Eric Berg's answers to a Christian critic

The Chapel Guardian have uncovered an interesting corner of cyberspace that shows a curious possible sea change in the definition of what Chapel of Awareness is.

Chapel of Awareness was founded by Reverend Larr under the name Chapel of Awareness Spiritual Church. Around January, Friends of Chapel's Reverend Eric Berg answered a Christian critic's commentary about what he saw on the front of the building

The critic's comments are here at this link: The Church of Evolutionary Karmic Auras–and More!

What the critic has to say isn't an issue for Chapel Guardian; everyone has a right to an opinion. Eric, though, never directly answers the critic's repeated use of the term "spiritual". Instead, he addresses the differences between Spiritualists and "Spiritism," which he claims is "more occult."

Since the Friends of Chapel takeover, published Chapel of Awareness material has increasingly used "Spiritualist Church" as part of Chapel's name, and Eric explains: "While Spirtualists [sic] practice similar things to new agers, it is a religion dating back maybe 100 years. Typical Spiritualists are devoutly Christian, believing only that one may communicate with people after they go to heaven, so the choice of the term "church' is a natural one. Perhaps you were thinking of Spiritism which is much more occult"

So what is Chapel of Awareness anymore? Eric's explanation of Chapel to the blogger seems to emphasize spiritualists, when the blogger never took issue with that term in his criticism. Chapel leadership now continue to apparently phase in the name, "Chapel of Awareness Spiritualist Church", when that is not what Reverend Larr founded. The Friends of Chapel leadership, for example, titles most of Chapel's website pages as "Spiritualist Churches near San Diego | Chapel of Awareness", and some recent mailings from the Friends of Chapel leadership also have used "spiritualist" in the Chapel's title and descriptions.

So the Chapel Guardian must ask the Friends of Chapel leadership --- in direct relation to what Reverend Larr's founding principles were --- is Chapel officially now a Spiritualist church? Is it now aligning with one religion, Christianity, at least as Eric explained it, as opposed to the open philosophy that Reverend Larr based the organization on?

This question is made even more important with Eric's closing statement in his response: "Advertising the teaching of evolution at a church *does* sounds [sic] funny."

To be fair, Eric did also say: "Lastly, the founder was a paleantologist [sic] and astronomer, and loved science. As a result he wanted those who ran the organization to have a solid grasp of the basic scientific concepts such as evolution." That is of course true. But why not defend the Chapel's principle of promoting the idea that a church can indeed cover evolution as a principle, rather than saying it "sounds funny"?