On the tide of the angels - popularity of angel stories - Cover Story

Christian Century, March 1, 1995 by Trudy Bush

MOTHER MARY ANGELICA, now the owner of a cable television network, says she encountered her guardian angel when she was 11. Crossing the street on the way home from school, she felt herself lifted by invisible hands out of the path of a car. Judging from the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly bestseller lists, people crave such stories of angelic rescue. In the current deluge of angel books--as well as in recent television specials about angels--such narratives are prominently featured. Has the number of guardian angels suddenly proliferated? one wonders. Or are they newly inclined to reveal themselves and involve themselves in our lives, as many of these books claim?

The angel stories seem to fall into predictable patterns. Perhaps the most common element is a traffic hazard. (How did angels occupy themselves before the invention of the automobile? asks one commentator.) When they are not lifting us out of harm's way, angels are busy rescuing motorists in stalled cars or preventing automobile collisions. In another oft-repeated story, an angel appears in human form to guide a person who is in a strange place and unsure of her direction. Then there are stories about people being threatened by gangs, hostile tribes or armies who are protected by angels invisible to themselves but seen by their enemies. And there are frequent stories about people who, while grieving the death of a loved one, meet a stranger who silently sympathizes with them, comforts them and then disappears.

The similarity of the narratives raises a question. Is there a kind of collective unconscious at work that makes people interpret puzzling experiences according to certain patterns? Or in attempting to make sense of what happens to us, do we adapt models of miraculous experiences that we have already heard? How should we evaluate this outpouring of angel stories?

In the early 1970s, when Billy Graham decided to preach a sermon on angels, he found that little had been published on the subject in this century. The book he wrote, Angels: God's Secret Agents (Word, 1975), headed the bestseller list for months and has remained Graham's most popular volume. Several books on the subject followed during the '80s, notably Mortimer Adler's The Angels and Us (Macmillan) and Geddes MacGregor's Angels: Ministers of Grace (Paragon House).

THIS STEADY but specialized interest has turned into a wildly popular trend: during the past five years the number of angel books in print in the U. S. has gone from five to at least 200, according to Gannett News Service. Reading some of the angel books crowding the bookstores is like devouring a box of chocolates. The books' glossy, gold-embossed covers, decorated with gorgeous angels, have the appeal of prettily wrapped bonbons, and the large print surrounded by lots of white space promises that the content will go down easily.

If nothing else, the angel phenomenon indicates that philosophical materialism--the belief that nothing exists but corporeal substances occupying physical space--has not triumphed in American culture. As Adler states, "The notion of angels--of minds totally devoid of bodies--is anathema to materialists of every variety." We are hungry for the spiritual, for the miraculous, for assurances of a realm beyond the corporeal.

"If we don't read our Bibles too carefully, angels seem to be friendly folks," says Lawrence S. Cunningham, chair of Notre Dame's department of theology. And because they are spiritual realities, we can impose on them any character we want. In an age so marked by a sense of stress and crisis, what image could be more comforting than that of a powerful, loving guardian who is always by our side, ready to comfort and protect, and reluctant to judge or reprimand us?

The special popularity of angels at Christmas suggests that they function as a kind of Santa Claus for grownups. Perhaps celebrating a Christmas without religious meaning leaves secular folk feeling empty, and angels fill that void, suggesting the mystery, warmth and magic that reindeer, elves and St. Nick hold for children. And they are just as easily sentimentalized.

In a Gathering of Angels: Angels in Jewish Life and Literature Ballantine), Morris B. Margolies, a Kansas City rabbi, points out that in Israel's history, belief in angels blossomed during times of exile or foreign dominance, when people felt that God had withdrawn far from them because of their sinfulness. During such times, angels acted as intermediaries, carrying people's prayers to God. In our age, too, people look for intermediaries and for evidence that the divine still intervenes in some way in our lives. Angels seem more accessible than God, and more attractive. And while there is only one God, there are many angels--so many that we can each have a private angel devoted to our welfare. In Angel Letters (Ballantine), Sophie Burnham tells us that angels "pour their blessing on us overwhelmingly. They play with us. They look after us. They heal us, comfort us with invisible warm hands, and always they try to give us what we want."