Peace to you also.

Thank you for trying to understand what is obviously a poor effort by me to explain what I am thinking. Allow me to try again…

None of the Messengers sought to found a religion. All they did was to seek to bring their people back to the core values that had been taught before them but which the people had failed to follow. That was why Messengers had to be sent again and again.

What they first achieved was a cultural transformation of their followers. So all of the “religions” in fact began as a culture, exactly as you say. It is the followers who institutionalised the culture into a “religion”. This truth is central to my understanding of religions. To me, it is so obvious that I failed to emphasise it.

At the time of the beginning of a “religion”, there was no “holy book”. There was only the words and teachings of the one they followed. These words and teachings were remembered and recorded by the followers and eventually became Holy Books. In fact, for some people, these books became so holy, they became more important than the words and messages inside.

I hope you can see that we are on the same page as far as understanding that Christianity (and the other religions as well) in fact began as a culture, and that culture is more important than the religion that followed. If we can go back to living the culture that was taught by the one we choose to follow, we will become good people.

Of course, salvation is another matter altogether, but that is not the subject of this discussion.

Peace.

I appreciate your apology in that towards the middle of your reply you actually made reference to how people from whatever society or culture they come from can position their spiritual outlook as “culturally contextualized”. I did not say though that Christian culture ever arose from “religious doctrine”. I basically said that it was the other way around! I am simply bewildered how you could have missed the main thrust of my argument when I stated it more than once, twice, three times – in different ways!!!!! That the original culture (of Christianity) had been turned by some into a religious doctrine is actually what I had clearly explored in the content of my replies – or should I say touched upon somehwat??? After all, I didn’t go into depth at examining how this actually happened – I merely made references to the fact that the fashioning of religious institutionalism out of a radically simple indigenous culture was in fact what happened to Christianity historically. To quote my first reply to you, I stated: “However, as an indigenous Christian, I feel that it is appropriate to emphasise that in actuality, Christianity is a culture rather than a religion as such – this is the fact that much of the world tends to ignore – a culture which has as it’s foundation, spirituality. Organization (as in structure) is a composite of any culture or society – there is not one single society on the face of the earth which does not have a structure of some kind! Even the most decentralized societies such as the early Christian communities and other such tribal cultures still have a way of organizing themselves – the only difference between these societies and other more complexified ones such as those of ancient Greece and Rome or of the modern industrial West is that the latter have in-built institutional hierarchies from within which most of the organizing power is summoned.” In my second reply, I maintained that Christianity “is in fact a CULTURE because of it’s orginal mode of social organization.” From there I went on to describe how one could also appreciate it from looking at it as a religion without this perspective necessarily detracting from Christianity’s intra-cultural diversity of expression.

Relative to the issue of naming, I am also emphasizing the too often overlooked fact that “Christian” originally meant far more than a superficial label (given that the idea of a name bears different connotations to that of a label). My very first sentence read: “I feel that people who use the name Christian as a definitive label whilst actively engageing in the ways and publicising the values of Caesar as though these were reflective of Biblical teaching are doing a gross injustice to the name “Christian” and actually forfeit that name as a true and proper reflection of themselves – thereby rendering it the profane reputation as a label rather than a name designated by God to largely distinguish a chosen people from the rest of the world…” and again later on I stated: “Talk about cultural misappropriation and monopoly of a name which God has desired to be wholheartedly (not just superficially) but wholeheartedly reflective of the innate character of His own Son within a community context…”

Summarily then, reducing the culture of Christianity to a religious doctrine, thereby tarnishing it’s name in the process of “labelizing it” frivolously has caused a severe misrepresentation or misrendering as it were, of Christian values out there in the world at large.

I am glad Singam, that you did give some insight into the construction of “Hinduism” by British colonial rule. That part was very interesting to read!!! In some ways that struck a chord of similarity in my mind about the way in which “the church as an institution” was formed. Believe it or not, it wasn’t formed institutionally by the Christian community (which was at that time greatly reduced in number, not to mention in sociocultural morale as a result of the era of the persecutions) but by the government of the day – the Constantinian Dynasty in Rome.

It’s not that I missed your point about a culture arising from a religious doctrine. I didn’t realise that was the crux of your argument.

Each Messenger who brings a message of change ends up triggering the formation of a new religion that eventually evolves into a culture. Religion is only a convenient label used to describe a group of people.

Most people are not aware that there is no such religion as Hinduism. This was a label concocted by the British when they wanted to classify the people in India. They had their Christians and their Muslims. But they also had this huge non-homogeneous mass of people of Hindustan (the land beyond the Indus) without any label… whom they recorded as Hindus, and the label stuck. In fact, the native name is Sanathana Dharma – the eternal dharma: a way of life, more than a religion.

