Leonard Sweet, Rick Warren, and the New Age

THE ACCUSATION

Lighthouse Trails Research Project: "The 2007 Catalyst Conference will be taking place this October, and long-time colleagues Rick Warren and New Age sympathizer Leonard Sweet will be speakers. . . . And even though Leonard Sweet has been an avid promoter of New Age ideas for a long time, Warren has shown continued support for him. In 1995, the two did an audio series called The Tides of Change. In the audio, they spoke of 'new frontiers,' 'a new spirituality,' and 'waves of change.' In more recent days, with Rick Warren's New Reformation and Global Peace Plan, those 'new frontiers' have begun to come to the light. A few years prior to The Tides of Change series, Sweet wrote a book called Quantum Spirituality. This book reveals the nature of Sweet's spiritual affinities as he talks about "christ-consciousness" and a "New Light" movement" (Rick Warren and Leonard Sweet Together Again).


A BRIEF ANALYSIS

Leonard Sweet is no New Ager. Nor is he a post-modernist in the sense that Christians would see post-modernism (i.e., that there exists no objective truth to be known). Sweet made his personal faith very clear in an interview with secularpostmodern.org (part 1 and part 2):

QUESTION: "In your interview with Relevant Magazine you said you were very conservative about "some things." In what ways are you postmodern? And in what ways are you not?"

SWEET: "I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. I believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God. I believe in the virgin birth, literal resurrection, all of that. Theologically, my content is very conservative. But when it comes to how one communicates that content and what containers one uses to communicate that content, I'm very open. I want the church to be innovative, radical and indigenous to the culture. (Sometimes it scandalizes people how conservative I am in my theology.)"

Doctrinally/theologically, Leonard Sweet is about as Christian as anyone can get. So why have so many "discernment" ministries and assorted Christians charged him with being a New Ager? I believe it is because Sweet communicates with unconventional language. When he shares his thoughts/ideas, either in print or verbally, he often:
1) raises abstract thoughts and musings;

2) challenges established ways of discussing biblical truths;

3) does not stick to Christian-speak with which Christians are comfortable;

4) creates his own words/definitions for what he is trying to say;

5) uses terminology that is similar to the kind used in the New Age;

6) sometimes makes observations based on the observations made by non-Christians;

7) resorts to highly technical/scientific language (some of which resembles New Age lingo); and

8) employs scientific concepts/theories.

In my opinion, most of the people calling Leonard Sweet a New Ager simply cannot sift their way through his very difficult, highly unfamiliar, and non-traditional remarks. They cannot understand what he is saying because it is extraordinarily complex, in some respects like writings of various philosophers who have given the world lengthy dissertations that very few of us, truth be told, enjoy reading. Moreover, his concepts are far beyond their own personal experiences or musings to feel comfortable with what he is discussing. And, unfortunately, such individuals are unwilling to go beyond where they are—intellectually, experientially, or spiritually.

These critics who are attacking Leonard Sweet and calling him a New Ager are the same critics who cannot even understand Rick Warren when he explains his P.E.A.C.E. Plan (which is a fairly simply concept). They also are the same critics who mistakenly think the Emerging Church is a centralized, monolithic, united front of churches/people that all teach/believe the same thing, when in reality, the Emerging Church is a highly diverse set of loosely-connected churches/individuals that often differ on numerous issues. If such critics cannot even comprehend these two relatively simple issues, one can only imagine how difficult it is going to be for them to grasp sentences like these from Leonard Sweet's Quantum Spirituality:
I am not so much sticking my bead into the wisps and vapors of postmodern science as I am reaching in and pulling out conceptual metaphors, especially those released by nonmechanistic physics, and joining them to interdisciplinary dilations on divinity.

Quantum spirituality may not be news to those in university and multiversity academispheres struggling with the babelian confusion of a complete breakdown in agreements about holistic, sacramental visions of the uni-verse.

What follow are my uncertain attempts at blowing a trumpet for a New Light apologetic, which plays some new notes from an ancient theological score of cosmic holism, which harmonizes the theological and historical basso continuo with the biological and social sciences.

I find dimensional language preferable to hierarchical language or stratification theory.

