Decline of the Church
Church attendance and membership across the U.S. is declining. Belief in God is not. Seemingly, membership in a church is less and less seen as the vehicle through which God's meaning can be found. I assume there is no singular reason for this decline in the church as the pathway to religious living. Ironically, as less and less people use a sectarian church as the foundation for their religious beliefs, the 'true believers' become more angry, more radical, more hell bent on using political means to enforce their beliefs on others.
I have examined my own life to try and understand why I too, not in any sudden petulant way, began to distance myself from organized religion. The more you live, if your life is not isolated in some sort of self constructed cocoon, the more injustices you see. And these varied injustices, you begin to realize, are virtually ignored by the churches. None of the major human rights battles in my time were church driven. None of the advanced enlightenment about many issues came from the church. This is not to say that no religious leaders from any denominations may not have played an important role on any of these ethical issues. They did, but almost always as isolated rebels of their church.
I think many began to question God communicates to us via inherited religion. I think many began to be aghast at how strong a role organized religion plays in the worst atrocities of war and as the cause of war itself. Lincoln wrestled with this during our Civil War: "Both parties deprecated war....and the war came....Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other...with malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.....". Therein lies the catch, just how does God give us the ability to see the right? For me the universe is a God created miracle, a miracle being something beyond human reason to understand. God's native tongue is not to be found in inherited scriptures, or from the tongues of human titled religious leaders, but in facts revealed through science. There have been so many thousands of instances where religious leaders have peddled falsity about so many things as to render the notion that they are divinely inspired to be preposterous. I can't build my own religious beliefs around such illogical nonsense. Whatever God is He is not some sort of partisan Idiot appointing buffoons as His emissaries to us. You try to keep the faith, but at some point sitting through a church service began to seem artificial, insincere, useless, disingenuous, self serving, and frankly unreal. You sit there and wonder just what the hell is this accomplishing? You start questioning the music: all that singing doesn't accomplish a damn thing; neither does all that praying; neither do all the church socials, the bible studies, the expenditure of money to support preachers and the building of glittering cathedrals. Just the cost of maintaining these glittering offerings to God is obscene. It was like let us pray for the poor and spend our money on anything and everything but the poor, except for some small miniscule portion of the budget. If anyone thinks some charities are top heavy scams, organized religion is in the lead.
You also begin to note that the more religious a country, the more aggressive the country tends to be. While Europe became less church oriented, America went the other way and of course which country has been more warlike across the globe than the United States? If the Vietnam War did anything for me, it forced me to see the absolute evil in what we did to that country. How could I have ever supported that kind of venture so enthusiastically for so many years? How could a country within which I had thrived so well, do something so wrong? Slowly, ever so slowly I realized it was religious dogma, domino theories, manifest destiny bullshit enveloped in some sort of 'better than thou' mentality, and blind patriotism which was driving all of this. All of this energetic aggressiveness, this intolerance toward others, this blind eye to the Golden rule, this recourse to violence as a means to an end----all of this stuff was coming from the religious RIGHT. I came to see these people as the religious WRONG. I have read scripture and in more than one religion, and none of these mind sets emanated from Christ or any other major historical religious prophet. The religious right has nothing much in common with real Christianity. Why didn't religious organizations stop this country from ever attacking Vietnam? Why did they do next to nothing to stop the invasion of Iraq? the Crusades? Slavery? Women's rights? the dozens of invasions of South American countries? Then when war commences and young people die like flies, it shifts to some sort of guilt ridden cry of 'support the troops'. Support the troops? The time to support them was not to send them into an immoral war. The murder, impoverishment, and insecurity peddled by Hussein pales in comparison to the havoc we have generated across Iraq. The only way to support the troops is not to send them into immoral wars and to bring them home if there. I hate slick religion----support an immoral war and then justify continuing it by the battle cry of 'support our troops' This is nothing more than a larger version of the mother who supports her son no matter what he is up to: "I mean, he joined a gang, so what could I do but get him an assault weapon in hopes he could kill more effectively and not be killed himself. I am sorry for all the kids he killed but I just wanted to protect my boy." I guess Mother of the Year in one instance and Patriot of the Year in the larger case scenario. But a whole lot of dead innocent victims when all is said and done.
And it just gets worse. Now, these same 'purist' elements of organized religion, almost to a man/woman support torture of prisoners because it 'protects' our country. Is there really anyone, who has ever read scripture, who thinks Jesus would support torturing prisoners? It's an absurdity unless you belong to the religious right, in which it is reduced to 'well, I think it works'. Imagine what this new 'religious principle' does to the consequences of our own captured soldiers. Imagine how many millions of new recruits this grotesque spectacle of Middle Ages barbarianism generates across the globe. How did organized religion, increasingly dominated by the 'purist' elements, ever get to be the front for war, prejudice, intolerance, torture,assault weapons proliferation, irresponsible reproductive practices, and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, ever get to be the image of organized religion?
Is organized religion losing members? I hope so. Enough is enough. Let's just go back to the Golden Rule, cut out all this unethical bullshit camouflaged as religion, and begin to promote ethics on the basis of the Golden Rule---to lead by example, to rearrange our national priorities, to become more pure in spirit toward all of humanity, to work together to protect our environment. This created Universe, via God's created process of evolution, is the basis for all life in all it's forms. Humans, short of mental disease, understand right from wrong. The Golden Rule is inherent in the ethical nature of man. Everyone, everywhere understands the Golden Rule. We all, everyone, everywhere, need to do the right, as God has given us to see the right via this Rule. God does speak to us, it is wired in our genetics. It is there, in all of us, yet we just find reasons to do wrong and then try to call it doing right. OUR BAD. Let us not pray, but understand our duty to the Golden Rule. God's purpose is right there, a part of each of us. All the stuff we might do to strengthen our allegiance to the Golden rule is good. All the stuff we do to get around the Golden Rule is bad. Church attendance has declined in part because they too often, for too long, have been the instrument and excuse to ignore the Golden Rule.
