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Has the Christian faith been fundamentalised and radicalised?

Started by David Pinnegar, December 19, 2015, 05:02:05 PM

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David Pinnegar

I was at a confirmation service a few weeks ago and was sent into apoplexy by the banality of the lyrics of what were called "songs" accompanied by percussion beats and any tunefulness at best approaching only a dirge. It was the debasement of culture to the worst degree possible and anyone with any intellect would have run out screaming.

When I was young, I belonged to a youth fellowship  . . . and the people from this generation including teenage girls who reported seeing the face of the devil looking in at them through their bedroom window and who loved Jesus really to the extent of being their imaginary boyfriend . . . are now grown up, and from services I've attended in the past few years really haven't grown beyond that idea.

I overheard a retired Bishop recently talking about his experience coming into a parish relating how he had been asked by his congregation "Your predecessor talked about God. What's all this stuff about Jesus?"

The Church that I'm experiencing now seems to be rather a different place to the church that many of us experienced in our youth before we joined youth fellowships . . . We learned about God through what Jesus taught and we worshipped God as God. But now we seem to worship our teacher as God.

We look sideways at Islam bemoaning "radicalisation" and "fundamentalism" - which really means literalism without examination of language and interpretation in the context of the Creator creating . . . - and the willingness of Muslims to worship their teacher as God.

Yet when we see such a mote in the eye of Islam are we not overlooking the beam in the eye of Christianity?

Both religions have debased to the simple, to appeal to the first rung of getting bums on seats, and in not providing a stairway from that path isn't it of no surprise to see the texts and religions in conflict?

In many ways I wonder if Christianity is being disseminated backwards and in a manner that encourages its beleifs more as a superstition - "Love Jesus and his Holy Spirit will work miracles for you" - every day if you pray to him . . .

So people are attracted to the Majic Man.

When we learn the creation of numbers at school we start with 1 and 1 and we come to know that that makes 2.

The invisible and all powerful thing in this, which is overlooked, is that 1 stays 1 for ever even if it meets another 1, nothing happens without their operand . . . "+" and as soon as we understand "+" we can start to understand the work of the Creator resulting in two . . . and the wonder of "x" which breeds life as soon as we get past the number 1, as 1x1 is no more than 1.

In this mathematics we learn about the Creator God creating. Two numbers have to love each other as themselves to be willing to be transformed into bigger and more useful numbers.

There's no maJic in this, nothing supernatural. It's all common sense and can be understood by anyone.

But it's the power of the supernatural that seems the attraction now, praying and obeying the communication of the Holy Spirit and witness of healing . . . That's great, but for most of us it doesn't happen every day, which is why I believe many have run from the churches screaming, rejecting them and leaving them to die . . . whilst those that remain frenzy to the music of percussion bands and hypnotic dirges in pleadings for their imaginary boyfriend to come and do it for them.

Meanwhile, jealousies arise between the boyfriends . . . and exclusion results and war ensues.

In the mathematics of 1, there's something very maJic . . . but we don't teach it to kids at primary school, leaving it till much later. It's the square root of -1 . . . which we call "j".

J is a maJic number that enables music to fill the air around you. Can you not hear the music? It's there - but you have to have a radio to switch on to hear it. Radios are great, but it's been a long process for the operands + and x to bring everything together along the way to make radios happen. I believe that many believe they can hear the music without necessarily having a reliable radio on which to listen and uncertainties of the signal received cause uncreation to happen rather than the creation that anyone can see in the processes of "+" and "x" with 1+1=2 and 2x2=4 leading to all.

The J of religion might possibly usefully kept where perhaps it used to be, learned after the letter C and G in understanding of the Creator God.

The power of the Creator God to bring peoples together to create is the true magic of our religions.

Does anyone else feel that they have experienced such a shift of focus in recent decades?

Best wishes

David P

David Drinkell

It's interesting that the two types of church which seem consistently to be showing growth are the "happy-clappy" ones and the cathedrals.  In the former, practices may well bear out what you say and even highly intellectual types may seem to leave their brains outside.  In the latter, the message is deeper, the mystery more profound and the casual worshipper can partake without being singled out.  The Dean of York remarked recently that many seekers find themselves comfortable in a cathedral although their courage might fail them in many parish churches. 

JBR

I feel that it is a much wider phenomenon than just religion.  In my opinion it is the 'dumbing down' of British society that has been taking place since the 1950s - throughout my entire lifetime, in fact.  This, of course, is as a result of a number of factors.
A missionary from Yorkshire to the primitive people of Lancashire

David Pinnegar

One wonders why this thread hasn't raised controversy. I suspect, however, that the obvious partisan front that the churches promote through the worship of the teacher as God, and which ordinary people don't have the tools to interpret or bother to give time to understanding on account of the disputes caused, has simply created an irrelevance of the perception of God, and atheists in their droves.

Best wishes

David P

Janner

Quote from: David Pinnegar on December 19, 2015, 05:02:05 PM
I was at a confirmation service a few weeks ago and was sent into apoplexy by the banality of the lyrics of what were called "songs" accompanied by percussion beats and any tunefulness at best approaching only a dirge. It was the debasement of culture to the worst degree possible and anyone with any intellect would have run out screaming.

..........

Best wishes

David P

For a long time now I have been mulling over the services at my parish church and, quite by coincidence, some time ago I decided that if I had to settle on one word to describe them it would be 'banal.' So for me David you have hit that particular nail squarely on the head.

Quote from: David Pinnegar on December 21, 2015, 08:24:05 PM
One wonders why this thread hasn't raised controversy..........................................................

Best wishes

David P

The real controversy must surely be about how and why services have become so banal. I would suggest there are many factors, some which could have been avoided by the church (in its general meaning of the C of E) and some which could not.

On a lighter note,

Best wishes to all for a very happy Christmas.

J

David Pinnegar

#5
The sermon at a carol service I went to recently was universally questioned, doing nothing to persuade those who come to Church just once a year to come more often. What do priests think they are doing?

Without a ceremonial crib perhaps into which a baby could have been presented symbolically, the sermon was much more abstract. It began . . .

"JESUS is here!"

"Jesus is HERE!"

"Jesus IS here!"

and continued without much to make Jesus any more visible, real or apparent than he was before and for one, in the absence of a material reality before my eyes I really couldn't be persuaded that I was witness to the presence of any supernatural manifestation in the building that afternoon.

If the sermon was preaching to the converted then perhaps the converted heard what they wanted to hear. But that afternoon was the afternoon when for once in the year there was a congregation of 79 instead of 20. I doubt whether the other 59 people will do anything other than go to another service as a matter of duty and comforting attachment to the past next Christmas, and yet another church will close along the way.

Why in the insistent peddling of nonsenses is the Church allowing its people to be robbed of its churches?

At the church to which I went for the Midnight service on Christmas Eve, the sermon did nothing but assert the historical fact that the birth and life of no-one other than Jesus had been so well documented in the history of mankind. Perhaps my ears are deaf, my eyes are blind and dead is my mind, but the celebration of the Mystery of Christmas didn't this year inspire much enthusiasm for celebration.

Best wishes

David P

JBR

Perhaps they could get some guitars and drums in?

(Sorry.  Bad joke!)
A missionary from Yorkshire to the primitive people of Lancashire