Can Christians Practice New Age Spirituality?

A Vatican reflection on New Age spirituality makes a similar distinction. It describes Christian spiritual life as a growing relationship with God, rather than a way to achieve salvation through a technique. The document is addressing a wide set of beliefs, so it cannot judge every use of the word manifestation.

There is a test Christians can apply to their own words: Am I asking God, or am I claiming I can make God deliver? The question matters even if the words sound religious. The Catholic catechism warns that prayer itself can become superstition when someone treats its outward performance as though it works by magic.

Can Christians learn from Buddhism and other faiths?

Yes. Learning from another faith and adopting its claims are different acts.

The host says she has grown more open to Buddhism. She also talks about African spiritual traditions and the harm of dismissing them without understanding them. Those traditions should not be swept into one New Age category. They have their own histories and living communities.

The Catholic Church’s declaration Nostra Aetate names Buddhism and calls Catholics to recognize what is true and holy in other religions. It encourages dialogue and respect. The same declaration affirms the Church’s belief in Jesus Christ. Respect for another tradition does not erase that difference.

This is where the host’s openness meets a hard question. Listening to a Buddhist describe suffering is one thing. Adopting a spiritual claim because it sounds like a Christian one takes more thought. The host wonders if people across traditions believe the same thing in different ways. Sometimes they may share a concern or a practice. Their accounts of God, Jesus, and the purpose of spiritual life can still disagree.

Arnie Ellis offers a useful picture from his time as a Catholic lector. He says that when a small group discussed the same Gospel passage, each person brought a different understanding. They had a text in common. They did not all hear it in the same way. An encounter across faiths leaves even more room for surprise, provided nobody has to pretend the differences have gone away.

Why do Christians judge other beliefs?

Sometimes a Christian is stating a teaching. Sometimes a person is making a claim they cannot know.

The host tells a painful story from a co-worker. After the co-worker’s father died, her then-husband said the father would not go to heaven because he had not been a Christian believer. The family was still mourning in the room. Arnie Ellis is struck by the certainty of the remark. He asks how anyone there could know.

Abigail Covington explains why some Christians speak strongly about salvation: Christian teaching places Jesus at its center. She does not treat that belief as a license to wound someone. She says Christians who lead with fear may push people further from the faith they hope to share.

Her own route into Bible study began partly with arguments. As a teenager, she wanted to challenge Christians she thought were using scripture to hurt others. She now teaches people who, she says, have left a church after painful experiences yet still want a relationship with God. For Abigail Covington, how a teaching is read changes how it is used.

She points to Jesus speaking with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4. In her telling, he talks with the woman rather than shouting at her. That is the model she wants to follow. The point is sharpest at a moment of grief, when a family needs company more than anyone’s confident account of the afterlife.

How do you decide what fits your faith?

Start with the practice itself. What does the person doing it say happens? What does a church you belong to teach about it? Those questions can reveal a conflict without requiring you to call a stranger evil.

The host knows what it is to need prayer. Born in Nigeria, she remembers her family praying after her uncle was kidnapped. He came home. Later, in the United States, she sang in a Catholic choir and learned prayers with her mother. As an adult, she asks which parts of that faith she has chosen for herself.

Abigail Covington says God is not afraid of her questions. She sees them as a way to deepen a relationship, while keeping its Christian center. Arnie Ellis says he cannot claim that same certainty. He can admire it and keep asking his own questions. Neither guest offers the host a quick way around the difference.

People could ask. An advisor could explain what she meant by a reading; a priest could say why the catechism objects to it. At the event the host describes, pamphlets sat on the table, and anyone walking past could have stopped to ask a question.

The full episode of Squeam-ish is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.