RELIGION / JOHN DART : Spiritual Warfare Sparks a Warning : Publishing: Author John Dawson warns that fighting demons has run amok. But some say God has given them technology to help with the task.

One of the hottest trends in the conservative Christian camp today is so-called spiritual warfare--fighting demons. But one of the movement’s founders, warning that the preoccupation with the devil has run amok, is now trying to redirect the troops toward more earthly problems of racial and cultural division.

Bristling with military metaphors and bravado, dozens of spiritual warfare books have appeared since 1990 outlining prayer strategies to break supposed satanic strongholds at home and abroad where evangelists make little headway. In addition, databases and information networks are aimed at analyzing and pinpointing the bastions of the powers of darkness.

At a national conference on spiritual warfare in Anaheim this week, about 1,200 ministers and lay leaders attended workshops on topics such as “How to Fight Evil Forces and Win.” They heartily cheered tales by speakers of winning converts by defeating demonic forces.

Conference organizer C. Peter Wagner of Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary predicted in an interview that he believes “God has given us a new spiritual technology to complete the task” of reaching everyone in the world with the gospel by the year 2000.

But John Dawson of Lake View Terrace, an acknowledged pioneer in spiritual warfare whose 1989 book, “Taking Our Cities for God,” introduced Wagner and others to notions of high-level combat with evil spirits, is clearly disturbed that he may have helped create a monster.

The term “territorial spirits” comes from a chapter in Dawson’s book that discusses satanic forces thought by some Christians to prevail over certain cities and regions.

“The paradox was,” Dawson said in an interview, “that half of that chapter was a warning about becoming too focused on demons.” Dawson closed the chapter by saying Jesus gave his disciples authority over enemy spirits but that He also urged: “Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

Dawson, international director of urban missions for Youth With a Mission, wrote that it was wrong for the evangelical world either to deny satanic activity altogether or to become preoccupied with it.

A potentially dangerous tendency in the movement, he now contends, would be an automatic association of a non-Anglo culture with the demonic. For instance, Dawson said ancient religious practices of Native Americans should not be presumed to be idolatrous or demonic.

“There are enormous amounts of redemptive truth within every culture that approach the core revelation of God’s nature and personality,” said Dawson, a New Zealand-born U.S. citizen who argues for reconciliation among races and cultures in “Healing America’s Wounds,” a book to be published in June.

Dawson founded the International Reconciliation Coalition, a group that has brought together Native Americans, missionaries and government officials for prayers of reconciliation at the site of a massacre of natives by whites, as well as whites and blacks praying together at places where slave auctions were once held.

“There is a tremendous amount of unresolved white guilt in America,” he said, a change in emphasis that may sit better with many Protestants and Catholics who are concerned with healing racial divisions but uncomfortable with Christians who talk in confident detail about confronting demons.

Dawson also said he believes that some spiritual warfare recruits are setting themselves up for a fall, especially charismatic and Pentecostal believers who tend to see supernatural manifestations as everyday events and place undue confidence in their new spiritual weapons.

“Now thousands of charismatic and Pentecostal believers are baffled when they rebuke the devil and nothing happens,” Dawson said.

“You get somebody who prays a big, macho prayer in New York City like, ‘We come against the spirit of Mammon in Jesus’ name!’ ” Dawson said. “They know they didn’t remove the powers of darkness from New York because they often experience a continuation of evil.

“What I’m saying is that God’s word never gave that much authority in the first place,” he said. “What they are calling the spirit of Mammon isn’t some kind of great big demon . . . but a systemic problem of dynamics within a culture, such as our preoccupation with materialism and the injustice that is a byproduct of that idolatry (of wealth).”

The spiritual warfare movement has drawn fire from other conservative Christian leaders who contend that Scripture does not give clear marching orders despite the much-quoted 6th chapter of Ephesians that advises believers to “put on the whole armor of God” to struggle against cosmic “principalities and powers.”

Author-Pastor John MacArthur of the large Grace Community Church in Sun Valley argues that biblically approved weapons against Satan are resistance to temptation as well as understanding and application of biblical teachings.

Likewise, the influential Calvary Chapel, pastored by the Rev. Chuck Smith, and its affiliated congregations “are not looking for wars to fight with Satan,” said the Rev. Oden Fong, an associate pastor on Smith’s staff. “Our emphasis is on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and giving the gospel to the world.”

There is little doubt, however, that the spiritual warfare concept has pumped excitement into some church groups and conventional prayer organizations.

The movement is not for the weak-kneed, said Sandra Varner, a Christian bookstore worker in Thornville, Ohio, who attended this week’s spiritual warfare conference at Anaheim’s Melodyland Christian Center.

“Of course, everybody gets R&R;,” said Varner, using the military jargon for furloughs, “but this is vital for the survival of Christianity in America.”

Varner suggested that any frivolous fascination with demons would have been wiped out by the talk on Tuesday by former San Fernando Valley resident George Otis Jr. of Lynnwood, Wash.

Otis, who said 15 Bible translators have disappeared in recent years, described his research interviews in the last four years with Hindu leaders, Buddhists in Nepal and “the brain trust of the New Age movement”--among other non-Christians he considers to be under satanic influence--amounted to “camping out in the heart of darkness.”

Dick Eastman, who moved his international Every Home for Christ headquarters from Chatsworth to Colorado Springs in 1991, told the conference of growing success by his door-to-door, literature-distributing organization. It collected 206,000 decision cards expressing interest in Christianity five years ago but received 665,292 cards during 1993, he said.

Although Eastman used some of the militant slogans of spiritual warfare in addressing the conference, he emphasized the more traditional Christian goal of intimacy with God in prayer.

To avoid being “casualties” in spiritual warfare, advised Eastman, “the further we move into the spirit dimension the closer we need to be to God.”

Dawson, who also spoke at the conference, said that for some figures in the movement it is “a change of metaphor without a change of theology.”

Dawson has some allies in the movement for his reconciliation quest--nearly 70 Native Americans registered for the conference.

“You can rebuke the devil until you turn blue, but God will allow the continuing infestation of the demonic (in the culture) until there is order, justice and reconciliation,” he said.