THE CHRISTIAN HOLISTIC HEALTH MOVEMENT
There is a growing movement of Christian practitioners of holistic (or “wholistic”) health, and of Christians who turn to such treatments for their physical maladies.5 Perhaps the most articulate and vigorous spokesperson for this movement is Monte Kline, Ph.D., a former staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ who became a nutritionist and “wholistic health practitioner” after a personal bout with cancer.
In his March/April 1988 Christian Health Counselor newsletter, for example, Kline devotes six pages to the subject of “New Age paranoia” in the church. He argues that Christians have often been more hysterical than rational in their approach to the New Age movement, with the result that many innocent people and legitimate ideas and practices have been tarnished with the label “New Age.” He acknowledges that “there is much, much spiritual error in the New Age movement,”6 and Christians need to be discerning about these elements. But the opposition of many Christian authors to certain holistic health therapies represents what he calls “flat earth Christianity.”
Flat Earth Christianity
Flat earth Christianity is the too-often-prevalent Christian mentality that considers heretical and even demonic any theory that does not fit in with its traditions and present knowledge (e.g., for many medieval Christians the idea that the earth is round and not the Center of the universe was Considered anti-Christian). Kline explains:
Their assumption is that anything outside their knowledge of the creation is supernatural in the demonic sense and therefore to be denied. Thus, the Ch’i energy of acupuncture, auras, and chakras could not possibly be just another part of God’s creation, only unknown to them….Yet man is called to exercise dominion over His [God’s] creation (Genesis 1:28), and how can man do that without exploration and discovery? True science is merely the processes of discovering, quantifying, and applying what God has built into His creation.7
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