Tuesday, in an article in the Detroit News, something happened that doesn’t happen every day. In fact, it may never have happened before. The headline read, “Faith leaders deserve a shot at creating peace on earth.” The author of the article was defending Rick Warren – well that’s not too unusual – many Christian leaders, pastors and teachers have done that consistently these past four years. That would hardly be newsworthy. But this article was written by someone who does not defend conservative Christians. On the contrary, she stands for beliefs that are opposed to biblical Christianity. Her name is Marianne Williamson.
Many of you may be familiar with her, but for those who are not, Williamson is a major figure in the New Age movement. She is currently part of a growing effort in Washington DC to convince the US government to open a Department of Peace. Respected figures like Walter Cronkite work with Marianne Williamson in this effort, and New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard is a co-visionary of Williamson’s peace plan.
Williamson became popular, largely through the Oprah show, when Williamson wrote a book, Return to Love, (based on the New Age classic A Course in Miracles), and Oprah brought Williamson onto her show — the book became an overnight success. A Course in Miracles could be referred to as the New Ager’s bible. Former New Age follower Warren Smith wrote about Williamson in his book, Reinventing Jesus Christ :
Over the past decade, Williamson has continued to champion A Course in Miracles in the media and in her public appearances around the country. A more recent book, Healing the Soul of America, has enabled Williamson and the Course to make a subtle transition into the political arena. Hoping to inspire a “new gospel” approach to national and world problems, Williamson, along with bestselling Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch, cofounded The Global Renaissance Alliance.[Now called the Peace Alliance.] (from chapter 1)
What is so significant about Williamson’s recent defense of Rick Warren is how she ties meditation into the scope of the global peace plan, and as we have laid out over and over in the books we have published and the articles we have written here at Lighthouse Trails, Rick Warren is a promoter of Eastern style meditation (i.e., contemplative prayer). And of all people to recognize this, Marianne Williamson did! Christian leaders haven’t, but a New Age leader has. Williamson, in defending Warren’s trip to Syria says:
Terrorism is a spiritual darkness; it is a mass psychosis. People who know how to lead groups in prayer and collective meditations, people who have expertise in healing hearts and minds and relationships, people who know about dismantling insane behavioral patterns — such as these have at least as much to offer in response to terrorism, as do people who know how to drop bombs.
In referring to “collective meditations” just what exactly does Williamson mean, and what role will meditation play in bringing about global peace? Smith explains:
Williamson’s discussion of peace, the “new gospel” teaches that peace can only come through the “Atonement” (at-one-ment). This is described on page 175 of the Course Text: “Yet you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement is the way to peace.” After introducing this idea of “atoning” Williamson described how she and others are gathering together in small “cell” groups (“cells of peace”) to pray for world peace. Williamson explained that as people join their hearts together through meditation and prayer, they begin to create a loving “energy field” that counters the hate and negativity being generated by the world. She explained that as the number of people consciously gathering together to create peace increases, so the strength of the “forcefield” will proportionately increase. She said that prayer becomes a “conduit for miracles” as the “forcefield” grows in strength, and as the love generated from it is “harnessed” and purposefully directed for the “good” of the world. (Reinventing Jesus Christ, chapter 7)
Rick Warren also believes in meditation. He stated that clearly in his first book (Purpose Driven Church) many years ago, when he said that the Spiritual Formation movement was a vital wake up call to the church. He revealed what he meant by “Spiritual Formation” when he named Richard Foster and Dallas Willard as key figures in the movement. Ray Yungen elaborates:
I realize there are serious ramifications regarding the issues discussed here. What I am saying is that Rick Warren is part of the effort to bring contemplative prayer into mainstream Christianity…. He sees Willard as being on the same level as Foster in the spiritual formation movement (i.e., contemplative prayer movement). In Willard’s book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, the title of which sounds very close to Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline, Willard quotes Merton and Nouwen and extols the practice of the silence:
In silence we close off our souls from “sounds,” whether those sounds be noise, music, or words…. Many people have never experienced silence and do not even know that they do not know what it is.
Like Foster, Willard sees this spiritual discipline as the most powerful way to commune with God. He maintains: “It is a powerful and essential discipline. Only silence will allow us life-transforming concentration upon God.”(A Time of Departing, 2nd ed)
The “transformation” that Foster and Willard speak of takes place through meditation. That’s precisely what Marianne Williamson is saying! Listen:
Meditation is time spent with God in silence and quiet listening. It is the time during which the Holy Spirit has a chance to enter into our minds and perform His divine alchemy. (Williamson, Return to Love)
Is Williamson speaking about the Holy Spirit of the Bible, the third part of the
Godhead? According to Williamson, the answer to that is absolutely not! She believes in the cosmic christ or christ consciousness, which is not the Christ of Christianity:
Even if he takes another name, even if he takes another face, He [Jesus] is in essence the truth of who we are. Our joined lives form the mystical body of Christ.
Jesus and other enlightened masters are our evolutionary elder brothers. (The concept of a divine, or “Christ” mind, is the idea that, at our core, we are not just identical, but actually the same being.
“There is only one begotten Son” doesn’t mean that someone else was it, and we’re not. It means we’re all it. There’s only one of us here.
You and I have the Christ-mind in us as much as Jesus does.(Quotes taken from Reinventing Jesus Christ, citing Return to Love)
Make no mistake about it, Marianne Williamson is not referring to the biblical Jesus Christ, and she will be the first to say so. But she does resonate with Rick Warren, and we propose to you that it is because he is a promoter of mystical meditation, which according to New Age thought is the conduit to bring about a global awakening (or a new reformation as some New Agers call it).
In her Detroit News article, she exhorts Warren: “Don’t go quiet, Rick. If anything, push back — and do not back down.” I think Williamson can rest assured that Rick Warren will not back down. He has already made it clear that he will do “whatever it takes” to bring about global peace through a new reformation, and there is no doubt about it, it will be a reformation through spiritual formation.
For those believers who are reading this, and have put two and two together, you realize the significance of what is taking place. Barbara Marx Hubbard said that the Book of Revelation scenario of a disastrous Armageddon does not have to happen, if a critical mass of people come together. Rick Warren also believes that a critical mass is necessary. At the recent AIDS conference in Canada, Warren said he is “pressing for a ‘coalition of civility,’ where diverse groups can disagree without being disagreeable or denouncing one another, and seek unity without requiring uniformity in order to reach critical mass.”
Yungen, when referring to a time when all the people of the world will come together in unity, through meditation, says:
Through Rick Warren, Richard Foster’s vision [of unity through meditation or contemplative prayer] could enter fully into mainstream evangelicalism both in North America and around the world; and with the unprecedented following and support Warren has gained, we could be heading towards a crisis in the church that might possibly lead to the falling away that the Apostle Paul warns about…. As you decide for yourself whether Rick Warren’s embrace of the contemplative has any consequential significance at all, remember the words of Sue Monk Kidd [who endorsed Dallas Willard’s book, Spirit of the Disciplines and has herself become a member of Williamson’s religion] where she echoes the very essence of Thomas Merton in the conclusions she arrived at:
I am speaking of recognizing the hidden truth that we are one with all people. We are part of them and they are part of us … When we encounter another person, … we should walk as if we were upon holy ground. We should respond as if God dwells there. (A Time of Departing, 2nd ed.)
Let us remember the exhortation of the apostle Paul during these sober and serious times in which we live:
I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. II Timothy 4:1-5
For More Information:
A Time of Departing (to learn about contemplative spirituality and how Rick Warren and other Christian leaders are embracing it)
The New Gospel Campaign for Peace (update of Reinventing Jesus Christ)
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