation Yoga this summer in the Bennett Center. The explanation for the class states:
TouchStone YOGA is a Christian YOGA class that consists of an integration of the ancient discipline of Hatha YOGA– stretching, Asana practice–relaxation with Christ centered meditation and prayer.4
Out of India discusses Yoga, including Hatha Yoga:
Yoga means “union,” referring to the union of the individual’s consciousness with the cosmic consciousness and is based on “disciplines and exercises” that unite “individual and cosmic consciousness … [t]here are many different yoga traditions and practices, which in essence have the same goal: the union with the divine.”
Through Hatha Yoga’s physical exercises, one gains control over the body, enabling one to meditate more intensely, and to open pathways in the spine for the flow of Kundalini energy.
Yoga uses a set of techniques to raise the coiled Kundalini energy through the seven chakras. The realization of being one with the universe, and thus, of being divine, comes as the result of the Kundalini serpent power, recognized as psychic energy, traveling up the spine through the chakras…. It is important to understand that the results of Yoga are real: the exercises and breathing techniques actually do release an energy and bring a change in consciousness. (Out of India, p. 186).
The fact that Gordon is presenting Yoga classes on their campus is further indication that the school is heading into very spiritually-troubled waters. Lighthouse Trails believes there is no such thing as “christ centered” Yoga.
According to a 2008 article (originally published in Gordon’s magazine, the Pilot), Gordon College has partnered with a monastery in Italy so that Gordon art majors can study traditional and Catholic art traditions. Gordon’s website says that the “intent of the program”–Gordon in Orvieto–“is to foster in our students an attitude of responsive looking and listening for signs of new life in the traditions inhabited by artists and poets, saints and mystics, of the past, especially those of pre-modern Europe in Italy.” In a “Gordon in Orvieto” handbook, it talks about gaining spiritual insight from contemporary mystics Richard Rohr, Kathleen Norris (The Cloistered Walk) and Henri Nouwen. This puts Gordon students right smack in the center of contemplative mysticism. These mystics they will turn to (Nouwen, Norris, and Rohr) advocate mantra-style meditation and the belief that God is in everything (panentheism). Richard Rohr, a favorite of Death by Church author Mike Erre, wrote the foreword to a 2007 book called How Big is Your God? by Jesuit priest (from India) Paul Coutinho. In Coutinho’s book, he describes an interspiritual community where people of all religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity) worship the same God.
The signs that Gordon College is becoming an emerging contemplative school are ample. In their East-West Connection program, they identify Richard Foster (and his monumental book, Celebration of Discipline) as saying the world is in a “massive shift in the tectonic plates of history,” a shift toward Asia as the rising world culture. Foster, more than most, understands this shift that is taking place. We believe the shift Foster is referring to also includes the shift toward the mystical (which is overtaking so much of our society today).5 It is tragic to think how Gordon College began as a ministry to missionaries but has become a product of the emerging contemplative church and is more in tune with the new missiology that does not present the true Gospel than with biblical Christianity that offers salvation through Jesus Christ alone.
While there are probably professors and staff at Gordon who are completely unaware that this shift is taking place at their school, equally there are those who are leaning toward or embracing contemplative spirituality at Gordon. For instance, on the Gordon College website, it states that Gordon Professor of Philosophy, Dr. David Aiken has been significantly influenced by three mystics: Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila (who levitated when induced by mysticism – see Castles in the Sand) and John of the Cross (believed that God is in all things. 6
For those potential students who are looking for solid, Bible-based schools, it may be best to steer clear of Gordon College and look elsewhere for your educational needs.
