KIM LAWTON:…At the CORE/El Centro natural healing center in Milwaukee, Sister Madeline Gianforte is using Reiki on one of her clients. In this Eastern healing technique, practitioners place their hands on or above someone in an effort to enhance the body’s flow of energy. They say that can lead to physical and spiritual healing.
SISTER MADELINE GIANFORTE (CORE/El Centro): As a practitioner, I’m just facilitating that energy. But you are doing your own healing in the sense of connecting to the divine and the healing that happens within.
LAWTON: Gianforte is a nun with the Sisters of Saint Agnes. She’s also a trained Reiki master. She says Reiki fits well with her faith.
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GIANFORTE: It’s an incredibly spiritual, prayerful experience for me. It calms the inner part of my being so much that I can tap that deepest place, the core place of who I am.
LAWTON: But the US Catholic bishops say Reiki is superstition, and they’ve urged Catholics not to provide or support it….
Part of the danger facing the church, no matter the denomination, is the idea that we can merge or ‘marry’ two different religions and maintain the purity of both. Jesus said “no one can serve two masters, for he will love the one and hate the other”. Even though he was speaking of mammon and God, it applies to this as well.
It would have been so easy for the early Christians to say “well, why can’t we have the Roman gods and ours too? After all, we will still be serving Jesus!” But this was not an option for them. And it should not be an option for us, either. God is a jealous God, and calls us to monogamy with Him. Whether we seek out Christ + Buddha, Christ + yoga, Christ + Islam, etc. — it’s not an option for us, and once we give in, we lose that right to be called “Christian”.
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
It’s just frightening to see how the New Age movement has crept into Christianity and is being accepted as the norm. If we protest that any of these non-Christian practices are wrong, it’s twisted around so we’re the ones who are wrong for not wanting to be enlightened…we are seeing the great apostasy that was predicted in Scriptures. Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.
I’ve always felt that anyone who talks about “the divine” ought to get the bum’s rush. As I understand it, “the divine” is just a way of turning something that belongs to the god Christians are supposed to believe in into a commodity, disassociating holiness from a particularly Christian source. Then you’re seeing “the divine” everywhere, including Hinduism according to Schori.
Re : black and white – love it! Monotheism is rather more cut and dried than polytheism, now, ain’t it?
Found this review article on the state of research of Reiki:
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J Altern Complement Med. 2009 Nov;15(11):1157-69.
A systematic review of the therapeutic effects of Reiki.
vanderVaart S, Gijsen VM, de Wildt SN, Koren G.
Department of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
INTRODUCTION: Reiki is an ancient form of Japanese healing. While this healing method is widely used for a variety of psychologic and physical symptoms, evidence of its effectiveness is scarce and conflicting. The purpose of this systematic review was to try to evaluate whether Reiki produces a significant treatment effect. METHODS: Studies were identified using an electronic search of Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. Quality of reporting was evaluated using a modified CONSORT Criteria for Herbal Interventions, while methodological quality was assessed using the Jadad Quality score. DATA EXTRACTION: Two (2) researchers selected articles based on the following features: placebo or other adequate control, clinical investigation on humans, intervention using a Reiki practitioner, and published in English. They independently extracted data on study design, inclusion criteria, type of control, sample size, result, and nature of outcome measures. RESULTS: The modified CONSORT Criteria indicated that all 12 trials meeting the inclusion criteria were lacking in at least one of the three key areas of randomization, blinding, and accountability of all patients, indicating a low quality of reporting. Nine (9) of the 12 trials detected a significant therapeutic effect of the Reiki intervention; however, using the Jadad Quality score, 11 of the 12 studies ranked “poor.” [b]CONCLUSIONS: The serious methodological and reporting limitations of limited existing Reiki studies preclude a definitive conclusion on its effectiveness. High-quality randomized controlled trials are needed to address the effectiveness of Reiki over placebo.[/b]
Christianity has its own healing tradition, rooted in Judaism but drawing on Gospel and Apostolic tradition. God is the source of all healing, and calling on any other source is a treacherous undertaking.
The Roman Catholic church has tended to confuse Christian healing with viaticum, and tended to deemphasize traditional healing, since the prayers for healing aren’t always answered in the way that the healer would want. The nun in this story probably has the best of intentions, but she would do well to go somewhere that will let her get back in touch with her own tradition, while receiving intense spiritual direction.
Individual Roman Catholics may, and do, confuse Christian healing with Viaticum, but I’m not sure that such a wholesale statement can be made about the Church itself. Sadly, women religious have become the Trojan Horse introducing a huge dose of insanity into the Church.
The only personal experience I have of reiki occurred when I went to a “Christian” retreat and 2 people there offered to pray and lay hands on me for the healing of [I think] a leg injury. When I realized what they were doing, I was bent out of shape that they presented what they were doing as part of a Christian healing ministry. It didn’t resemble any Christian healing ministry that I knew of.
My second thought, as I saw the “healers” sweeping their hands over me and exclaiming, and comparing notes as to what they “felt” in the air above my leg, was to wonder whether I would be the uncouth child who saw the naked emperor and announced that he had no clothes.
I sat through their ministrations, trying to keep an open mind. I don’t think I came away bewitched by the thing.
I’m prepared to stay agnostic for a little longer on the subject of what inherent powers the body might have to heal itself. The amount that I don’t know, about healing and the body, far outweighs the amount I do know. If there’s something to this, are other conclusions possible, that is, other than to lump reiki in with paganism and occult? I’m asking because I’m curious, not to defend reiki. One of the “Christian” practicioners in the news report (Lauri Lumby Schmidt) spoke of herself as a vessel through whom God’s healing power can be experienced, and I didn’t hear her say she guarantees any result. It’s not exactly how I describe what I’m doing when I pray to Jesus for people, but not all that far removed.
But perhaps it’s the subtle differences that bear a closer look.
If this energy is naturally present in the body, I’m not sure what exactly is accomplished by the hand-waving or the touch. If it’s a matter of aiding or enhancing a natural process, like chiropractic medicine or taking vitamins, then it’s misleading to promote it as a Christian practice.
Interesting to read that there has been some attempt to evaluate reiki scientifically. The researchers’ conclusion, that they couldn’t verify the claims being made about reiki, could be said about claims that God heals through prayer. That doesn’t keep me from praying for people, laying hands on people, and anointing them. I believe people are being healed in response to prayer, but there’s a lot of subjectivity involved, some of the time, when they talk about the nature of the healing they’ve received.
Pax,
Chuck Bradshaw
Hulls Cove, Maine