Organized religion

  • Thread starter Thread starter catholic1seeks
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

catholic1seeks

Guest
Can someone explain to me the objections against organized religion? I don’t see how someone could be a against Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc. just because of its leadership structure and/or liturgical aspects. Or is it more to it than that?

? :confused:
 
Good question. I would ask those same folks how they would feel if we didn’t have an organized civil government, or if we didn’t have organizations in business, education, or just about everywhere else…Doesn’t really make any sense…
 
In my experience in many conversations on Protestant forums, it comes from a developed perversion in recent decades that since the Pharisees were organized and religious, that anything that resembles them is evil. Don’t ask me to explain the logic. :o
 
Then there is the Marxist reason to be against Organized Religion; seeing it as “religion is the opium of the masses.” Without these Organized Religions many would think people would begin to ‘think for themselves’ and that if no Organized Religions ever formed through the ages then their would be less Racism, and most certainly no Deaths due to Religious differences (Crusades, Jihads, ect.)
 
Totally private religion never gets the numbers to get together and do things, because nobody has anybody else to lean on or any heritage of spiritual experience. People forget or get discouraged easily, instead of being constantly reminded of God’s

Much “safer” for authoritarian governments, criminal groups, and so forth, if the people don’t think their lives have any cosmic meaning.
 
MarcoPolo said:
In my experience in many conversations on Protestant forums, it comes from a developed perversion in recent decades that since the Pharisees were organized and religious, that anything that resembles them is evil. Don’t ask me to explain the logic. :o
Click to expand...
On the surface it is a weak attempt to explain away their atheism. On the undersurface it goes straight to Mark 13;13 “Because of my name you will be hated by everyone…” But if you need a reference, simple read the books of Exodus and Leviticus to discover who first “organized” religon. The detail that God required is very explicit. Then read the description of the Last Supper in the gospels, and simply draw a line between the dots of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
God has not left man alone to worship God as man see’s fit. We always get it wrong when we go in that direction. Confussion, chaos, multiple explanations for the same text, multiple churches, multiple faiths, we recreate the tower of bable over and over again.
Man cannot worship God properly without God’s showing and telling us and even then, without the Holy Spirit intervening for us and lifting our prayers to God.
 
There are many answers to this question. One might be that we as Americans hold freedom to be special. The individual is important especially in law. For one to be in a group that holds particular views is difficult because they might be forced to use faith that they don’t have. Many look to so called churches to find something that agrees with their beliefs so they don’t have to use faith.
Others may just want to be able to express themselves without the fear of being wrong. Many just want to feel good about what they do and who they are with. Some want to be stimulated by sermons or music. What seems to be lacking in the search for truth is the work of Jesus Christ and what He did. It is a shame and a cause for prayer.

mdcpensive1
 
catholic1seeks said:
Can someone explain to me the objections against organized religion? I don’t see how someone could be a against Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc. just because of its leadership structure and/or liturgical aspects. Or is it more to it than that?

? :confused:
Click to expand...
In my experience those who do not like organized religion usually have a very personal reason for this decision. Some of them were hurt deeply by organized religion. (Some of the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy [Catholic or otherwise], some could have been forced through a sexual reeducation program by their church [or church going parents], etc) Some of them look at atrocities carried out in the name of organized religion (and no religion is innocent here) and cannot reconcile that with the teachings of the religion. Some of them may see that man corrupts everything and therefore feel that any organized religion must, inherently, be corrupt. There is no simple answer to this question and to pretend one exists is to do injustice to those who hold this view and cripple any attempts to evangelize or apologize those who hold it.
 
Simon_X said:
Good question. I would ask those same folks how they would feel if we didn’t have an organized civil government, or if we didn’t have organizations in business, education, or just about everywhere else…Doesn’t really make any sense…
Click to expand...
So you don’t mind then if I compare your religion to a business, school, or just about anything else since you just did right?
 
MarcoPolo said:
In my experience in many conversations on Protestant forums, it comes from a developed perversion in recent decades that since the Pharisees were organized and religious, that anything that resembles them is evil. Don’t ask me to explain the logic. :o
Click to expand...
This is interesting, I (personally) have never heard a protestant claim they didn’t like organized religion because if we’re going to be honest you cannot have a church (the physical building) that holds worship services without some type of organization. It might be a small organization, but it is organization none-the-less. Would you mind extrapolating a bit on what you’ve witnessed or giving us some links to conversations?
 
Drawmack said:
This is interesting, I (personally) have never heard a protestant claim they didn’t like organized religion because if we’re going to be honest you cannot have a church (the physical building) that holds worship services without some type of organization. It might be a small organization, but it is organization none-the-less. Would you mind extrapolating a bit on what you’ve witnessed or giving us some links to conversations?
Click to expand...
It’s more related to the Church hierarchy or any authority or any form of the Mass, there are cries of “legalism!!” for any suggested form, etc… I think it is more based on Church hierarchy, words of consecration, stuff like that. There’s a couple anti-organized Church threads on this page, for example. The word “institutional” gets thrown around a lot too. Here’s a thread demonstrating how “religion” has become a bad word too. Others have shared my observation.
 