Such comments would be especially hard to digest for someone already convinced that; a) Rick Warren is a New Age deceiver; and b) anyone with whom Warren associates is a New Age deceiver. It seems too terribly obvious to these people that Warren and Sweet are in cahoots to spread unbiblical, New Age, end-times, demonic lies set to infiltrate the church and bring about the great falling away before the rise of the Antichrist.
A SUMMARY OF SWEET

As already noted, Leonard Sweet is a Christian. More significantly, he is a Christian thinker—and a very, very, very deep one at that. His interest is in blending what we have learned from science with what we have learned from the Bible. And by doing so, he hopes to help Christianity/Christians become more relevant in the eyes of a world that is strikingly different than it was just a half century ago. Sweet is attempting to bring biblical Christianity to more people throughout the world by; a) using language more applicable in our century; and b) challenging old ways of spreading the Gospel. As sweet explains in the very first sentence of his Quantum Spirituality (QS), "We are called to be in the world. Not of it. But not out of it, either."

Sweet feels that we Christians have been out of the world for far too long—huddled/hiding together in the pews of churches, preaching to the choir, and blaring out the same old sermons, while the entire world has been speeding past us and rushing headlong into a Christ-less eternity. Sweet wants to change this by updating how Christians interact with each other and the world, while making sure we do not lose our identity. As he writes, "We must live the historical moment we are in without letting that moment explain us. Christianity must bring to every culture an indigenous faith that is true to its heritage without Christianity's becoming a culture faith." He adds, "The Christian mind is failing to comprehend the times, our times" (QS, p. 1).

This has brought Sweet to a place where he has created what he calls his New Light apologetic. It does sound rather New Age on the surface. But a use of similar terms does not always suggest that a similar meaning is present. So what exactly does Sweet mean? He writes: "As postmodern science reorients itself toward wholeness, the possibility opens for a fresh synthesis in which religion, science, philosophy, and aesthetics can synergize a hermeneutical vision of spirituality. I am calling the New Light apologetic" (QS, p. 7). In simpler terms, Sweet's hope is to preach Christ/Christianity in a way that would blend "religion, science, philosophy, and aesthetics."

This does not mean that Sweet is willing to change anything doctrinal/theological (see Sweet's above declaration of his doctrinal views). But there are certain aspects of the church, its language, its structure, its way of doing things that should  be changed, indeed, must be changed if the church is going to remain a relevant force throughout the world. As Sweet says: "The challenge of an in-but-not-of faith is knowing when to stand, timeless and transcendent as a rock, and when to surrender and let go, releasing oneself to be swept along by the relevant currents" (QS, p. 2).

Sweet's message is a "recasting of traditional spiritual resources in a postmodern idiom and its conversation with the great intellectual currents of our time" (QS, p. 10). Put another way, he is trying to make Christianity more relevant to all kinds of people, who might otherwise turn a deaf ear to Christianity. Sweet views this approach as thoroughly biblical, saying: "In the same way Jesus entered into the culture of his day in complex ways; in the same way Paul in front of Areopagus presented the gospel to the Athenians by quoting two of their own poet (Epimenides and Aratus of Crete): so the church is to be a dialoguing fellow traveler with culture, exhibiting a critical but not unfriendly relationship to history" (QS, p. 2).

Sweet is merely seeking to put Christianity in terms that might be more acceptable/understandable to persons whom we may meet in our travels throughout the world. Or, to use Sweet's language: "The New Light apologetic chronicled in this book is devoted to enfranchising and energizing Christians to connect their faith with the indigenous historical place in which God has chosen them to live. It aims to jolt Christians into a sense of their own time, out of their fashionable out-of-itness. For the God who exists beyond time is the God who lives, moves, and has being in this time" (QS, p. 1).
SWEET AGAINST THE NEW AGE

