Skip to main content

When religion and spirituality collide


For centuries, faith was top-down: Spiritual power flowed from pope to the faithful, archbishop to Anglicans, priest to the pious, pastor to congregation. This has changed as regular people confidently assert that spirituality is a grass-roots adventure of seeking God, a journey of insight and inspiration involving authenticity and purpose that might or might not happen in a church, synagogue or mosque. Spirituality is an expression of bottom-up faith and does not always fit into accepted patterns of theology or practice.

Fearing this change, however, many religious bodies, such as the Anglican Communion, increasingly fixate on order and control, leading them to reassert hierarchical authority and be less responsive to the longings of those they supposedly serve. And that will push religion further into its spiral of irrelevance and decline. . . The gap between spirit and institution is not only problematic for religious organizations. The gap exists in business, where work and craft have been replaced by venture capital and profitability; in politics, where the common good and democracy are crushed by partisanship and corporate money; in education, where critical thought and the humanities are sacrificed to test scores.

Read complete article at - http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/when-religion-and-spirituality-collide/2012/04/16/gIQABv56LT_story_1.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did they lay their coats at Saul's feet?

The witnesses, laying their coats at the feet of Saul, were the men that would cast the first stones at Stephen in Acts 7. Why did they all lay their coats at Saul’s feet? The Talmud contains a very interesting account of the act of stoning that may provide the answer. “When the trial was over, they take him [the condemned person] out to be stoned. The place of stoning was at a distance from the court, as it is said, ‘Take out the one who has cursed.’ [i] A man stands at the entrance of the court; in his hand is a signaling flag [Hebrew   sudarin = sudar , ‘scarf, sweater’]. A horseman was stationed far away but within sight of him. If one [of the judges] says, ‘I have something [more] to say in his favor,’ he [the signaler] waves the   sudarin , and the horseman runs and stops them [from stoning him]. Even if [the condemned person] himself says, ‘I have something to say in my favor,’ they bring him back, even four of five times, only provided that there is some substance to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Human Lives are Valued more than Religious Institutions and Rituals

Human lives are valued more than religious institutions and rituals by the unnamed god in the first account in Genesis . That message is repeated throughout the  Hebrew Scriptures  and the  teachings of Jesus  in the  Synoptic Gospels. Read the complete short articles at - https://mailchi.mp/2116c809b552/human-lives-are-valued-more-than-religious-institutions-and-rituals
Post a Comment
Read more

Which Jesus Model Are You Using?

  Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording. Their linguistic models of Jesus are similar, but not identical. John’s content and linguistic model of Jesus, stand in stark contrast to those of the Synoptic Gospels. Continue reading at - https://mailchi.mp/77dbb92ed693/which-jesus-model-are-you-using
Post a Comment
Read more