Can someone explain to me the objections against organized religion? I don’t see how someone could be a against Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc. just because of its leadership structure and/or liturgical aspects. Or is it more to it than that?

I grew up in a household where both of my parents were agnostics and my grandparents were Hell fire and bimstone Baptists. I would suggest that the primary issue is a distrust of authority. Authority is distrusted becouse there is an (often unspoken) attitude that the very fact that it exists is evidence that it is corrupt and therefore evil.
 
MarcoPolo said:
It’s more related to the Church hierarchy or any authority or any form of the Mass, there are cries of “legalism!!” for any suggested form, etc… I think it is more based on Church hierarchy, words of consecration, stuff like that. There’s a couple anti-organized Church threads on this page, for example. The word “institutional” gets thrown around a lot too. Here’s a thread demonstrating how “religion” has become a bad word too. Others have shared my observation.
Click to expand...
I think that some people see the terms religion and spirituality as some sort of antonym. Therefore they believe, probably because they have been taught, that you cannot have both at the same time. I disagree with that: it is completely silly. You can have any combination of the two. The way I see it, religion is about the group and spirituality is about the individual.
 
“Organized” carries with it the implication there are rules, and people don’t like to give their freedom to chose for themselves over to someone else unless they agree with them. The people who complain the loudest about this sort of thing are the first people in line to make sure the government demands you wear a seat belt or control people in other ways. That makes me believe that their apprehension to control by another is often based on their perception of what that control entails.

For Catholic, it entails a great deal of behavioral choices that must be viewed in a negative light and not engaged in. For someone who doesn’t restrain themselves in this way to look upon another who does restrain themselves, they view it as some sort of mind-control game. Their assumption is always you do the things you do (or don’t) merely because the Church told you to (or not to), not that you examined it for yourself and came to agree with exactly what that organized body teaches. You don’t use condoms because the Pope says it’s a no-no, not that you yourself accept the idea that contraception interferes with God’s natural plan for life.

So much of it is just bad assumptions on the part of those who are not a part of the organized body itself, and I think this is more often that case than of an individual in a faith who views their faith as over-controlling.
 
I would submit that the origin of resistance to organized religion rather than decentralized lies in modernist secular philosophy.

Modernist philosophy differs from premodern philosophy in that it asserts the identity of the individual rather than as a collective society. In other words, to a modern philosopher any society is a composition of individuals rather than a unified people. These individuals unite into a society for protection of their rights/assets/etc. As a society, they then form a government, and almost inevitably (to the modern philosopher) there is a conflict of government seeking power and individuals seeking to retain their individual based “rights”.

So the modern worldview is based largely on a concept that all centralized authorities naturally seek to opress the rights of individuals (not realizing that rights are granted generally on a human society level by God, not to individuals), and thus they come to view all central authorities as an opposition. For a civil government, this is more acceptable to them. After all, the civil government can manifest tangible examples of its protection of citizens… having a military, a police force, etc. A religious central authority is different, however, we’re in the business of protecting intangibles: peoples’ souls. So to some who view centralized authority as contentious with their “individualism”, the centrally organized church appears to hungrily demand participation (and per the modernist worldview, this participation represents suppression of rights), and therefore is something to be avoided, since it doesn’t appear to provide tangible benefit.

The reality is that no secular government exists solely to protect the God given rights of citizens in an eternal sense. They are important because they protect the tangibles… but they can never save the soul. The other important aspect to realize is that the modernists are wrong. No man is an island unto himself. We can only exist as human beings, with all the pride and dignity of man, if we are a CIVILIZATION under God. No society, no humanity. That is why the catholic church is a communal worship, together with all the angels and saints throughout eternity, and does NOT suppress, but rather enriches peoples’ lives.
 
Drawmack said:
I think that some people see the terms religion and spirituality as some sort of antonym. Therefore they believe, probably because they have been taught, that you cannot have both at the same time. I disagree with that: it is completely silly. You can have any combination of the two. The way I see it, religion is about the group and spirituality is about the individual.
Click to expand...
I agree they are certainly not opposed. Unfortunately the lines are blurred in some churches who equate anything formal as continuation of the OT Law, legalism, institutionalism, etc…etc… If I had to guess, I would guess this occurs more in so-called “non-denominational” churches.
 
Many people see religion as the form and spirituality as the substance.

While form and substance can certainly coexist, the problem comes when form claims to be substance ‘by definition’ while at the same time contradicting substance ‘by action’.
 
Drawmack Wrote:
Re: Organized religion
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon X
Good question. I would ask those same folks how they would feel if we didn’t have an organized civil government, or if we didn’t have organizations in business, education, or just about everywhere else…Doesn’t really make any sense…
Click to expand...
So you don’t mind then if I compare your religion to a business, school, or just about anything else since you just did right?
Click to expand...
I don’t think Simon X has explained what was meant by the posted comment about comparing organized religion to other forms of gov’t etc. What I see from the post is that humans being as they are need a form of unity and organization to help form themselves properly. That is what I would gleen from the comment. Hope this helps.

mdcpensive1
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top