Corporate Relisious Experiences

‘Corporate religious experiences. such as the Toronto Blessing, tell us nothing about God ' discuss

Corporate religious experiences are experiences seen by a body of people. They are not just experienced by one person, but by a collective group of people who all say they experienced some supernatural event similar to one another. However to discover what a real corporate religious experience is, it is important to delve into the meaning of what a religious experience itself actually is. In itself religious experience has a variety of definitions, one of such is:

‘A religious experience is a non-empirical occurrence, sometimes perceived as supernatural. A religious experience can be described as a ‘mental event ' which is undergone by an individual, and of which that person is aware. Such an experience can be spontaneous, or it ay be brought about as a result of intensive training and self discipline. '

The religious experience argument is a classic a posteriori argument, which seeks to establish of the objective existence of the Divine. The argument from the religious experience starts from the premises that all our knowledge of the world relies upon existence of God. As a result of this assumption, religious experiences should be given the same basic validity as other sorts of experiences. Therefore, because of this people claiming to have experiences of God 's angels and miracles should be believed, as Richard Swinburne later discusses. The are doubts however, as William James has claimed, in The Varieties of Religious Experience that some religious experiences are self-induced either by drugs or drunkenness, they are essentially private and individualistic, therefore unable to be truly revealed in a way that others may understand. Richard Swinburne, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, claims that a believer 's explanation of a religious experience is the most straight forward claim, his main argument is that if the person who makes the claim is trustworthy in other areas of life, and there is no suspicious circumstances, then that is a good reason for taking the person 's religious experience seriously. To take Swinburne 's argument as valid, we must therefore consider what this leads to tell us about God. For example, if an individual claims that a particular experience, such as God telling someone that they are ill and must receive help, then the individual goes to receive help, then the individual goes to receive this help and upon discovers he or she has a brain tumour. This person would thus be believed that God had enlightened him upon this and therefore existed, however to others, they may just claim that the fact that a brain tumour was discovered could also prove that the person was not coherent enough to be able to know whether it really happened or was just a hallucination, symptom of the tumour. Swimburne however would still thus say that had the person proved trustworthy in the past then his experience should be taken as genuine. Another argument however seems to contradict Swinburne 's viewpoint, as many social science studies and explanations of religious awakenings point to religious experience 's association with deprivation and suffering in both traditional and modern societies.

Following a disaster…people feel more vulnerable, confused and full of anxiety, and they turn to millennial beliefs in order to account for the otherwise meaningless events. The disaster is given meaning.. so that the deepest despair gives way to hope '

To focus on corporate religious experiences is to look at the Toronto Blessing, for example. As discussed earlier, corporate religious experiences are experiences, experienced by a body of people. The Toronto Blessing is no such exception. Toronto Blessing is a term used to describe the phenomena that began in January 1994, at Toronto Airport Christina Vineyard Fellowship. (TACF) Participants in these conferences and meetings have reported healings, incidents of the greater awareness of God, and personal transformations. Worshippers have exhibited unusual behaviours, which they attribute to an encounter with God. Most commonly people claim to have hysterical laughter and speaking in tongues. Other less common behaviours include manifestations that resembled roaring like lions and barking like dogs. At one time the TACF website described it thus:

‘The Toronto Blessing is a transferable anointing. In the most visible form it overcomes worshippers with outbreaks of laughter, weeping, groaning, shaking, falling, ‘drunkenness ' and even behaviours that have been described as ‘a cross between a jungle and a farmyard '.

