I am embarking on a new writing project and to get started I am asking for help form as many people as possible. Most of my life I have functioned in one way or another insider the walls of religious institution. I was at an event last night and listened to people mouthing the words of the Great Thanksgiving, an order of worship for celebration of communion in the church. I wondered how many people were really paying attention to what they were saying and doing, or if it was a religious activity? Over the past few years I have become increasingly less comfortable with religion, and the ways it has invaded the church. Some of you may have even heard me say religion is killing the church. Well the time has come for me to do some more study and writing on the topic. I am beginning to write with the working title of Religion Must Die. How can you help? Let me know your thoughts.
What would you say is the difference between religion and the church?
How have you been hurt, offended, or just plain turned off by religion?
Why might religion be important?
Anything you would like to share regarding the topic?
Please take a few moments, or longer if you like, to share your thoughts. You can post them as a comment here, or you can e-mail me at revabouwens@verizon.net.
2 comments:
Hi Aaron:
I think that in order to do justice to this topic you need to also add a third category: the kingdom. It seems to me that the Kingdom is what Jesus was all about. The church was Jesus' one and only strategy in support of the kingdom. Religion might be defined as our attempt to systematize, codify, tame, and reduce to routine the demands of 1 and 2.
Religion tends to create systems that contain the same sins and errors found in our human institutions. For example: our UM system of having multiple levels of status in clergy and each one having a style of clergy garb and vestment that will identify what class we are in is just another power and pecking order system you would find in the secular world.
The only real way that religion has harmed me is by creating a system that is is often so boring that it is painful.
Pastor Aaron,
Here I am ensconsed in Fayetteville now and feeling sort of "lost in the middle of Lent." It sort of snuck upon me in the middle of medical concerns. I feel I should be more in tune with God but sometimes so far away because I question my connections with God versus the world. I think there is a personal angle as well as a church angle to religion that may be as important.
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