Due to direct intervention from God, I went back to the church in which I grew up this last weekend. Worship was excellent, preaching was mediocre – as per usual – but I did carry away one exceptionally interesting (to me) thought, and those of you who read my xanga are now officially doomed to hear about it. (So if you don’t like what one of my good friends calls “walls of text” you should stop reading now. Consider yourself fairly warned.)

The preacher on this fine day was a fairly well known man in many evangelical/worship circles, and he preached about making declarations with the intent of affecting the spirit world. Several interesting/on-the-edge-of-heretical-because-he-was-preaching-not-thinking-but-meant-well- things came out of his mouth, but the one that caught my attention was this. “Most people have the misconception that Satan is more powerful than they are. They have this idea that it’s God, then Satan, then the angels, then us little humans. But it’s not like that. It’s God, then us – as the Church, we have authority over all else.” (Rough quote, probably in need of some AMEN-uhS!, but fairly accurate.) Ordinarily I’m not sure that I’d have problems with this, but for one thing. The entire message was preached to the effect that we, as individuals, should take authority over problems in our lives. (With which I agree, provided the word authority is changed to responsibility – a change which I believe would accurately represent the intent of the preacher.)

My problem comes when, in that context, the preacher says that we have more power than Satan. While I’m not prepared to enter a full discussion about the authority on/in this world of one whom I believe the Bible refers to as “the prince of this world”, I think I can safely say this: as the body of Christ, the Church, I am in entire agreement that our authority surpasses that of Satan. However, I’m not sure that I believe, in the sort of individualist, self-help, take-personal-authority-in-Jesus’-name sort of way he seemed to be preaching the message, that we have any authority over Satan. As an Anglican, and a fairly high-church Anglican at that, it seems to me that what authority we have, in any individual sense, even as members of the Church, comes only when we are doing the will of the Lord. And I know it isn’t any authority that comes from us personally, although I suspect it may be a disservice to the preacher to say that he intended the comment that way. So I believe that, rather than taking the approach that we should identify problems in our lives, declare them interference from the devil, and declare authority over him and them, which seems to me to be inflating our sense of personal authority, it is more appropriate to seek the Lord’s will regarding what we can do on our own strength (very little), and in what ways we should act to be fulfilling His will. In this way alone can we truly be assured of the Lord’s authority over satanic influence in our lives, as well as the influence of our fallen natures. However, having reached a conclusion – or rather, resolution – which I find acceptable on this matter, I am assaulted by another question.

I think I can state with complete safety and certainty that it is a weakness of the Protestant/charismatic/evangelical movement that those Christians coming out of this movement are taught to rely entirely too much upon themselves as individual Children of God. That status is a special status, with all kinds of special privileges and protections – chief among them being forgiveness of sins, eternal life with God, and a good night’s sleep (yes, it’s Scriptural) – but I think the Protestant/evangelical movement doesn’t appropriately emphasize the importance of being part of the Church body. (To prevent misunderstanding: I don’t think they do a bad job of being a Church body, just of teaching members how to act as a part of one.) And I have to wonder whether or not teachings like this, which can be extremely misleading regarding how and in what ways a Christian has authority over Satan and his co-fallen angels, are not extremely dangerous. Granted that God will protect His children… still, it can’t be a good thing for Christians to go out into their daily life believing that they, as individuals, can exert Godly authority over whatever problems they ascribe to Satan in their daily walk, without being properly “under apostolic authority” or acting as supported members of the Church and tools of the will of God. Confrontation with the enemy of mankind while relying on a sort of inflated sense of personal authority seems, to me, almost as hopeless as confrontation with the enemy of mankind using Wicca or some other sort of false spiritual authority. “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” (I’ll have to look that reference up when I’m not so tired – sorry.) It seems to me that while high church may also often be slightly lacking in instruction in spiritual warfare, our mistake is more one of failing to emphasize it in any meaningful way than of sending out warriors unequipped.

So my question is this: are my concerns legitimate, or is there some aspect to Protestant/evangelical teachings in this area that I’m missing or that might be a blind spot of the high church approach? Or was this simply a one-time kind of mistake that isn’t made on a broad scale, and I'm just being paranoid?

Once again, I’m forced to apologize for the lack of organization and clarity in this post. I also apologize for any offenses which I seem to give to my Protestant/evangelical brethren – ‘tis unintentional, I assure you. All feedback from all sides is welcome.