Church-going, Going, Gone!

Michael Horan

Description

In Church-going, Going, Gone! Michael Horan argues that although the Christian church in Britain may be in terminal decline, that is not to be equated with a national decline in spiritual values. Most if not all people have some level of awareness of what he calls the 'Other-than-oneself', even though they have rejected, or never accepted, the church's now outdated teaching. Church-going, Going, Gone! is concerned less with teaching than with learning. The book provides atheists, agnostics and believers-in-exile, as well as those who have given little thought to belief, with a framework for collaborating as learners, working toward equality, peace and reconciliation, and dedicated to unselfish and imaginative social action. A new movement of the human spirit is beginning.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Reino Unido
• Philosophy
• United Kingdom
• Great Britain
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845408183
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title page
Church-Going, Going, Gone!
A Movement of the Human Spirit Begins
Michael Horan
imprint-academic.com



Publisher information
2015 digital version by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Michael Horan, 2015
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Originally published in the UK by
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Originally distributed in the USA by
Ingram Book Company,
One Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086, USA
Biblical quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version® copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton. All rights reserved.



Quotations
If someone comes to you and asks your help, you shall not turn him away with pious words, saying, ‘Have faith and take your troubles to God!’ You shall act as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in all the world who could help this man - only yourself.
-Moshe Leib of Sasov, Hasidic rabbi, d.1807
The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.
-Luke 17:21



Preface: Church-going is going
Whether or when the theological, political organisations known collectively as the Christian church in Britain [1] will finally wither and die cannot yet be known. It may well be that the question will be answered within a generation or two from now. [2]
Meanwhile, one possible future - in Britain at least, but other countries with an historically ‘Christian’ culture might give thought to this - could develop along these lines: the disestablished Church of England has lost its political status (bishops no longer sit in the Lords at Westminster) and has ceased to be the ‘national church’. Those who retain their Roman Catholic identity take for granted that they can now in conscience and with impunity ignore the impotent strictures of a paternalistic Vatican, although Rome maintains a nominal presence in this outpost of its empire. Nonconformist church-goers, whose forebears prided themselves on their centuries-old separatist, dissenting tradition, have dropped their divisive denominational labels, put their differences behind them, [3] and now join with newly-formed local groups of secular and Christian humanists, together with one-time members of the Church of England and of the Roman Catholic church, with a few liberal Jews perhaps, a Buddhist possibly, and maybe others. They meet, not in dedicated buildings, which have become too expensive to maintain, but in hired halls or in private homes, and not always on Sundays. There they share their insights, based on their beliefs in and experiences of what they variously call God or some other name for the ‘Other-than-oneself’, joining in informal celebration of joy and gratitude, and expression of their hopes and concerns. More and more of these groups are forming, and more and more people are attending them.
It is taken as read here that ‘spiritual’ communities such as these, or something like them, historically but no longer the church’s unique role, will continue to be important to many people. For them, worship and prayer - or whatever new words they coin to give meaning to joyous celebration and to meditation and quiet - will remain central to spiritual thought and practice, as a source of peace and personal renewal, and as an expression of spiritual and social values. However, over time and irreversibly, the traditional, outdated teachings of the Christian church will have been replaced by new concepts and language, none of it requiring individual or corporate acceptance as fixed or ‘official’ doctrine or dogma, or forming a prerequisite to membership.
This will be among the beginnings of an emergent movement of the human spirit, committed to personal growth, creating and maintaining loving relationships (both personally and socially), working toward equality, peace and reconciliation, and dedicated to unselfish and imaginative social action.
We are witnessing the terminal decline of the Christian church in Britain. However, the argument which follows is that ‘religion’ itself is far from dead. The church structure may be crumbling, the form of its teaching now seen to be irrelevant, but the essence of belief and spirituality remains.
We are in transition, moving towards a radically different future, in a time of unprecedented change. So this is not an end. It is a beginning.


1 By ‘the Christian church in Britain’ I mean British churches as a whole. Only when there is a need to refer to a specific church is its denominational name used. ‘The church’ is not to be read as a synonym for the Church of England, for example, as the press does, both regularly and misleadingly. While the focus of this book is on the British scene, other western countries whose culture, historically at least, has been based on a Christian tradition will do well to think about the implications of the argument within their own context.

2 A view taken by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, is that the Church of England could be one generation away from extinction if it cannot attract young people into its membership. It is a statement of the obvious, of course. His speech at the Shropshire churches conference was widely reported in British national newspapers and on their websites on 19 November 2013.

3 In this possible future, a few conservative evangelical congregations continue with their services, but their numbers are small, and are getting smaller. Within a generation or so these groups will also have gone. Meanwhile, they have an unfortunate and unfounded sense of being under threat from what they think of as a godless society. Their literalist and dogmatic biblical fundamentalism emphasises apocalyptic expectation; and a defensive belief in their being ‘the elect’ regrettably precludes dialogue with any whose beliefs are at variance with theirs.



Part One

Chapter 1: An invitation to the fulfilment society
This book is about belief and the practical relevance of belief. Its aim is to contribute to the growth of a new movement of the human spirit, based on the acceptance that the practices of traditional Christian faith are dying.
First, something that I believe. I believe that the issues explored in these pages are both urgent and important. Urgent, because our world, locally, nationally and internationally, is increasingly in need of solutions to increasingly complex problems, but time is not on our side if those problems are to be resolved. Important, because what I shall be calling spiritual values and beliefs (and which some will continue to think of as religious values and beliefs) have far more direct and practical relevance to these problems, including individuals’ personal problems, than the great majority of us have so far applied our hearts and minds and hands to.
An early task, therefore, will be to clarify if not define what is meant by spiritual values and spirituality, so that we can stop tripping over our language, and so resolve once and for all the historical believer/unbeliever dichotomy.
Moreover, I believe that these values are to be found far more widely in the population than is commonly supposed. Indeed it may even be said that to one extent or another, little or much, spiritual values are to be found somewhere in all people, aware or unaware, whether high or low in our consciousness.
It will be objected immediately that every day national newspapers and radio and television news programmes provide more than enough evidence to the contrary, with the darkest reports of evil actions. It may be that there is a potential for that in all of us.
Some will wish to pick up again the well-rehearsed discussion about the part that ‘religion’ has played across the centuries in confrontation and persecution and conflict and worse, citing Northern Ireland or Israel as evidence in our day. It may be questioned, of course, what is meant by ‘religion’ in this context, when it is possible to speak of an atheist Ulsterman who was a fanatical Protestant, for example; [1] or secular, non-observant Jews in Israel who quote the Hebrew scriptures to authenticate the borders of a land promised by God to the patriarch Abraham and to Moses the lawmaker and to their descendants. [2]
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, claims are made for an increase in belief in the occult, astrology, witchcraft and the so-called New Age cults. There may be some truth in that, and perhaps it needs to form a part of the exploration to find new meanings for belief and religion.
In spite of all of that, the evidence that will be presented here argues that a majority of Britons believe in some form of Ultimate Reality, whether they call it (him/her) ‘God’ or use some other name for the ‘Other-than-oneself’. The position is taken here that there is a spark of the ‘divine’ in every one of us - and here is the first opportunity for you to substitute your own word for divine, if you will - a spark which has to be nurtured and fanned into a flame.
That positive and optimistic view of humanity is held by Quakers, for example, who like to quote the words of their founder, George Fox: ‘walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one ’ [my emphasis]. [3] In more recent times a rabbi has asserted that ‘the most sublime idea I know is to see the trace of God in the face of the human other’. [4] A mirror image of that notion fi