It is Friday evening, and Bill and Terri Honsberger are heading for a Denver meeting where about 75 people are already joined in a heartfelt rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
A portrait of Jesus figures prominently on an altar near the meeting hall’s front. But in this picture, a contemplative Jesus has his legs crossed, his arms extended, and his palms upright. This is a gurufied Christ in the lotus position—the preferred prayer posture for millions of Asian Hindus and thousands of Americans who follow Eastern spiritual paths. Another picture hangs nearby: one of Lord Krishna.
Fresh fruit, flowers, and plants are spread in a collage of color over the altar, and burning incense sticks send smoke and pungent odors through the still air.
OMmmmmm …
The chant mixes with the incense as Bill and Terri enter the meeting—a Hindu satsang organized by a local yoga society. “Amazing Grace” has yielded to the monotone repetition of the “sacred” Hindu syllable.
A woman stands up. “It’s so nice to see so many other Christians gathered together,” she says. A school counselor adds that the meditation techniques she has learned give her something of “enduring value” to offer kids at her troubled inner-city school.
Seated in the back of the meeting, the Honsbergers are quiet witnesses to a variety of stories, each echoing the concept that—when you boil it all down—Jesus, Krishna, the Buddha, and other “enlightened masters” all teach the same thing.
As the group ends its formal exercise of testimonies and chanting, they retire downstairs for a snack featuring plenty of vegetarian goodies. But Bill is just getting started.
For Honsberger, 36, is the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society’s missionary to America’s New Age movement. He may be the first.
And he’s getting ready to tell this gathering about the real Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Wearing jeans and a sport shirt, Bill walks up to a woman and her teenage daughter and, after some small talk, engages the pair in a brief discussion about the uniqueness of Jesus.
And before Honsberger knows what is happening, the woman and her daughter repent of their syncretism and accept Jesus—lock, stock, and barrel!
Not.
In fact, the teenage daughter seems more certain that a loving Jesus and her Eastern guru are compatible.
Her mother shows only the slightest indication that she heard Bill at all. She turns her attention back to her tofu.
New Age, Old Truth
For Honsberger, it is just another day in the life of the man New Age Journal has called “Missionary Impossible.” Honsberger’s response to the day’s lack of observable results shows he possesses the qualities his unusual calling requires: knowledge of today’s increasingly diverse religious marketplace, a deep concern for people’s souls, the patience of Job, and an ability to find and savor small successes.
“If you’ve done any work with cults, you know that everybody that ever came out of a cult says someone confronted them with the gospel and made them think about it, and that God later used that to bring them into the kingdom,” says Honsberger, a Denver Theological Seminary graduate who set up his New Age mission last September.
“If someone changes right in front of us, that’s fantastic. But it doesn’t happen often.”
In fact, Honsberger seems to be getting as much ridicule as anything: “Better hide your crystals, citizens of Boulder, Colorado,” cried the glossy, bimonthly New Age Journal, which has a paid circulation of around 150,000. “The Reverend Bill Honsberger, a fundamentalist Christian missionary, is coming—and he’s looking for ‘New Agers.’ … Honsberger plans to … persuade folks in the free-thinking college town [of Boulder] that the real Jesus does not speak through channelers or ‘A Course in Miracles’ and is not ‘just another guru.’ ”
It is not hard to see that this father of four has his work cut out for him. Unlike many missionaries, some of Honsberger’s target audience in Boulder are alert to his efforts. Boulder has long been a mecca of mysticism. A 1988 New York Times Magazine article called it a center for “Colorado’s thriving cults.”
Honsberger spends a lot of time in the city’s Bohemian-styled, New Age stores, and attends metaphysical fairs, lectures, and satsangs. But he doesn’t wear flowing purple gowns, nor is his hair pulled into a tight, shoulder-length ponytail. Honsberger more resembles an out-of-shape Dick Butkus. In fact, the former athlete stands 6 feet, 4 inches, weighs 260 pounds, and looks as if he could singlehandedly wrestle an entire séance into a forced confession.
Unlike the cartoon of him that appeared in New Age Journal, he doesn’t pound his Bible and pontificate.
He tries to contextualize the gospel for his audience with questions such as: What have you read lately? What did you think of what the guru said? Does what you’re picking up make sense to you?
The endless barrage of New Thought theology he consumes does not shake his faith, but it does trouble his soul.
“I get this sad feeling, this empty feeling,” says the systematic theology specialist. “When you sit down and look at the message they’re sending out, you see that it’s antihuman. It’s destructive, and it has nothing to offer people.”
But modern mysticism, says Honsberger, often does give people something they didn’t find in church: “The New Age offers an incredibly open sense of community. You can be just about anything and be a part of the group.”
Not A Pipe Dream
Honsberger dreams of creating his own community gathering place: a storefront ministry in Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. The storefront would resemble the Christian coffee houses of the 1960s and 1970s that were staffed by the Jesus People, who led the 17-year-old, potsmoking Honsberger to the Lord.
“I saw those types of ministries do neat things and reach out to people the church didn’t seem to get near.”
Meanwhile, Honsberger teaches about New Age groups and beliefs at churches and conferences, urging Christians to reach out. Others are better in the pulpit, and he admits initially that all he wanted was to teach Bible at a Christian school: “Public speaking made me terrified. But God has a great sense of humor.”
In fact, Honsberger’s background as a Colorado deputy sheriff is the antithesis of a New Ager. Unlike some fuzzy mystics who believe humanity is basically good, he has seen otherwise. “I can tell people about all the guys I know who don’t fit the picture of man being divine.”
And he is not shy about his views. Last August Honsberger appeared on the debut segment of a nationally syndicated TV talk show hosted by former first son Ron Reagan, and he mixed it up with Elizabeth Claire Prophet of Montana’s Church Universal and a meditation master named Brother Charles.
Said Brother Charles: All men are good.
Asked Honsberger: What about Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahmer?
Replied Brother Charles: “That’s not a part of my reality.”
Countered the ex-cop: “Well, if Jeffrey Dahmer came up and knocked on your door, that would become a part of your reality, wouldn’t it?”
If nothing else, this former-copturned-New-Age-evangelist is generating plenty of concern among his target audience.
The editor of a northern Colorado publication on alternative lifestyles and beliefs says Honsberger’s approach is insulting. “The whole idea is that they’re bright and we’re dumb for having missed it for all of these years,” said the editor, who asked to speak anonymously.
Honsberger says he just wants to counter the effects of the sixties counterculture—his generation. “The church got rejected in the sixties.… I’m just trying to get people to look at how Christianity measures up against other systems.
“I just try to stack ’em up against each other and show that Christianity and the way God is portrayed in the Bible aren’t really so bad.”.
By Steve Rabey, religion editor for the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph.
