‘Playing’ with Danger: The Rehabilitation of Spiritual Danger for Inter-Ritual Participation – An Evangelical Perspective

The realm of spirits is often overlooked in the ‘new’ comparative theology (CT), which Francis Clooney defines as ‘the practice of rethinking aspects of one’s own faith tradition through the study of aspects of another faith tradition’. However, a ritual turn in CT has encouraged a practice of inter-riting that invites practitioners to explore the rituals of other religions for the sake of generating comparative theological insight. Beyond fostering deeper interreligious hospitality, inter-riting also promises to facilitate what Shaw and Burrows (2018) call a ‘necessary hybridity’ between Christian liturgy and traditional rituals, suggesting its importance for the study of World Christianity. Yet, some have noted that a fear of spiritual danger – and its close correlate, the phenomenon of ‘negative reverence’ – can stall its practice, resulting in inter-ritual failure. This paper argues that evangelical Christians are well positioned to access biblical and theological resources required to negotiate these concerns constructively. After describing spiritual danger and negative reverence, I turn to assess one method that US evangelicals have promulgated globally since the 1970s to address spiritual danger – the model of power encounter – before exploring alternative biblical and theological resources that offer a more constructive approach to engaging unfamiliar spiritual forces. The aim of this paper is to rehabilitate the fear of spiritual danger and move it toward a more balanced and curious discernment of spirits, and to shift from a negative to subjunctive reverence that is both hopeful and cautiously ‘playful’.