ImageI once accused my church elders of emotionalism. They were indignant and it just seemed to add to the different reason why i had been summoned to meet them; although any charge of emotionalism in Christianity is to be considered separately.

One definition from the Free Dictionary is that it is “conduct, policies etc that are based upon feelings rather than reason.” In this i would include ‘theology, experience of God etc’. It is not for no reason that the Christian church regards one’s experience of God as a relationship with God, because our relationship with other people involves emotions if not depends on them. Relationships often invoke emotions or extremes of emotions. Yes, i have felt Jesus with me, and walking beside me, and its a pretty amazing experience, and having emotions isn’t bad but using them to paper over cracks in theology is.

This emotionalism often pervades Christian music. One of my favourite Christian songs, Breathe by Michael W. Smith, from the WOW 2002 album, uses this emotionalism. No doubt the songwriter is unaware of the property and any use of emotionalism is unintended, but emotionalism pervades so much of Christian culture that it is taken-for-granted. Smith opines “I’m desperate for you” and “I’m lost without you”. I find it to be a beautiful song. But it by-passes my reason, like much of Christian theology and church teaching. The words ‘desperate’ and ‘lost’ are emotional words (and to be lost implies desperation). I think of Psalm 42 and the retort that ‘as the hind thirsts for water’ – an essential for life – ‘so i thirst for thee’.

Of course, the Song of Solomon is included in the canon. It is the tale of one person’s great love and desire for another, and no doubt included to inspire the believer’s desire for God.. Yet there is a significant component of sexual desire within the writer’s longing. Have you ever wondered, like i have, how that got past the self-appointed censors who assembled the Bible at the Synod of Hippo in BCE 393, and their emphasis on celibacy?