Psychic cures; and divorce’s effect on children’s faith

In Monday’s RNS report Michelle Roberts writes about the growing number of Americans who are seeking spiritual cures for the modern world: Laura O’Donnell meets you at the door of her brown split-level home in Portland, Ore. The 34-year-old physical therapist invites you to sit down before settling herself in an overstuffed chair. She folds […]

In Monday’s RNS report Michelle Roberts writes about the growing number of Americans who are seeking spiritual cures for the modern world: Laura O’Donnell meets you at the door of her brown split-level home in Portland, Ore. The 34-year-old physical therapist invites you to sit down before settling herself in an overstuffed chair. She folds her hands, gives you a beatific smile and asks, “Do you have any questions for the spirit world?” Today, a growing number of Americans are turning to psychics-or intuitives-as a way to achieve spiritual wellness. For her part, O’Donnell draws upon myriad disciplines-psychology, physiology, sociology, theology, anthropology and mythology-to help her clients achieve harmony and greater consciousness, blending spiritual messages with a score of practical ideas, suggestions and exercises.

Deborah Potter reports on how parents’ divorce can lead to a crisis of faith for their children: When Jen Thompson looks at family pictures, the memories are still painful. Her parents divorced when she was 14, and along with the sense of loss came a crisis of faith. A recent national survey of adults who were kids when their parents divorced found that the separation had a major impact on their spiritual lives. They were, for example, much less likely to go to church or to call themselves religious than those adults whose parents stayed married. “One extraordinary finding in our study was that of those grown children of divorce who were active in a church at the time of their parents’ divorce, two-thirds say that no one in the clergy or congregation reached out to them at that time,” said Elizabeth Marquardt, the author of “Between Two Worlds,” a study of children and divorce.

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