9-5-10 Have organized religions simply run their course?
We’re not stuck with them, you know, just because they’ve been around for thousands of years, employ masses of people, convene community, exercise formidable political clout, declare dominion over science, control valuable real estate, and claim their sacred texts to be direct from God.
As a person of faith who is not religious, I do honor religions for offering us ways to come together in recognition that God is, and I fully acknowledge the good work these institutions do. But organized religions also generate a sense of arrogant entitlement and false righteousness in followers that, in God’s name, excuses discord and violence – as well as making followers vulnerable to political, social and sexual exploitation by the diverse likes of Glenn Beck, Pope Benedict XVI, and Osama bin Laden.
Isn’t it time we ask ourselves if organized religions, as they are currently at work in the world, are still the best ways for us to come together in God’s presence–or are they are simply the way we’re most used to? Why do we become religious in the first place? Do we believe what our religion tells us is true, or are we more interested in its offer of institutionalized structure and comfort? Do we sign on to be, say, an Episcopalian or a Saktas or a Mahayana because these sects offer us ways to make the best use of our working partnerships with the Almighty, or do we sign on mostly to avoid the unsettling reality that God is unknowable, death is mystery, and there is no instruction manual for life?
A quick side word here about the devil. I see life as a choice between two ways of being: one where we are open to reality in God’s company; and one in which we turn away from reality for our own emotional and intellectual comfort. So when I talk about the devil, it’s not as an entity living somewhere hot, but as whatever weakens our grasp of reality in favor of what we’d be more comfortable with.
As far as I can tell from the outside, people involve themselves with organized religions for a variety of reasons, some of which seem good (a longing to feel part of a productive community, a way to strengthen their partnerships with God, a way to do good works); and some of which seem bad (habit, social pressure, fear, an intolerance for ambivalence).
On some days (and today must be one), I see organized religions’ ways of organizing and structuring our individual partnerships with God as among the devil’s most effective strategies. Why? Because, to some degree, having one’s relationship with God organized by religion weakens one’s ability to face the world as it actually is. Participating in organized religion also siphons off the energy, time and money people spend maintaining religious organizations that could be more usefully spent tackling today’s real world problems.
Oh dear, organized religion as the devil’s tool. If Glenn Beck is right (or God has no sense of humor), I am so going to hell. Yet – gulp – I’d still like to suggest that organized religions, as they function today, often work to weaken faith – to diminish the reach and power of our working partnerships with God, the great Whatever.
I recognize that many people of faith (including myself) have a need to gather together in God’s name – to seek the shelter and comfort of congregation. But please, do ask yourself if today’s organized religions still function as truly productive ways to do this? Would you rather die having been active in your church or mosque or synagogue, or active – as God’s partner – in doing your best to be useful out there in the real world?
Tags: devil, faith, fathering in God's name, Glen Beck, God, God's sense of humor, organized religion, religion, unconventional faith
You are in good company.
“Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother’s, or his brother’s brother’s God.” Emerson
I will begin my answer by providing the conclusion I have reachd in the chapter of my unpublished work titled: “Does the Christian Religion practice exactly what the Bible teaches?”
“Traditional religion neesd to change if it is to survive and be the guiding force in our lives. It could do so without sacrificing the fundamental belief that Christ is the Son of God, and the Bible as the word of God. The Christian Church would have to project the image of recognition of the Bible as “Biblical” rather than literal truth. We need to recognize the Bible as an honest interpretation and translation of the record of creation and/or evolution; and of the lives of Holy people and of Christ, Jesus, the Son of God.. The Church must also prtactice what is taught in the Bible by refraining from judgment. It would have to relinquish the coercion through guilt from not believeing in Christ, and of viewing others as not being good Christians because they are unable to live the life that Christ represents. The use of fear of eternal damnation and the loss of salvation for not being a Christian is also one of the lessons that the Church must sacrifice, if it is to retain its relevnce in this new millinneum.
The Church would have to be less selective of passages in the Bible that support the claim of the Christian religion as the only true faith, and it must take on the task of examining the true nature of God and, [I believe] the ‘duality’ of the deity. The Church must become more relevant to the spiritual needs of people by recognizing the difference between religion and spirituality. It must feed the spiritual hunger and passion that currently exists in the mjority of all humans”.
The Church must relinquish practices that tend to restrict the development pf true personal relationships with God, through encouraging believers to focus almost entirely on Jesus, despite our acceptance of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Church should heed the words of Jesus as stated in John 6:44 and 45: “No man can come unto me, except the Father which has sent me draw him: And I will raise him up on the last day;” and ” “And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.” These statements, which are repeated in other passages in the Bible, appear to suggest that Jesus promoted a relationship with the Father, God, as a requirement for Christians.
