The usefulness of religion More can be said but the following article identifies a number of real-world advantages to belonging to a religious community. Of "having" a religion. Here are various considerations that should not be overlooked: There is identity, and with that goes sense of purpose in ways that the article only suggests, hence motivation to move mountains, at least by those who really take things to heart. For families there is educational advantage for their children, supplemental to other education but nonetheless very worthwhile in the areas of inculcating morality and appreciation for one's heritage. Large religious communities, especially megachurches, may offer a curriculum of educational opportunities for people of all ages.
A religious organization can also nurture talent. This is visible to all when a faith has a media outlet, but can be just as true when it simply acts on its own and does what it usually does. That is, a religious organization, a church or temple community, can offer believers a chance to perform music, or create music, a chance to exhibit art, to publish written material, to speak in public, to be a teacher to others, to make use of treasured skills including cooking, carpentry, sign painting, 'house' painting, working on cars, quilting, sewing special garments, even various hobbies. You name it. Sometimes religion leads to study of other languages, everything from Greek to Hebrew, and from Sanskrit to Japanese or Chinese In media-active groups there also is TV production and all related skills that can be cultivated, and the same for film, radio, publishing, and computers. And what religion does not need accountants and financial advisors? There also may be an opportunity for legal training. Security may also be a factor and some faiths, like the Sikhs, have made this part of their raison d'etre. Any religious group may also need medical assistance from time to time. Probably this is essentially inconsequential in small groups, but a large organization needs a nurse and an on-call doctor. Religion can also motivate people to study psychology. There also are friendships to consider, and some may turn out to be lifelong and filled with deep meaning. As well, there may be relationships with the opposite sex, including relationships that lead to marriage. Some religious groups sponsor sports teams, such as basketball or softball, and may offer various recreational opportunities like outdoor camping, going on picnics, and even social dancing. A religious community may organize hikes in the woods for members, or nature walks. Some offer a chance for people to develop gardening skills. In some religious groups there is opportunity to take moral stands that have importance in the wider community. Religion also introduces people to the value of the study of history, or it should. Of course, for some people history doesn't matter, they are tone deaf to it, but any religion needs to teach history to teach about itself, and that can lead to generalized interest in the whole field of history -not as an antiquarian subject but as an ongoing saga about human experience which necessarily has antecedents, prequels, as it were. Study of the Bible, or the Bhagavad Gita, or any scripture, also introduces people to literary criticism and such fields as drama, mythology, narrative writing, language, and poetry. This can also result in appreciation of foreign cultures, or at least the cultures of other people, for example, for Christians for the culture of Jews and, to think about the story of the Magi, Zoroastrianism. For those who take evangelization seriously this also means the need to study the culture of, for example, Native Americans, or Asians, or Africans, or Pacific islanders. For Buddhists it means an imperative to learn about Hindus, Confucians, Taoists, and Shinto. For Hindus it means the need to know about the many strands of Hinduism itself, as well as cultivating awareness of Jainism, Buddhism, and other Asian faiths, and also learning as much as possible about Christianity as both friend and competitor and about Islam as a ceaseless antagonist. For Baha'is it means an imperative to study all the historic religions of he world. For Mormons it means a necessary interest in all tribal groups in the Americas, and an interest in the Jews of history. For Goddess devotees it means the need to study a good number of Goddess traditions, plus the place within other faiths for the divine feminine. And so forth. What you ultimately get, then, is the nucleus for what may be called an aesthetic of life, a sense of beauty, of what can be beautiful, and of how to make the world a more beautiful place that nurtures the human spirit. The whole phenomenon, if you take religion seriously, is endlessly fascinating. If you take the whole phenomenon seriously you may discover that religion is, indeed, far more than its beliefs and other outward manifestations, and is multi-dimensional, and each dimension has real-world value. A few thoughts for today Billy Rojas ============================================== Washington Post What good is religion? By Sigfried Gold Published: September 9, 2013 The work of self-transformation can be done through psychotherapy, religious practice, reading self-help books, independent resolutions and intentions, consulting coaches, gurus, psychics, body healers, mind healers and faith healers of all stripes. People come to the work of self-transformation in moments of despair, moments of hope, after long reflection, through happenstance, and some, myself included, make the pursuit of self-transformation