Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508110025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At least that's what the authors of some of the dozens of current titles on the subject would have us believe. They include John Ronner, who was in Roanoke last week promoting his latest book, "The Angels of Cokeville and Other True Stories of Heavenly Intervention" (Mamre Press, Murfreesboro, Tenn.).
Ronner, a former journalist, has been capitalizing on the angel phenomenon since 1985 when he published "Do You Have a Guardian Angel?" a question-and-answer book about the spiritual creatures. He also wrote "Know Your Angels," an almanac of lore about angels, ghosts and "guardian spirits."
Ronner touts his books as journalistic in approach, which means he allows its subjects to speak for themselves about their angelic encounters without specifically endorsing any particular view of angels. The voice of the books, however, is clearly sympathetic with the position that such encounters are at some level "real" for those who have them.
The test for validity, Ronner said in an interview, lies in the effects. A beneficial experience - one that ennobles or uplifts the individual - must be valid, he contends. He also believes that the accounts of people who don't know someone is dying but who see visions of that loved one at the moment of death constitute clear evidence of the reality of the experience.
Ronner points out that the Jewish and Christian scriptures name only three angels - Michael, Gabriel and Raphael - though there are stories of human encounters with other, unnamed angels. He also reiterates that the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of angels is of a class of beings between God and humans.
But most of what Ronner and other angel authors dwell on has less to do with that classical vision of angels and more to do with another type of supernatural protectors for mortals.
Ronner says some people confuse angels with "guardian spirits," who may be the souls of humans - usually dead - who cannot or will not leave the vicinity of Earth and who perform acts of kindness for the living. That includes such things as warning children about impending danger, as in the title story from "The Angels of Cokeville," or relieving the anxiety of those who are about to die.
He tells stories about the spirits of separated spouses appearing to protect their mates, about long-dead grandparents appearing to their grandchildren in times of danger, about a son being reconciled to his father's spirit in the moments after death.
On the one hand, Ronner and the other angel authors spend a lot of time talking about the benevolent purposes of these interactive spirits and the attractiveness of the world-to-come that many who have had near-death experiences report.
On the other hand, Ronner, for instance, describes "so-called `earthbound' spirits [who] are trapped by their own states of mind - like obsessed or wrong-thinking people on earth. Some are guilty, some angry, some deeply caring about something earthside, some insane or `shell-shocked' by violent deaths."
Though Ronner doesn't attribute that speculation in the book, he said it comes mostly from psychics and spiritualists who claim to have seen into or spoken with the inhabitants of the world-to-come. Why those people don't find happiness and serenity in the next life, we don't know.
Currently popular speculation about angels seems to be an attempt to meld every religion's view on the spectral beings into one big, happy next-worldly family.
He is perfectly content to dump Norman Vincent Peale, Peter Sellers and John Wesley into one paragraph as if their views on the interaction of the living with the spirits of the dead would be compatible. Jewish and Christian folklore about angels taken from sources neither religion considers holy is given equal weight with accounts in Scripture.
Classical Greek and Roman mythology, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are given equal status with 19th-century clairvoyants, John Milton, Emanuel Swedenborg, Joseph Smith, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Calvin and dozens of lesser-knowns.
Ronner says his intention is not to preach or make converts but to let individuals come to their own judgments about the claims he records. At the same time, he is sympathetic toward those claims, avoiding skepticism or detailed examination of alternative explanations for the experiences.
What he and similar authors end up with, I'm afraid, is a theological mud pie with no discernible ingredients or crust. It is then half-baked and served up as nutrition for the soul or spirit.
In the end, talk of angels is personal opinion and speculation - which Ronner himself points out is "the cheapest commodity in the world."
by CNB