The Blessing has proved immensely popular and in recent years, many Christian travellers have come to the TACF to experience it for themselves. Some estimates are as high as 300,000 visitors. The experience usually deeply affects people and they are often said to leave with a renewed zeal for their faith and an overwhelming desire to spread the message. Some visitors have been so affected by the experience that they have towns, sometimes radically transforming the way that they are conducted in their own churches. Areas that have become known for Toronto Blessing revivals worldwide include Peninsula and Florida in America and Bath in England. However this practice is hotly debated in Christian journals. The fact that it can seemingly overtake people into a ‘fit ' letting it spread on is another worrying factor. However other Christians disagree and believe it to be a message from God as the Reverend Sandy Millar suggests, ‘These manifestations are restoring us to the intimacy with God for which we cried out when we first became Christians." Witnesses have also been said to have said to suggest, "Jesus Christ became real to me." Explains a member of the congregation of St Stephen 's, Brentwood. He remains an awesome and holy God. He became a reality in my life. I could not pass him by, because his presence was certainty in my life then, and could not be ignored. It remains that way today. ' The Church of England itself refuses to make a comment on these events but however the chairman of the Doctrine Commission (and the then Bishop of Newcastle), Reverend Alec Graham, said in the 1994 that ‘one has to ask the traditional questions" of the manifestations: "Do they build up the Church? Do they show the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace and all that? Are they edifying and up-building, or selfish and destructive?" In the churches opinion the blessing does nothing of the sort, its lack of evidence seems to only condemn, their previous belief in God, so to have these revelations is an embarrassment.
In terms of what the Toronto Blessing actually tells us about God, it can be hotly debated. Believers of the movement and those who have actually experienced it, would say it was a direct contact of God, a proof of a revival or renewal of God 's true hope, where the Holy Spirit 's manifest presence is tangible and highly valued. In this many see a renewal of the actual nature of "church", a return to core principles. Neutral observers point out this phenomenon is not at all new. Nor is the resistance to the movement by the average churchgoer who may be unfamiliar with religious experience. The recurrent resistance to these experiences by conventional organized religion was summarized by Sigmund Freud in his observation that (organized) "Religion is a (psychological) defense against the religious experience". To criticize the movement is to say that it has nothing to do with God, just because of the sheer coincidence that such a phenomenon has occurred to many people does by no means immediately suggest a proof of God, nor does it really tell us anything. What can believers actually get from what they experienced? Hysterical laughter or other weird behaviours seem to just indicate a overtaking of the soul or temporary paranoia, which could be explained by psychology. The fact that one person goes to the fellowship and claims an experience of abnormality, can also influence others to claim the same thing, it would act as a passing on of the message, which by their knowledge would have made more of a sheer force if claimed by many. The other point to make is that, many of whom go there are already claim believers in God himself, however who lack fulfilment, so for them to go there and claim to have experienced nothing would be abnormal, as their main objective would be to have experienced God. Another criticism is how do we know for sure that the supernatural occurrence in the Toronto Blessing is actually God, this doesn 't necessarily mean that by dismissing God we are automatically stating that the whole occurrence of the Toronto Blessing is a coincidence, far from it, rather that it is an occurrence that happens because of the will of those involved to experience such an event, it is psychological, and that is what promotes the whole idea of it. So even with the criticisms and observations, the Toronto Blessing still fails to actually reveal God, in any way shape or form, except it just seems to claim that such weird claims are as a result of God 's intervention, but this even is not entirely proved. Why does this have to be the result of God? It could be any number of things, as claimed by many it could be Satan? The religious experiences are merely an attempt at proving the existence of God; however they fail to arrive at the critical point of proving it was actually God 's work. The knowledge that it supposedly grants us with, really grants us no better of than before. The knowledge that it may give us about God if we believed the claim is that God is wanting to reach out to his people, that he is an interacting and a loving God. But this also begs the question as to why be it that God chose to reach out to people at that particular church and for what reason? But Toronto Blessing is not the only corporate religious experience claimed, early in the nineteenth century, and estimated 70,000 people saw a Miracle of the Sun, in Portugal near Fatima. The miracle was attributed by believers to Our Lady of Fatima, an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three young shepherd children in 1917, as having been predicted in advance on the 13th July, 19th August and 13th September 1917. The children reported that the Lady had promised them that at midday on the 13th October in the Cova da Iria the Lady would reveal her identity to the children and perform a miracle, "so that all may believe, in her and God himself." According to many witness statements, after a downfall of rain, the clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disk in the sky. It was said to be significantly less bright than normal, and cast multicoloured lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was reported to have careened towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening some of those present who thought it meant the end of the world. Witnesses reported that the ground and their previously wet clothes became completely dry. According to witness reports, the miracle of the sun lasted approximately ten minutes. The three shepherd children, in addition to reporting seeing the actions of the sun that day, also reported seeing a panorama of visions, including those of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of Saint Joseph blessing the people. To look at this perceptively is to see that no scientific accounts existed of any unusual solar of astronomic activity during the time the sun was reported to have "danced", and there are no witness reports of any unusual solar phenomenon further than forty miles out from Cova da Iria. So there is suspicion as to whether the event actually occurred. It has been alleged that the fact that an unspecified "miracle" had been predicted in advance, the abrupt beginning and end of the alleged miracle of the sun, the varied nature of the observers, the sheer numbers of people present, and the lack of any causative factor, all reasonably lead to the conclusion of a mass hallucination. Many researchers have looked into the idea of the miracle, one such man is Kevin McClure who claimed that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the sun, a similar phenomena had been reported in the weeks leading up to the miracle. On this basis he believes that the crowd saw what it wanted to see. Kevin McClure stated that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any of the research he had done in the previous ten years. Many years after the events in question, Stanley L. Jaki, a Benedictine priest and author of a number of books attempting to reconcile faith, science and Catholicism , he proposed a unique theory about the supposed corporate experience. Jaki believes that the event was natural and meteorological in nature, but that the fact the event occurred at the exact time predicted was a miracle. The report was even officially accepted as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church. But to look at what the event actually tells us about God, is to take the miracle as truth. Therefore many believers would see the event as a message from the God, of our Lady of Fatima, in order to get more people to believe in the Christian faith, the better state of humanity, theoretically, this is what the Christians who witnessed the event would have believed was its purpose. But in other ways it could just have been that of a scientific occurrence of that time, or even a mass hallucination, in which case it fails to tell us anything about God. To think about both these religious experiences and see as to what they actually tell us about God is to first take the premise and see whether that is actually true, only then can you see what it may or may not tell us about God. As we can 't know, without the validation of the experience, and the only validation that we can get as neutral observers is through belief. If this belief is present then one can look at the experience in ways of what God may actually be telling us. In conclusion the case of the Toronto Blessing, the hysterical laughter and other such weird behaviour can be explained as acts with God as Howard Browne , a main proponent and wide supporter of the Toronto Blessing argues that the Bible mentions the presence of "joy" in the Holy Spirit manifestations. He says that this "joy" or "laughter" emanates from believers who are in filled with the Spirit. But contrary to that also is that as believer such weird behaviour and sudden renewal of faith can only be of Gods doing, as the feeling tells us of Gods wish for a revival of faith for the entire Christian movement. However such abnormal acts like that of hysterical laughter pose a question as to why would God wish this to be the effect or way in which he communicated with the believers in God, as Jesus himself condemns laughter, with an inappropriate attitude , indeed you would have thought that one needs an appropriate attitude when it comes to God. Secondly, even if God did include "holy laughter" manifestations in the outpouring of the Spirit, it still does not mean that He is involved in the ones that we are seeing today. In other words, if we are to put aside constant monitoring and awaiting of God, then we would not know if the manifestations we do see are authentic. Christians have still ignored God 's Word which challenges us and mandates us to examine all things and hold fast to that which is good. We cannot possibly be held in contempt of judging experiences based on God 's own Word like in the Miracle of the Sun. In fact, it is only when the experience is conceptually validated for all that we can in sincerity say what an experience tells us about God.

