Christianity and Astrology
Christianity and Astrology
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Historically, astrology was integrated into the church along with other aspects of Hellenistic civilization. From time to time, various Christian thinkers worried about the tension between free will and the apparent determinism of astrology, but by and large the science of the stars occupied an honorable position in the Western tradition. Although some of the biblical prophets disparaged stargazing, the Three Wise Men were clearly astrologers, and in certain other scriptural passages it was evident that God regularly used heavenly signs to instruct the faithful.
Despite certain tensions between them, astrology and Christianity were not separated until the fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century. For various reasons, but particularly because of astrology’s association with metaphysical religion (e.g., the New Age movement), fundamentalists—and, later, most other varieties of conservative Christians—rejected astrology as a delusion at best and as a tool of Satan at worst.