What Sweet is advocating is not New Age. It is a new and fascinating attempt by Sweet to make Christianity a much fuller spiritual option in the eyes of the world. In fact, with direct regard to the New Age movement, at the very beginning of his book Quantum Spirituality, Sweet blatantly declares: "The New Light apologetic represents a Christian alternative to the largely Old Light 'New Age' movement" (QS, p. 7). He also states: "There is a yearning for a sacred way of living on the Earth. . . . New Age astrology, ufology, Urantia, channeling, fire-walking, 'Psychic Fairies,' crystals, 'big foot,' Marian visions, and 'Vivation professionals.' It is embarrassingly predictable that the fool's paradise of New Age Pied Pipers has become "the major alternative in America's spiritual life'" (QS, p. 37). Sweet goes so far as to equate the attraction of the New Age movement with the very same attraction that is resident in Satanism! On page 36 of Quantum Spirituality, he writes the following:
New Age piety is arguably the most powerful and widespread force affecting our culture today partly because it 'reprimitivizes' religion, in historian/holistic health pioneer Catherine Albanese's wonderful phrase, opening it up to the personal, the universal, and the mystical.  This is also the appeal of the new theological Orient-ation, the 'new paganism,' and 'satanism.'"

What causes confusion, however, are the places where Sweet uses terminology that sounds New Age. At one point, for instance, he states: "The event of Jesus Christ spells the end of the old age and the beginning of the new age" (QS, p.113). This sentence in isolation—for someone not reading carefully (or for someone reading with an eye toward making Sweet into a New Ager)—might suggest that he is New Age. But in the very next sentence, he explains his remark, writing: "The church then is the 'beachhead of the new creation,' in Beker's words, 'the sign of the new age in the old world that is 'passing away' (1 Cor.7:31)."

He has also sought to draw a distinction between himself and the New Age movement by explaining, "'going with the flow' may be the best advice New Light leaders can offer—provided the flow comes from synchronicity in the Spirit and not in the self or culture, as occurs in so many of the occult-New Age alternatives to Jewish-Christian faith" (QS, p. 239). And in order to once more say in another way that his views have nothing to do with the ideas being advanced in the New Age movement (especially with regard to its teachings about God and our oneness with the divine—also known as undifferentiated wholeness), Sweet explains:
"The danger of evaporating the individual self in the 'wholeness' of the group is one of the key differences between the New Age movement and the New Light movement. Both reject individualism. But New Age posits in its place a cosmic Oneness. . . . Not so New Lights. The Christian tradition has invested heavily in the process of individual identity formation. It never sacrifices the individual for the community. Indeed, individuals often have access to deeper truths than the established authorities and larger communities. But this access is combined with, not opposed to, membership in the community. Community deepens and harmonizes the individuality of each member."

Finally, hoping to show that his views/ideas are not intended to intrude upon the Christian faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3), Sweet declares: "A New Light apologetic must be technologically aware. It must be open to combining spirituality and technology in ways that do not, as the New Age movement's 'push button meditation' audiotapes are prone to do, violate the integrity of the Christian faith" (QS, pp. 131-132).
A CLOSER LOOK

Consider this quote taken from Sweet's Quantum Physics:
"One can be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ without denying the flickers of the sacred in followers of Yahweh, or Kali, or Krishna. A globalization of evangelism 'in connection' with others, and a globally 'in-formed' gospel, is capable of talking across the fence with Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim–people from other so called 'new' religious traditions ('new' only to us)–without assumption of superiority and power. It will take a decolonized theology for Christians to appreciate the genuineness of others' faiths, and to see and celebrate what is good, beautiful, and true in their beliefs without any illusions that down deep we all are believers in the same thing" (QS, p. 130)

There are enough red flag words in here to send any cottage-industry apologist and self-appointed heresy-hunter into paroxysms of panic: "sacred [in other religions," "globalization," "connection," "globally," "genuineness of others' faith." One fundamentalist organization on the Internet interpreted this remark in a way that echoes how numerous reactionary Christians have responded to Sweet's writings (i.e., not very carefully):

"Are we ALL believers in the same thing? I would more accurately call this a deconstruction of theology not decolonization (unless it means the same thing). Sweet then reconstructs- not inhibited to express the idea of inter-spirituality to his readers, because this is what the Emerging church is on board with. Hybrid religion is their answer to the changing church (see The Issue of other Religious Practices, at Let Us Reason). 

