An Age for Angels : Spiritual, Commercial Interest in Heavenly Beings on the Rise

Heaven can’t wait.

Times have gotten so bad that guardian angels are turning up in individual’s lives with increasing frequency, and people are more receptive to the heavenly beings than ever before, say leaders of angel-related organizations and businesses.

In the past year, guardian angel pins have moved from bins in the back of Catholic bookstores to the check-out counter at card shops, florists and drugstores. There are five mail-order companies specializing in angel-related goods and the Golden, Colo.-based Angel Collectors Club of America has seen its membership in 1992 swell by 200 to nearly 1,000.

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“The world is in a lot more trouble than it’s ever been. People are recognizing their own sense of powerlessness,” said Eileen Freeman of Mountainside, N.J., editor of the AngelWatch newsletter. “We’re not the only race of intelligent beings around. There is another race--and we call them angels.”

There is widespread belief in angels. Gallup Polls have found that half of the nation, including nearly three-quarters of teen-agers, believe in the heavenly beings.

The Bible is filled with hundreds of references to angels, in roles ranging from guardians of individuals and churches to messengers of God’s word as in the famous passage in the Gospel of Luke when an angel announces to Mary that Mary will be the mother of Jesus.

A large pair of wings are the first item that makes an impression on visitors entering Sally Allen’s Angels For All Seasons store in Denver. Customers can eat angel food cake sitting in wing-backed wicker chairs, or look up to see cupids sitting in the skylights above.

Her store opened last September, and did a “phenomenal” $150,000 in business the first four months. She is now planning to open up other shops of angel collectibles in an airport and a mall.

But what people coming into her store are mostly looking for is hope, Allen said.

“We have a lot of people who have lost children, who they themselves are dying,” she said. “Basically, it’s a gathering of people who are trying to get back to God.”

For the true believers, it is no coincidence that angels are becoming more prevalent in an age when humanity semes to need divine help to solve such ills as homelessness, hunger and the destruction of the environment.

“Our information is that this is coming from the angelic realm as well as from the human realm,” said Alma Daniel, one of the authors of “Ask Your Angels.”

“I would say that we are at a crossroads in human civilization,” she said. “If we don’t move up in consciousness, to put it mildly, we are going to hell in a handbucket.”

Her book, written with co-authors Timothy Wyllie and Andrew Ramer, includes claims of angels directly intervening in people’s lives, including helping a man survive a direct hit on an ammunition dump in Vietnam and a woman’s escape from death when a tire iron hurtling toward her windshield suddenly disappeared.

Others involved in the angel movement have their own stories to tell.

Freeman said she first saw her guardian angel at age 5 after her grandmother died. A figure “bathed in this incredible light” spoke to her from the foot of her bed telling her not to be afraid: “Your grandmother is not in a cold and dark grave. She is happy in heaven with God and her loved ones.”

“I know that my experience was real because since that day, I have never been afraid of death,” she said.

Even churches that teach the existence of angels greet reports of miraculous intervention with the mix of openness and skepticism they bring to other supernatural claims, such as appearances of Mary or cures attributed to saints.

“We would say, yes, there are angels, and you may have had an angel intervene for you, but we don’t know that,” said Deacon Chris Baumann, a spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference.

But many who have cast their lot with the angels say it has become easier to believe in the heavenly beings as the limitations of high technology in solving societal ills have become evident.

“Our age is a scientific age,” said Marilynn Webber of Marilynn’s Angels, a mail order company in Riverside, Calif. “We came to realize this didn’t get us where we wanted to go so there is more of an interest in spiritual things.”

Freeman also said belief in angels is not as fantastic as some critics would claim.

“People are so willing to believe we’re visited by people from outer space, why can’t they believe we’re visited by people from inner space--so to speak.”