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In the eyes of traditional church leaders, the popular authors who render angels into household pets, who invite readers to get in touch with their inner angel, or summon their own "angel psychotherapist," or view themselves as angels in training are trafficking in discount spirituality. And the churches are at a loss for a response. "What's troubling is that many religious leaders today acknowledge this but don't know what to do about it," admits George Landes, professor of Old Testament at Union Theological , Seminary. "They remain skeptical of the extravagance of angelology but don't know what to put in its place. It's a real struggle."
Even within the Roman Catholic Church, there is debate over how to handle this revival of interest. Angels are still important in Catholic devotions and are included in the new Catholic catechism. From childhood, Catholic children have learned the "Prayer to the Guardian Angel," and those who attended Catholic school were often told to leave a little room at their desks for their guardian angels. But the church remains suspicious of reports of supernatural interventions, notes Lawrence Cunningham, chairman of the theology department at Notre Dame. Cunningham has little use for the present popular fervor. "If people want to get in touch with their angels, they should help the poor. If they want to get in touch with their angels, they'd be a lot better off working at a soup kitchen than attending a seminar."
The emphasis on angels as divine intermediaries, theologians worry, just creates a greater distance from an ever more abstract God. And to the extent that angels are always benign spirits, it evades any reckoning with the struggle between good and evil. "I'm certain that if we are to solve the problems on earth, we will have to do it ourselves," says playwright Tony Kushner. The angel in his play in no way is meant to absolve humans of tough choices and hard spiritual work. "New Age theology says we live in a benign universe where all you have to do is ask an angel for help. This makes things like Sarajevo difficult to understand." Kushner is especially troubled by the suggestion that angels appear only to some people and not to others. "I find that horrendously offensive," he says. "The question is, why are you saved with your guardian angel and not the woman who was shot to death shielding her children in Brooklyn three weeks ago? That suggests a capricious divine force. If there is a God, he can't possibly work that way."
Most devotees of angels don't pretend to have found a way to confound Providence and repel disaster. They do, however, suggest that the very idea of angels seems to act as a means of grace. In Los Angeles, artist Jill D'Agnenica has been scattering angels all across the neighborhoods that were ravaged by riots last year. In April, on the first anniversary of the turmoil, D'Agnenica distributed four 12-in.-tall plaster magenta cherubs at a prominent African-American church. She has continued to set the brightly painted angels ! on street corners, at bus stops, on walls, in parks, atop trash piles and in empty lots, always 10 to the square mile -- 1,000 in all so far, with 3,600 more to go. "The experience of seeing an angel," she says, "or even more important, when word gets out, the act of looking for an angel, would remind each person of their place in the City of Angels."