Of course, Sweet is not talking at all about creating any hybrid religion. Nor is he saying that all religions are equally valid (i.e., pluralism). Sweet is noting that someone can be a "faithful" disciple of Jesus Christ (as opposed to an unfaithful one) without denying the flickers of the sacred in followers of Yahweh, or Kali, or Krishna. The operative word here is "flickers." Sweet is calling attention to the sparse, momentary, flickerings of truth about God, reality, ethics/morality, or the cosmos that are present in most religions.

It is not New Age/pluralism to say that most religions have some hints of truth and reality in them—i.e., flickers. Even Walter Martin and many other counter-cult apologists have recognized this obvious fact. A lot of religions, for instance, teach that murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, adultery is wrong. Also, some religions accept that there is only one great Creator God. And many, many, many religions talk about a worldwide flood long ago. Even Mormonism teaches that Jesus rose physically/bodily form the grave. These are all "flickers," as Sweet said, of the sacred. It doesn't make each and every religion true. But various religions do have real truths in them, and we can use those "flickers" of the sacred to build a common ground on which to stand, and then while standing on that ground, we can share with our friends greatest sacred truth of all, the Christian Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It also must be pointed out that Sweet is not a post-modernist who denies truth or rational thought—another misconception held by some Christians. But again, to be fair, Sweet often uses terminology that can be confusing. For example, in his interview with secularpostmodernism.org, Sweet said: "I think we've go to rethink our whole understanding of the nature of truth. And I think it's going to be hard on the church - because the church thinks that truth is a set of principles. . . . [A]pologetics of the future aren't a rational apologetics. They're more aesthetic apologetics. It's a whole new apologetics base, and it's not based on a rational, logical presentation of a reasoned gospel."

This remark has been interpreted by various persons to mean that there is no real, ultimate truth, or that we need not think about our faith at all. But nowhere is Sweet saying that we need to utterly separate our rational minds from anything. He is merely saying that we need to move beyond rational thinking. We must integrate what has previously been only "rational" thought (i.e., do's and don'ts, chapter/verses of the Bible) with experiential living—i.e., our "relationship" with Jesus (experiencing a life in intimate fellowship with a living Savior). He apparently feels like many people have lost this and are living a "religion" rather than a relationship. They are living nothing more than a "set of principles."
ANOTHER "NEW AGE" EXAMPLE

Another example of Sweet using terribly difficult/confusing language would be his comment, "Energy-fire experiences take us into ourselves only that we might reach outside of ourselves. . . . Energy-fire ecstasy, more a buzz than a binge, takes us out of ourselves, literally. That is the meaning of the word 'ecstatic.'"

This quote has been interpreted negatively by a host of so-called "discernment" ministries, including Lighthouse Trails Research Project (LTRP), an organization supposedly devoted to discernment. They paint Sweet as one of the worst New Agers to come down the deception trail in a long time. And, since Sweet is associated with Rick Warren, this is just more proof to them that Rick Warren is also a New Ager. Here is the interpretation by LTRP: "Note: This ecstasy Sweet speaks refers to the New Age ecstasy that occurs in an altered state of consciousness" (see Leonard Sweet: Quantum Spirituality and a Christ Consciousness!).

In context, however, what Sweet is talking about has nothing to do with any New Age altered state of consciousness. He begins defining exactly what he means by this ecstasy-related term a full twenty pages prior to where this quote was lifted by LTRP. There he begins using the term to describe a very, very personal, one-on-one encounter with God that radically changes one's life and outlook on life. He writes: "Somewhere on the journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, there must be a Damascus Road. It does not matter whether these ambushing, energy releasing experiences of God are of the intensity of a floodlight, or a flashlight. For each person the experience will be of different candlepower. But it must be genuinely your experience of God, it must have authentic theological content, and it must lead you into the common experience of community" (QS, pp. 76-77). Without having such an encounter, Sweet sees nothing but people who are stuck in a decaying and dying spirituality—and this affects the church in general. He writes: "Too many people are nothing, as our empty pews are shouting to us, because we give them neither an energy-fire experience of Christ nor the Christ of an energy-fire experience" (QS, p. 76).

