"And I have good reason to wonder because for a couple of years now I have been trying to alert the slumbering Slowly Becoming Catholic to the growing hiss of CSM spreading as a spiritual cancer within it under the umbrella of “spiritual formation.” Space only allows just a couple of quick examples. From my piece "SBC Embraces Emergent Church and Contemplative Spirituality" I showed you that the SBC's Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, “today considered a vital growing force in Southern Baptist missionary and ministry efforts,” featured the course “P1115 Spiritual Formation” taught by Dr. Faith Kim. Checking the syllabus we saw that one of the primary textbooks used by Dr. Kim was Celebration of Discipline by "Living Spiritual Teacher" Richard Foster
For those of you who don't know, Spiritual Formation is a required course in everyone's first two semesters of seminary. It is a proven fact that many students in seminary get so wrapped up in their coursework and ministries that their personal spiritual lives suffer. In order to help students overcome this situation, seminaries offer these types of classes in order to teach the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, such as prayer, fasting and Bible study. It is also a great time to meet with a group of people for discipleship and personal accountibility. After going through two spiritual formation classes in my first year of seminary, I find that the accusations of CSM infecting SBC life are out of line. I guess I'm not able to judge though because I'm infected with CSM personally because we used Foster's book as our textbook in the first Spiritual Formation class that I took. Any of you other seminary students infected? Check out the rest of the blog and let me know if they have any grounds for concern over the CSM in the SBC.
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3 comments:
"I find that the accusations of CSM infecting SBC life are out of line."
Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree agree here. But if I were you I'd be asking myself why we need to turn to a Quaker mystic for spiritual formation which is in direct counterpoint to the Reformation.
How many Protestants does Foster draw from in his teachings? And I think you'd do well to make the time to wrap your obviously superior erudition around the following piece and the links within it.
At least then, though you will not likely agree, you'll at least know I have done my homework:
The Cult of Guru Richard Foster
http://www.apprising.org/archives
/2008/04/the_cult_of_gur.html
Ken,
First of all, I am aware of the problems with Foster's theology. But just because he doesn't hold to the same theological convictions that I do, doesn't mean that I should write off everything he has to say. I am willing to fight for orthodoxy as much as anyone else, but if I only read books written by people who I agree with then my reading list would be very short indeed.
I think we turn to a Quaker mystic because the SBC has forgotten what the spiritual disciplines are all about. The Bible mentions fasting and meditation. Do you know how many times I've heard someone teach about either one of these disciplines? Zero. There are many reasons for this. I don't think that we hear much about fasting because we have made an idol out of food. I think that we're afraid to even mention meditation (even though the Psalms are full of references to meditation) because it brings to mind pictures of Hindus and Bhuddists.
I guess my point is that if we ground ourselves on the Word of God, then we shouldn't be afraid to learn from people we disagree with.
P.S. I guess I don't have quite the obviously superior erudition that you might have thought because I had to look up 'erudition' in the dictionary, sorry to disappoint
For the record, when Ken talks about "doing his homework", a good chunk of that is simply linking to articles he himself has written. In just the article he posted in his comments, links to his own material outnumber links to other sites two to one. Don't believe me? Go look for yourself.
Long story short, don't take Ken's word for it. Do your *OWN* homework.
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