In the last Stonyhill Newsletter I concluded the three part series entitled "The Future of Mainline Churches in The 21st Century" with a brief discussion of the seven reforms that I believe are needed in all of the worlds mainline religions. I also included a brief overview of the rapidly growing progressive grassroots church movement that is springing up around the world. These progressive churches are attracting people looking for post-modern religious doctrines and scriptures that offer both intellectual integrity and a middlepath spirituality that makes sense to their 21st century consciousness.
To say that this three-part article generated a good deal of lively feedback and comments from readers over the last six weeks would be an understatement. Some readers agreed with the concepts and ideas discussed in the three articles, some disagreed or challenged them, but almost everyone who responded wanted to know if I personally thought Christianity would survive the 21st century. I thought a formal response to this question would be a good way to wrap up the series before moving on to other topics related to authentic spiritual growth and the maturation of our primitive egos.
As I pointed out in the three previous Newsletter articles, there are very few church leaders in any of the mainline religions that would deny that their churches are struggling with a critical decline in both membership and financial resources. The average age of pastors, priests, and active laity is often over sixty years of age, and the number of new clergy graduating from seminaries to replace dying and retiring clergy is well below the number required to insure that all churches have a resident pastor and the number of seminary candidates for ordained ministry are continuing to decline.
Given these well-documented realities, it is safe to say the future survival of our mainline churches beyond more than a few generations is doubtful. Despite the loud and defensive rhetoric of fundamental and conservative churches, it is clear that our mainline religions are rapidly losing religious and social relevance.
The future for our mainline religions is grim, but to answer the question posed by readers, I believe that we may be missing an important and powerful reality embedded in the human psyche. Throughout history, humans have demonstrated a deep spiritual hunger for mythical heroes* in whom we can find ultimate meaning and who offer a useful spiritual template for our own lives. Our spiritual heroes simply have to both embody an accurate reflection of our own deeply held human desire to become more than we are, and represent a meaningful spiritual archetype we can use as a model or pattern for our own life. It is also important to note that these mythical heroes do not "have" to be real or based on real people to exert a profound positive influence.
The life and ministry of the historical Jesus, the Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa have all had a significant influence on my spiritual formation, but I would also have to include Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda from Star Wars, and Isaac Asimov's famous robot R. Daniel Olivar. Each was an important spiritual teacher in my spiritual formation. But far-and-away the most powerful single influence that shaped my spiritual life was "grasshopper" the Buddhist Shaolin priest Kwai Chang Caine played by David Carodine in the 1970's TV series Kung Fu. More than any other, "grasshopper" was the spiritual teacher who encouraged me to walk the spiritual path in life.
I am convinced that Christianity has survived for 2000 years and will survive the 21st century not because the historical Jesus literally did all the things that traditional Christianity says he did, but because the mythological Christ that the institutional Christian Church "created" for humanity over a period of five hundred years became a powerful mythical hero and template; a spiritual example of what every human being could hope and aspire to become. Using the historical Jesus, the early Christian church "created" Jesus Christ to reflect the ultimate, superhuman, holy human being; the son of God himself.
For Jesus Christ to survive as one of our mythical heroes, however, I am convinced that he will need to a) be removed from the current destructive and embarrassing myth that he is the founder of a sin and shame based religion for humanity that offers spiritual salvation through his barbaric sacrificial death as the son of God, b) he will need to be taken out of the context of the current petty, jealous, angry, violent scriptural definitions of a revengeful God, and c) Christians will need to abandon the literal understanding of Jesus and come to understand how the historical person we know as Jesus was mythologized into the all-powerful Christ of faith by the early Christian church.
I believe that the age-old Christian message of hope and meaning "will" successfully survive the death of these traditional pre-modern faith beliefs. No relevant religion is ever based on the factual or historical literalness of its faith beliefs. Any religion that survives to influence humanity is always based on a mythology that offers its believers a spiritual message of hope.
Christianity, the religion "about" Jesus as Christ, has always been based on the radical and transformative ministry "of" Jesus; the man who brought a message of hope to the poor, the outcast, the sick, the prisoners, and to those marginalized by the culture in which he lived. His God was an unconditionally loving father fully present in a Kingdom of God that was real and present. His God was a God that did not recognize human definitions or boundaries that separated people or created sub-human categories. Jesus taught humanity to see the Kingdom of God that surrounds us. He taught, that unlike the stories in the Old Testament, God is unconditionally loving. The ministry of Jesus brought hope to those who had given up hope.