I suspect that one of the problems of the Christian Church flows from the Christian belief that man was created in God’s image, which appears to be accepted as God’s physical image. In doing so, the Church has adopted a kind of single-mindedness that might be placing human limits on the Almighty God, we say we believe in. We appear to have dismissed the term “After his kind” that is used to describe cattle, beast, fowl, creeping thing and every creature, and we have coveted the term in a manner that gives it a different meaning when applied to man. We seem to accept that everything else is different from God, physically, but we claim physical similarity only for ourselves. Being created in God’s image might mean that we are closer in “likeness” than any other Being or thing to God, but the similarities to be considered might be the blessing of wisdom; the ability to think, reason and investigate; to form a society; to worship,; to love, and to have faith. It is in this manner that, I believe, man is created inGod’s “likeness”, and have been given a measure of primacy over all other living creatures and things. Although there are some similarities between man and some of the other animals (including homosexual practices), man’s mental capabilities prove us to be superior and perhaps closer to God’s “likeness”.
Further evidence in the Bible that suggests we are not created in God’s image could be found in Phillipians 2: 5 – 8 in the words: “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Who, being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men; And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
The problems of the Christian Church could also be arising from a misunderstanding born of the acceptance of the literal translation of the term “dominion” as used in Genesis 1: 28, along with the literal translation of the term “subdue”, from the same reference, that has misled the Church. The Thesaurus gives the word “possession” as a substitute for “dominion” and it offers the term “soften” and also “”tone down” as substitutes for “subdue”.Perhaps the words of Genesis meant that man was to become caretakers with temporary ownership, and being given the faciliities to “soften” the harshness of its environment and to tone down the the dangers presented to human life, that man was granted “dominion” over the earth and directed to “subdue it”.
If the Church sould deal successfully with the things addressed above, it could, probably regain its true usefulness in our society (Bible references are from the Official King James Version).
Great question! And timely.
The quick answer: No.
The answer for me personally: Yeah, pretty much.
I guess I would re-phrase the answer. It’s not that organized religion has simply run its course, it’s that organized religion is simply running its course.
Phyllis Tickle (love the name!) is a writer popular with “emergence” Christians. Her latest book notes that Christianity goes through major changes every 500 years or so. We are, she says, in the midst of one of those great changes now. The Bible, from a somewhat objective point of view, is the documentation — including a lot of argument — of the religious evolution of a particular ancient culture over a period of 1200 years or so. Who was Jesus in that tradition if not the ultimate turner of tables (literally and figuratively)? Moses, the prophets and the Apostles are all agents of religious change who meet with considerable, often lethal, opposition from their respective religious establishments—establishments that usually grew out of the previous set of religious rabble-rousers. Much the same story, I think, plays out in all religions.
Philip Clayton, theologian and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University recently wrote on his blog: “We realize that “cultural Christianity” — religious belief and practice that’s “just obvious” because it’s been inherited from one’s parents and culture — is largely a thing of the past. The burden is now on believers to show why their tradition is still relevant in today’s world. As we know, many of our friends and critics doubt that it still is.”
I’m a “cultural Christian”. I’m someone who was born and baptized into, raised and indoctrinated in, and at one time actually employed as a part-time leader and teacher in mainline Protestant churches. But particularly my parents and grandparents also taught me to “take everything with a grain of salt”. No blind faith for Mrs. Johnston’s son! Looking back, I think I’ve always confronted Professor Clayton’s burden in my association with Christianity. The challenge of Christianity has deepened by relationship with That Which Is Greater or God. (But I’m not a Christian exclusivist. I see the world through Christian eyes and fully accept that others do not. I’m more interested in how they see than “converting” them to my view. I’m a lousy evangelist.)
But I don’t think organized religion, or religion at all for that matter, is done. Religion is a human institution. It is the public and communal response to our individual and private spiritual experience. I believe that experience is part of being human and is universal. Yet that private experience varies tremendously from person to person from extremely commanding to barely perceptible. A part of the experience is understanding, again highly variable, that we are interconnected. Religion is what connects us spiritually. At its best, religion enhances our individual spiritual experience communally. But, being a human institution created by and for people with highly variable sensibilities, religion is limited, fallible, and liable to change.
We are social animals and it is also in our nature to organize. I believe that new and different forms of religion are constantly being organized; mostly as evolutionary developments from existing traditions. As new forms are organized, older, less adaptable forms tumble into the history’s dustbin. It can be a slow, frustrating, not to mention contentious and all too often violent process. The Devil’s in the details, so to speak. But so is God. If Ms. Tickle is right and Christianity at least is going through tremendous change, we can’t yet know what form it will take because we are still in the process of imagining it. By that, I do NOT mean, we make up religion out of whole cloth. In spite of the ardent arguments of true believers and non-believers, religion is not primarily a rational (or irrational) process. It is a creative process. One of the most powerful places we meet God is in our imaginations where we are free to see what is good and possible in the next moment. This is a human process. But it is also a spiritual process.
Religion is constantly evolving along with human culture. We will always be reconciling our spiritual, rational and aesthetic sensibilities to the work of living. It’s who we are. But it is also where we meet who we might yet be.