Ask any Muslim and he will tell you Islam is a way of life, not a religion. Ditto for the Buddhists, the Sikhs… the term religion is only applied to the “others”. So believe me, I understand and accept your point of view.

When you speak of a Christina culture, you must be aware that there are several cultures claiming that label. Those who live by the example and teachings of Jesus, those who live according to Old Testament rules, those who hold a bible in one hand and do nasty things with the other, even those who actively participate in that commercial gifting festival called Christmas.

You and I could say they are not really Christian but they claim the label and insist they have the right to do so.

At the end of the day, it’s not the label that counts. We may disagree about some of the specifics but we will surely agree that a large part of being a good person is about loving thy neighbour, offering the other cheek and doing good.

Peace.

If you had of read my passage thoroughly you would have acknowledged that I wrote about Christianity as “a culture” instead of “a religion”,
you would have noticed I desribed at length the basis upon which Christianity can be defined as a culture – because actually, that is the true nature of Christianity – (whether you choose to accept that or not) – it is in fact a CULTURE because of it’s orginal mode of social organization, which is too often overlooked in the present to a large degree as well as historically but I understand there are many, like yourself, who insist upon looking at Christian culture from the angle of a religion. Before I learnt that Christianity was far more diverse in it’s expression than being purely a “religious phenomenon”, I used to classify it in the same way as you currently do – however I have since then broadened my experience in terms of that diveristy in forms of expression that it, as a culture, can take hence my current passion and enthusiasm in identifying with Christian culture in it’s most far reaching implication as one of the most, (if not the most) ancient of life-ways kind of common to many small-scale societies globe-wide. Please do not get me wrong here – I am not intending upon belittleing your outlook since I do understand from my own recollections regarding my personal experience of perceiving Christianity as “religion”, the inner motivations which can bring one to perspectivize it as you are doing. There can be much merit in this but at the same time, can I entreat you to consider the fact that spirituality, (whilst it has a purposeful process or structure which serves to organize how dynamics blend, converse and coherently mingle), also embraces life in it’s myriad of relationships and events, many of which do appear on the surface to exist outside the sphere of obvious spiritual encounter but nonetheless have deep spiritual implications insofar as the interactive ramifications of decision-making processes and the outcomes of choices are concerned.

And thanks Daniel for your comment because I can sense the reality of what you said in my own past experiences also. There was a time (and sometimes that time still resurfaces once in a while!) when I was really embarassed boardering on ashamed of being called one – and I coudn’t really work out why until the Lord showed me how unrealistic and superficial (blatantly unrepresentative of His Son’s ways) the institutionalized church can be with history being particularly indicative of the types of worldly ideological conceptualizations that has so beseiged the church’s outward appearance to the point that they resemble in many epochs the caricature of the pharisees whom bore much righteous criticism from Jesus Himself. In addition to this, there was also a residual ingrained woundedness which actually stemmed from having my Christian identity distorted by these phariseic notions – there was a resentment about my identity having been the victim of a colonization of sorts whereby institutions were trying to acculturate me of all my Christian characteristics to the point where they had hoped I wouldn’t perceive those characteristics as being “Christian” anymore – instead it was their desire to see these authentically Christian characteristics replaced by an articifical diluted plethora of traits that were upheld and proclaimed by these instituions as ‘Christian’ when in actual fact they were nothing but the very opposite or at least rather foreign to indigenous Christianity. God furthermore convicted my heart that real Christians do not idolize institutions for God never intended His body to be reduced to an institution. It is meant to function as a people who are a Holy nation set apart by God for His glory. In fact, the early Christian community never used the word “church” to describe themselves. They were simply a community who culturally held a seperate identity from both the Hebrew nation and the other (gentile) nations, as based upon the model of both personal and community formation established by Jesus. Whilst it is simultaneously true that the word “ekklesia” was used amongst Greek speakers, it was intended primarily to function as a descriptive term to describe the organizational structure of role composition with communities. It was not intended to evolve into another word (i.e. “church”) to be used for denoting the whole body all of the time, thereby reducing it to nothing other than a lossely knit aggregation of individuals sharing the same philosophical outlook managed by an institutional hierarchy of officials who strikingly resemble wordly administrations in the details of structures and in their dealings with the rest of mankind and God’s creation. But just like the people of Israel when they had desired a worldly king to rule over them, they essentially disputed God’s desire for them to stay in a pure and unadulterated communion with Him as a simple society, and thereby sought to copy the sociocultural models of pagan societies, employing these for their own political and social organization.

Once I was so disillusioned with Christians, I refused to be called a “Christian”, and I preferred to say I worshipped Yeshua Hamashiach. I sometimes feel like doing the same now.