A religion that speaks to the potential future humanity of its members and brings hope and meaning does not need ancient, out-moded, pre-modern rigid faith beliefs to survive. It does not need to be an imperialistic religion that bullies others into unity of thought. It simply has to offer hope. Jesus taught his disciples about a way of life, not about how to start a new religion. Living a life of unconditional love and trusting in God was his religion of hope.
All that is needed for Christianity to survive the 21st century is a reinterpretation of the Christian myth to embrace a post-modern worldview. The old supernatural myths of a theistic God that sits in heaven and takes notes on whether we have been "good or bad" is a God that our human ancestors created and is no longer credible. We need to create a 21st century Christian mythology. We need to create a 21st century definition of God beyond theism. I believe that the ministry "of" Jesus that brought justice and unconditional love to so many people will continue to be a powerful religion of hope. But all of our mainline religions, including Christianity, will survive only if they are willing to undergo reform. Every path to the Creator is valid. The imperialistic claims regarding the superiority of Christianity as the only true religion must end.
There are those who fear that reform of our mainline religions will lead to the death of not only religion, but the death of God itself. This belief is a good example of the narcissism and arrogance of our primitive ego. There is no way that a simple human definition of God could ever lead to the death of the Initiating Consciousness of the universe. God is simply God. But how humanity understands God can make the difference between a world of unconditional love and enlightenment and a world filled with imperialistic violence.
The Christ of Christian faith is nothing more than a myth created by humans to attempt to capture the radical ministry "of" Jesus and preserved it for future generations of humanity as a message of hope and possibility. The ministry "of" Jesus brought far more to the mystery of spirituality than mere human creeds and religious beliefs. He taught us that we too could grow spiritually and learn to embrace a life of unconditional love, compassion, meaning, and purpose. Jesus the Christ represents the hope and belief that we too can evolve beyond our primitive ego and find the Christ nature within ourselves; the hope that we too can discover our essential or authentic observing ego self and learn to bring hope, unconditional love, and compassion to others.
Whether we are referring to our Christ nature, or our Buddha nature, we are referring to an authentic self based on a deeply self-aware observing ego; an enlightened spiritual consciousness that has evolved well beyond the outmoded knee-jerk beliefs of the current traditional mainline religions that were created by humanity's pre-modern collective primitive ego. This is the hope for our species that will allow Christianity to survive the 21st century.
* For an excellent treatment of the power of mythological spiritual teachers and the formation of religion see The Once and Future Christ of Faith: Promising Options Beyond the History-Faith Dichotomy, by Paul Alan Laughlin, The Fourth R, March-April, 2005
PERSONAL THOUGHTS
As I have tried to demonstrate in the last four issues of the Stonyhill Newsletter, bringing modern biblical scholarship into our understanding of religion and spirituality is essential if our goal is to successfully evolve an enlightened consciousness, and achieve the ability to manifest a sustainable compassion for others and the earth mother that birthed us.
I am going to try to continue to keep the feature articles in the Stonyhill Newsletter shorter and more easily digested by busy readers. I will try to break longer articles into a series of short articles like I have in the last four issues of the Newsletter. Shorter feature articles means that the subjects covered in any one issue of the Newsletter will require a more focused treatment of the subject material that I am writing about. Your questions, comments, and insights are both welcomed and valued, and are helpful to insure that the writing in each feature article is clear and inclusive.
I will continue to respond to questions and comments from readers as we deepen our discussions on spiritual consciousness, authentic spiritual growth, and the future of religion in future issues of the Stonyhill Newsletter.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
What does getting in touch with your Christ nature, or your Buddha nature, or your Mohammad nature, mean to you? What would you need to learn to become self-aware of, and pay attention to, in order to facilitate change in your current behaviors and manifest your Christ nature? Or your Buddha nature?
QUOTES
There is more to religion than a set of beliefs. There is religion's story or myth, enacted out daily and weekly in ritual, its ethical system, and its cultural dimension. The old supernatural story is no longer credible, but we can dispense with metaphysics and reinterpret the myth to fit in with our postmodern worldview. Religion is still needed----it has been made by us and can be reinvented by us."
Fourth R, May-June 2005, The God Problem, Nigel Leaves
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