Bibliography

Books o Philosophy of Religion for A level, OCR edition, nelson thornes Anne Jordan, Neil Lockyer, Edwin Tate (2004) o Groundwork of Philosophy of Religion, David A. Palin, Epworth, (1986) o The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Fount, (1977) o No laughing Matter: Christianity in the Light of the "Toronto Blessing", Shandon L. Guthrie o God and the Sun at Fatima, Jaki, Stanley L. Real View Books, (1999) o The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure Aquarian Press, (1983) o The Psychology of Religious behaviour, belief, and experience, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Michael Argyle, Routledge, (1997) o Sharot, S, Comparative studies in Society and History, Jewish millenarianism, (1980) o The Bible, New Testament o No laughing Matter: Christianity in the Light of the "Toronto Blessing", Shandon L. Guthrie

Internet o www.wikipedia.org o www.christianchurchtimes.com

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Bibliography: Books o Philosophy of Religion for A level, OCR edition, nelson thornes Anne Jordan, Neil Lockyer, Edwin Tate (2004) o Groundwork of Philosophy of Religion, David A. Palin, Epworth, (1986) o The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Fount, (1977) o The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure Aquarian Press, (1983) o The Psychology of Religious behaviour, belief, and experience, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Michael Argyle, Routledge, (1997) o Sharot, S, Comparative studies in Society and History, Jewish millenarianism, (1980) o The Bible, New Testament