NEWS FEATURE: The popularity of angels remains strong

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Everyday, in an upstairs room in her home in Bethesda, Md., Linda Rose Levenberg enters the angelic realm. With New Age music playing softly in the background, she sits cross-legged in meditation in front of a bamboo altar she has assembled herself. On the altar are incense, bells, […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Everyday, in an upstairs room in her home in Bethesda, Md., Linda Rose Levenberg enters the angelic realm.

With New Age music playing softly in the background, she sits cross-legged in meditation in front of a bamboo altar she has assembled herself. On the altar are incense, bells, a candle and a white potted mum. But mostly, there are angels: angel pictures, angel figurines, angel tarot cards.


At her altar, Levenberg conducts rituals to connect with what she calls her”angel guides,”named Gabriel and Sarah. Levenberg says these angels speak messages for her and for others.

Levenberg is not alone. Surveys show nearly 75 percent of Americans believe in angels. One-third say they’ve had some kind of personal experience or encounter with an angel.

Christmas has always been the season of angels. According to the Christmas story, it was a heavenly host of angels that first announced the birth of Jesus. But angels aren’t just for Christmas anymore.

They’ve become one of the most remarkable pop culture trends of the 1990s. Long after Christmas decorations are taken down, pop angels will still be around.

There’s”Touched by an Angel,”the hit CBS television program. There are movies, from”Angels in the Outfield,”to”Michael,”to”City of Angels”_ all stories of angels taking human form on earth.

There are scores of angel books. More than 2,000 angel titles currently are for sale on the Amazon.com Web site. And there are angel collectibles and trinkets, even entire stores dedicated to angels.

Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow says the high interest in angels reveals something important about contemporary American spirituality.”Many people are uncertain about traditional religious teachings and they may feel for personal reasons that God has been very distant in their lives. Angels are much friendlier. Angels are more approachable,”Wuthnow said.


Angels have long been the domain of established religion. Both Hindu and Buddhist cultures have a tradition of winged deities intervening in human affairs. Muslims believe the angel Gabriel brought the revelations of the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad. The Judeo-Christian tradition has a complex theology of angels as messengers and guardians from God.

Likewise, traditional religion has played a role in the mass popularity of angels. Evangelist Billy Graham wrote a book about angels, and the Vatican organized a traveling exhibit of angel art. But much of the current interest is occurring outside established religions.

Phyllis Tickle, contributing editor in religion for”Publishers’ Weekly,”said that while the current angel trends began almost ten years ago with an emphasis on traditional spirituality, the majority of the interest has now shifted to an alternative,”almost psychic”spirituality.

That’s the case for Linda Rose Levenberg, who describes herself as an”intuitive coach.”She consults with clients in her home and over the telephone about messages she says she hears from the angels. She also gives free angel readings over the Internet, often using her deck of angel tarot cards.”My philosophy really is that we are all one, that I am a fragment of God, and you are a fragment of God and that the angels are just working really hard for us to embrace that,”Levenberg said.

That disturbs traditionalists such as the Rev. Douglas Connelly, pastor of the evangelical Cross Church in Flint, Mich., and author of the book”Angels Around Us.”He believes you cannot have angels without the entire biblical package.”Angels never in scripture are independent sources of spirituality. No one in the Bible ever prays to an angel or appeals to an angel,”Connelly said.”It is always God who is the source of the spirituality, the spiritual life.” Connelly believes people still do have angel encounters, although he’s never personally experienced one. But he also believes some angel encounters may not be what they appear.”There are two kinds of angels. There are the good, holy angels of God, and there are evil angels whose main method of operation is deception. I think people need to be careful that the angel they encounter is genuinely an angel of God and not an angel that leads them into evil,”Connelly said.

Tickle argues that one reason for the heavy New Age interest in angels is that many established religions do not emphasize the mystical, spiritual side of faith that many long to experience .”There’s no question that contemporary American religion of all established persuasions has fallen far short of catching up with contemporary culture and trying to speak to it,”she said, adding that”angels, like many other things, have rushed into the vacuum.” Tickle worries about the cultural impact when angels become too commercialized and too popularized.”I think a steady diet of pop angels is very dangerous for a culture,”she said.”It domesticates a part of what was divinity.” When that happens, Tickle continued,”angels become a personalized, non-demanding way to not think about the realities of theology.” But others, such as Sophy Burnham, author of the 1990 surprise bestseller,”A Book of Angels,”argue that trivialization comes, not from putting an angel on a mug, but from failing to treat angels as a serious spiritual experience.”The real question is, are they experienced with as much reverence today? And that, each person has to answer for himself or herself,”she said.”I don’t know anyone who in the presence of a real, spiritual experience, is not knocked down to their knees. They feel it and it is very humbling and very beautiful.”


IR END LAWTON

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