He expands further on this idea by drawing an illustration/analogy between Christians being filled with fire from on high or from heaven (a living/breathing fire) because it is by the gospel that Christians can experience "'real contact, person-to-person, here below, between a human being and God." (QS, p. 80). To bring his meaning into focus, Sweet then refers to none other than John Wesley (1703-1791), that great stalwart of Christianity, and Wesley's personal encounter with God at Aldersgate (QS, pp. 80-181). Sweet continues, bringing the imagery of fire into the picture via his referencing to yet another great Christian, Blaise Paschal (1623-1662), and expresses a heartfelt wonder over how God can move in and through people and circumstances in a truly miraculous way:
"God still makes cold hearts, and cold planets, warm today, and God provides for their continual warming. God still makes churches that are so cold you could skate down the center aisle, as my mountain ancestors used to say, into churches so warm you could get steam cleaned. God still makes life, not a batch of pureed principles but a flaming 'fire in the night.' On the night of 23 November 1654 the fire of God's redeeming presence burned deeply in the heart of seventeenth-century French scientist/philosopher Blaise Pascal, who gave us such things as the barometer and the adding machine. From that moment on he always kept a handwritten account of his 'fire-in-the-night' experience sewn like a breast pocket into his clothing. An archdefender of reason, Pascal's deep devotion to Christ nevertheless led him to denounce, contra Descartes, rationalism as a disease of reason. Upon his death the scratch of paper he had touched and crinkled countless times but never showed anyone was opened to reveal: From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve. FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. God is fire. People who have been touched from on high by the fires of the Almighty will get fired up. Nehemiah's secret of spiritual health—'The joy of the Lord is your strength' (Neh. 8:1O)—is mirrored in the closing words of Pascal's memorial to that night: 'Joy, joy, joy/Tears of joy.' When people asked Wesley why thousands came to hear him preach, he responded, 'I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.'"

Sweet then takes this idea of fire, and blends it with scientific notions of energy in the body (not New Age, but scientific): "Our bodies are nothing more than the human organization of energy-fire." After a lengthy (and highly complex) dissertation on energy and its properties, he finally comes to the point (which for many people is likely lost on them by that point): i.e., "New Lights connect people to the many positive sources of energy—from the sun to the soul--but especially to the most powerful energy source in the universe: Jesus Christ" (QS, p. 84).

Finally, we come to the LTRP quote. It appears under text sub-heading "God is the I of the Universe" (QS, p. 93). What is so tragic about how the Dombrowskis of LTRP have interpreted this statement is the way that they have utterly missed the fact that Sweet is actually condemning such New Age/modernist teachings as: unbiblical notions love of self, self-awareness, and self-actualization. He also slams the New Age notion that we will be like God, describing that false teaching as the very lie that came from "the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:5)." Sweet adds, "Few evils are more insidious than self-creation and self-sufficiency, producing what used to be called "the energy of the flesh" (QS, p. 94).

In other words, Sweet's painfully complex discourse actually amounts to little more than him saying his ineffably complicated way that: a) we need to experience God in a very Damascus Road type way; b) we need to be "on fire" for God (to borrow a similar term from many Christian churches I have attended); and c) the ultimate source of energy is God, and to be plugged into God is true spiritual energy, whereas it is "the energy of the flesh" to live any other way—especially when it involves just living Christianity like it is a religion, rather than a dynamic, powerful, energized, relationship to God himself.
CONCLUSION

Leonard Sweet is not a New Ager. Indeed, as the above statements show, he is quite critical of the New Age movement. The worst that can be said about Sweet is that he often uses complex and/or confusing language that sends up red flags in the minds of Christians who have a superficial understanding of the New Age (usually so-called discernment ministries dedicated to rooting out New Age influences on the church).

This is where Sweet, in my opinion, must be more careful. (But then again, I am often left wondering if it would even make a difference to some people if he were more careful.) The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Leonard Sweet may just be too intelligent for his own good when it comes to certain situations/issues. And he, unfortunately, assumes that most people will be able to keep up with what he is saying and understand his rather heady musings. That is his primary error, as I see it And as a result, many Christians (and so-called "discernment" groups) have labeled him a New Ager, contrary to the evidence that exists.