BUUF Spring Equinox 2014 by Amy Eklund 11

Truth is like the fire at the heart of a many faced jewel.  Each angle shows a different aspect and a different color.  From: All Religions Are True by M. K. Ghandi

The statistics are damning. According to a recent CBS news report, for every person converted to Christianity in the U.S., four people leave the church. The Southern Baptist Convention expects to lose millions over the next 25 years. The last U.S. census reports that fewer people are attending church and declaring a religious affiliation. The Christian church in the modern western world is in steady decline.

Many of my fellow pastors complain that their congregations are aging with no young people coming to grace the pews. My own kids, now in their thirties, do not attend church. They think the church is antiquated and obsolete, a clay tablet in a computer age.

It is my opinion that my kids are right.

What can we do to save Christianity? WE NEED TO GET OUT OF DENIAL. Modern consciousness, with its knowledge of the history of thought, psychology, anthropology, and comparative religion, combined with a scientific world view, can no longer support the notion that the Christian story (or for that matter the stories of Islam, Mormonism, Buddhism or any other of the great religions) is history. Religious leaders need to ‘gird their loins’ and admit what they already know. Christianity is a culturally specific product of the human spirit.

So, what do we have if we can no longer believe literally in the Christian Story? Primarily, we have our knowledge of the human spirit. We know that the organs of the human spirit are universal just as are the organs of the human body. Just as the pancreas universally releases insulin into the blood stream no matter whether one is Eskimo or Hawaiian Islander, the spiritual experiences arising out of the human spirit (soul, psyche) are universal, whether one be Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist.

It is the yearning of the spirit to give expression to its self that has caused humanity to bring forth the great religious stories. They are powerful revelations that mediate the movements of the soul and make sacred our life experiences. We need them. We just need to be honest about our stories and stop claiming that our story, or our religion, is the only truth. The Truth is in us, forged onto the template of the human soul by the mysterious forces that create and uphold life. So, let us stop the dangerous silliness of division in the religious world. Let us stop the arrogance of thinking only Christianity (or Sikhism, or Unitarian Universalism) has the answer. Let religious people work together to tell the sacred truth of human existence. Let us share the wisdom of Mohammed and the Buddha from our pulpits. Let us read from, the Upanishads, the Gnostic Gospels, the Tao Te Ching and the Gita. Let us tell the ancient stories of the world’s indigenous peoples. By learning to see the sacred in the other we can reclaim it in ourselves. This, in my opinion, is how we can save Christianity.

Peace,
Rev. Jim McConnell