the central work and preoccupation of their lives. By self-transformation I mean a somewhat ill-defined effort to be a better person, whatever that may mean to any individual. Education is transformational, but taking a course in engineering is not the kind of overall self-improvement I’m talking about. A course in literature, philosophy or music appreciation might, intentionally or unintentionally, lead to a more expansive sense of one’s humanity or purpose in life; so that kind of education might be included when we consider the set of tool available for self-transformation. Engaging in psychotherapy, listening to a sermon on forgiveness, or resolving to meditate daily are unambiguously acts of attempted self-transformation. A few hundred years ago, religion had a monopoly on the self-transformation business. Self-transformation, moral improvement, efforts to get oneself or others to be morally better, have always been a central concern of religions (at least the ones sometimes referred to as _Axial-Age religions_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age) ), but seldom their sole concern. Religions also concern themselves with explaining cosmology, acquiring political and economic power, establishing and legislating social norms, killing or converting heathens. If religions stuck with helping people, non-coercively, in their attempts at self-transformation, they probably would not be ignored, hated or ridiculed as they are by growing numbers of the religiously disaffected. Religions have certain advantages in the self-transformation arena that can’ t be matched by secular forms of this work. One is the ideal–if not actual attitude–of religions towards money. Although the financial costs of religion can be quite high (giving away a tenth of one’s income is not uncommon), payment is generally voluntary; newcomers and poorer congregants can usually enjoy all the benefits of community, moral guidance and support, meaningful rituals, comfort in times of adversity, without having to pay more than they choose. Disingenuously or not, religions claim to be motivated by concerns beyond money, and obligate themselves to at least put on a show of providing services unattached to remuneration. For people outside the social welfare system, secular self-transformational help must be paid for. Much of the support in a religious community comes from other congregants rather than from paid clergy. As a special case, 12-step recovery fellowships, which include some of the largest organizations in the world, offer their members access to daily or hourly support, essentially for free, that could only be matched among secular service providers by extremely expensive in-patient treatment centers or psychiatry wards. Atheist though I am, I am troubled by the widening gulf between people yearning for self-transformational support and religions that might support them. The well-known Pew Research study, _Nones on the Rise_ (http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/) , shows rapidly increasing numbers of Americans who claim no religious affiliation. The religious and spiritual opinions of the nones are anything but uniform, but I suspect there is a significant subset of this population that 1) is open to spiritual and religious ideas, at least partly as a means of self-transformation, and 2) chooses not to participate in traditional religions. My own name for these people, imperfect as it is, is “outsiders.” Outsiders, I would claim, have become a burgeoning, lucrative market demographic to be targeted by the self-improvement and the professional healing and recovery industries: psychotherapists, coaches, treatment centers, Oprah, motivational seminars, diet and exercise programs, alternative healers, etc. I have no nostalgia for the bad old days of clerical authorities browbeating us into morality with their hands in our pockets. But I fervently yearn for a day when people wishing to be better have easy access to free or donation-based support, offered primarily by their peers, possibly facilitated by modestly paid clergy, and offered without coercion, without insistence that one set of beliefs is right and the rest are wrong, offered because people who actively pursue their own paths towards meaning, fulfillment and some vision of the good feel a generous desire to share what they’ve learned on those paths with others. Religions may be declining in their ability to provide that kind of altruistically motivated, communally organized support, but we have few other models to work with. There are no easy answers here, but as we as a society grope towards the evolution of institutions that meet our spiritual needs without exploiting or oppressing us, we need to consider if, when and how we can use religions, individually and collectively, in our attempts at transformation. Are there changes we might make to religions that would allow them to work better? What if religions were to 1) reject any claim on exclusive truth and express genuine respect for alternative views; and 2) pay all their clergy, administrators and stakeholders modestly and transparently to avoid the possibility of financially exploiting their members; and 3) eschew politics and efforts to impose their values on others, focusing on congregants improvement of themselves and ability to offer support and love to each other and the wider world? Would religions like that win back those who have been lost to religion in recent decades? Would we welcome such a development? -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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