The paradox of our "secular age"
- sciart0
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
Excerpt (to first link above): "In Durham, North Carolina, just a few miles from major universities, teaching hospitals, and other temples of science, the Holy Spirit remains formidable. When I attended a gathering at Catch the Fire Church one Friday evening last year, a petite blond woman made her way down the aisle, laying her hand on heads and shoulders, calling on the Holy Spirit.
Her magenta tunic glowed under the can lights. She breathed hard into her microphone. Here and there, the woman, a Toronto-based evangelist named Carol Arnott, paused to point a finger down a row of worshippers and shout, “Fire on them, Lord!” Knees buckled; people collapsed back into their seats.
As Arnott continued her circuit, a man in a hoodie—the “catcher”—followed closely behind, ready to help any person “slain in the Spirit.” One touch from her hand sent more supplicants falling to the floor. “Don’t get up too soon,” Arnott urged one dazed individual lying on the carpet. “You’re like a steak, marinating.” She preached as she walked, describing a vision in which Jesus gave her a bouquet of lilies of the valley and adorned her with a flowered crown and wedding veil. “The bridegroom is coming. Are you ready?” Arnott asked. It was hard to hear her over the moans and guffaws, the bursts of holy laughter.
Catch the Fire belongs to the fastest-growing group of Christians on the planet—charismatic Christians, who believe that the Holy Spirit empowers them to speak in tongues, heal, and prophesy, just as Jesus’s first apostles did 2,000 years ago. By some measures, they represent more than half of the roughly 60 million U.S. adults who call themselves “born-again.”
This flourishing and vigorously supernatural faith points to the paradox of the secular age: The modern era of declining church attendance has nurtured some of religion’s most dramatic manifestations. Instead of killing off religion, secularism has supercharged its extraordinary elements."