Kian Meng,

Not having been to the USA, i still have never seen the appeal of Dobson or the Republicans. They never have had a ‘bright side’, to my mind…

Don’t worry too much about the paragraphs. I know people who don’t use paragraphs and remain oblivious. At least, you wish you could go back and make corrections.

I am not a Muslim. But I honestly don’t think that disqualifies me from making fair comment. I used Islam as an example because they are currently suffering from a severe image problem – the consequence of the phase of growth they are in. What they require is a Reformation, the kind that Martin Luther brought to Christianity, to depose the rigid leadership hierarchy and allow the people the freedom to rediscover God.

Through my explorations, I have discovered that all religions have more similarities than differences. But often, the differences are what critically defines what is unique about each religion. Therefore the differences become more important than the similarities. And these differences lead to the wars in which more people have died than for any other cause.

As to the origins of religions, none of the “founders” ever set out to found a new religion. They simply set out to restate an old truth that they had rediscovered, whether by divine revelation or by meditative introspection or whatever, and wanted to remind the people of it and bring them back to the correct path. (Of course, to Christians, Jesus is different. Let’s just leave it at that.)

It is the followers of the teacher who found the religion. Most of the time, a single person can be identified as the one most responsible for the structure and direction of the “new religion”. I would in fact name him as the real founder.

This is probably why the organised religion often ends up looking so different from the simple lessons of the original teacher. And that is why, as Sivin pointed out, churches at all levels, including the temples within each of us, need to undergo continuous reformation, always examining whether they have strayed from the path set out by the original teacher.

I completely endorse what you have said about the unfortunate popularity of negative images, particularly in the mainstream West, concerning Islam. I was reading the comments posted on an American blog called “Free Republic” last week and I was so shocked at how blatantly racist and culturally biggoted about Muslims many of the comments on that blog were. So, I can see where you’re coming from here. The blog moderators of “Free Republic” said that they wanted their commentaries to be free from racist remarks and so I had readily pointed this out in response to the trash that was being said. But sly retorts came back to me of the like: “Muslims are’nt a race”. By such statements these biggots tried to ‘justify’ their slander. So I told them that whether race, heritage or spirituality – it’s all about “xenos” – one of the Greek root words for culture – hence we derive the English word “xenophobia” from this, meaning a irrational dislike or hatred of foreign qualities, values, things, whatever cultural characteristics of “the other”. And as for anything specific regarding Islam, let me not speak on behalf of this, as I am not of Muslim heritage – I would prefer Muslims to speak for their own. And if this is you Singam, please feel free to perspectivise how you see things from within the context of Islam. However, as an indigenous Christian, I feel that it is appropriate to emphasise that in actuality, Christianity is a culture rather than a religion as such – this is the fact that much of the world tends to ignore – a culture which has as it’s foundation, spirituality. Organization (as in structure) is a composite of any culture or society – there is not one single society on the face of the earth which does not have a structure of some kind! Even the most decentralized societies such as the early Christian communities and other such tribal cultures still have a way of organizing themselves – the only difference between these societies and other more complexified ones such as those of ancient Greece and Rome or of the modern industrial West is that the latter have in-built institutional hierarchies from within which most of the organizing power is summoned.

I must also apologize for my serious lack of paragraphs in the last comment I posted (26 Nov) – sorry for that Singam (and to anyone else who reads it!) but I was doing the commentary late at night and was rather flustered about other matters simultaneously so I rushed pasting it – which reminds me, a really good idea to have on this site would be a self editing button – I currently write for a blog that has this function and what it is is just a button which automatically becomes available to the writer of a submission to edit his/her own writing (i.e. you cannot edit another’s but you can edit your own anytime).

I understand how you feel. This is the dilemma that all religions face. Witness the desecration of the meaning of Muslim by the hordes who understand nothing of it. Ditto for the other religions. But this is inevitable because of what religion is.

You see, while spirituality is the relationship of a single person with God, religion is the organised culture of a group of people sharing common spiritual values. The two troublesome operative components are “organised” and “common values”.

Once an activity becomes organised, soon there will be leadership, hierarchy, power… and we know that power corrupts.

Common values lead to the desire to exclude values that are not common which leads to the imposition of conformity which leads to the deprivation of individuality and independent thinking.

This was how the noble ideals taught by Jesus became corrupted into the Inquisition – the darkest of times in the Christian church.

While religion is important, there is danger inherent in it. It is far more important for people to individually become spiritually strong, to be able to challenge and question their leaders if they see wrongdoings, to realise that, on Judgement Day, their church leaders will not be there to plead their case, that each person will be individually answerable to God.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, within each church, there has to be a continuous Reformation so that values are kept true. As for those have gone astray but continue to wear the label, leave them be. Let God deal with them. Their misdeeds will not, in any way, undo the good that you do.