in the meantime

The church of the future therefore, needs to go back to the first century and try again. Back to when we had the teachings of Jesus in its infancy— before His stories became exaggerated and before new stories were created by the new testament writers to further their cause—which however, was totally justifiable at the time as it was the only way for their religion to survive in that era.

The problem is, we are no longer living in that era, so we need to go back to that time and discover ‘Jesus the person’ once again, keeping in mind that the gospel writers were merely painting a portrait, not using a camera. If we can do this, we will go a long way in finding the ‘church of the future’—one that rejects a religion of fear, close-mindedness, and self-deception of the past, and replaces it with an honest and living faith of the future.

Jesus said there were higher understandings to be realised at a later time when, in John's account of his life, he told his listeners that he had "much more to say to you, more than you can now bear." (John 16:12) therefore implying that there would be a later time when such understanding would be possible, that time will be, when human growth has finally learned to respond to inside prompting and no longer feels constrained to parrot and conform to the socially familiar.

I believe this is a natural progression and we will get there, but until then, I won’t have much to do with the churches of today. We will always of course, still go to celebrate and validate friends and relatives rights of passage—where people are ‘hatched, matched, or dispatched’ through its ceremonies to be sure, but the ritual of going each and every week to worship as we have done in the past, I do not think will survive.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace

-  Sri Chinmony Ghose

we need religion however

Huston Smith says. ‘Historically, religion has given people another world to live in, a world more adaptive to the human spirit. Of course, not everything about these religions is wise.

Their social patterns, for example—master -slave, caste, and gender relations—have been adopted from the mores of their time. But in their view of the nature of reality, there is nothing in either modernity or postmodernity that rivals them."

spirituality = religion – prejudice

therefore

spirituality + prejudice = religion

-  MiesterX

breaking up from within

Along with the eastern religions which I mentioned earlier, other Christian churches have also sprung up to fill this void, with many people moving toward Protestantism. The Catholic Church has in response made some token concessions (rather than risk losing the rest of it’s population base) to place the bible into some sort of context that we can recognise in today’s world. It has even acknowledged some of its many contradictions and straight out falsities from days gone by, but continues to be preoccupied in giving black and white answers in an ultimately grey world. This may work for the right wing believers who need to fill their insecurity with certainty (by the way, why is it these churches who claim to have the answers don’t allow any questions?) anyhow, while they refuse to progress, they will never reach secular society as a whole, let alone my liberal viewpoint.

In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  -  J.H. Newman

partners in crime

Let me note at this juncture that the apple hasn't fallen far from that lofty pedestal with the fundamentalist Christians who are riding around in their four wheel drives and trucks draped in American flags who judge the entire world through the lenses of an absolute creed in a man who died for our sins.

One paradigm, one set of absolutes.

They and the Catholic Church who seem far more eager to expend energy defending their limited truth than to see its holy words for what they are—mere pointers towards a reality of the past which cannot be taken into our day and age in a literal way. The extent to which the Catholic Church has gone to keep information from the masses is riddled throughout history. It initially denied Charles Darwin’s argument for evolution with vigour and took 340 years to change its mind!!!
 

We are no longer being taught to think...only to count. With virtue and wisdom no longer of value. Once you stop asking questions, you loose the capability to generate the answers.  -  Decadence TV series

now I'm getting angry

This leads me to sinking the boot into what I feel is one of the biggest offenders, and one of the best examples of hypocrisy throughout history, Catholicism. The Catholic Church has been (and still is) in a position of influence. Despite this, it has historically, been willing to criticise, marginalise and even expel its most creative thinkers.

For example, Galileo dared to say that the Earth revolved around the sun, which (contrary to Catholic belief) meant the universe did not in fact revolve around us. Galileo was therefore condemned to death as a heretic. In order to save his life, he was given the opportunity to recant, which he decided to accept.

Perhaps the full acceptance of his idea was not complete until December 1991, when the Vatican finally admitted officially that Galileo had been right and that the Church, as well as its interpretation of the Bible, had been wrong all along. And, as if to prove that it inhabits another planet, this institution still even believes in Adam and Eve, Noah and his Ark and all those implausible (from a scientific perspective) bible stories as literal rather than symbolic. At least the Orthodox and Muslim religions who both share these same stories and also take them literally, simply believe God over Science—their inability to question may reveal they have no confidence their belief system would survive such an inquiry, but at least they still have their integrity and do not try to bend the facts to make their spiritual ideals match up with an incompatible post-modern word.

What if the Hokey-Pokey is REALLY what it's all about?