Both spiritualism and traditional Christianity share the belief that there exists an eternal soul which moves on to a spiritual realm after physical death. Technically, though, they are not strictly compatible. Orthodox Christianity rejects spiritualist practices like trying to contact the dead. So why do so many Christians actively participate in spiritualism?
In A Brief History of Death, Douglas J. Davies writes:
While its belief that the individual's spirit passes at death from this world into the next closely resembles the practical belief of many religious traditions, its distinctiveness derives from seeking to contact the dead and establish some sort of relationship between this life and those who have 'passed over' into the next.
Mainstream Christianity generally objects to this element of contact, seeing in it reflections of forbidden images of witches conjuring up the dead. Nevertheless, ordinary Christians do sometimes attend Spiritualist séances in the hope of gaining a message from beyond the grave, a sense of comfort in knowing that their dead relatives are happy, and a degree of certainty of the afterlife. This tends to happen shortly after bereavement and very few continue to attend on a long-term basis.
While major Christian traditions affirm life after death - doctrinally, ritually and pastorally - as an ultimate feature of human destiny, Spiritualism makes it proximate. To some grief-stricken relatives it is just such an immediacy of comfort that is sought, rather than a far-off goal framed by contemporary hopeful faith.
Architecturally and geographically, Spiritualist churches often reflect the place of Spiritualism within society, certainly in Britain. In many suburbs and small towns the major denominations are present through the highly visible Anglican parish church and the relatively obvious buildings of the other denominations. The Spiritualist church, by contrast, is often a small building in a side or back street and reflects, in one sense, its partial relevance to people for a relatively short period after their bereavement.
Part of the problem for orthodox Christianity is the fact that while Spiritualism developed within the context of western religion, it shares a lot of elements with non-western and non-Christian religious practices:
Within the history of death Spiritualism became to western societies what some aspects of Shamanism had been in many other societies. Shamanism is a form of ritual often involving trance assisted by various means, including drumming, dancing, drugs, as well as some form of prior apprenticeship or training. It sought to link the shaman with the realm of the spirits in order to gain some benefit for members of the shaman's society, often in terms of healing.
In both Shamanism and Spiritualism we find an approach to death that reflects a theory of life grounded in a distinction between a soul and its human body, and in the relationship, balance or effect of each upon the other. And this was framed by the wider belief in this world and another, spiritual, world, and in the possibilities of benefit accruing from links between them.
Christians can be deeply affected by the surrounding culture and this means that it's at least possible that Christianity will come to be ever more influenced by Spiritualism. Some influences have already occurred in America where modern western Spiritualism first arose and where it's been part of the fabric of American religion for about a century. The question is, how much more will Christianity be changed?
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