We need more religious thoughts in our world

RELIGION TODAY - APRIL 5 2008
Time magazine along with CNN ran a news piece on at the end of March which might shock some people. Islam is now a larger group than the Roman Catholic Church. As of last count, Catholics accounted for a stable 17.4 per cent of the world population while Muslims were growing but have now reached 19.2 per cent. For the record, if you include every branch of the family; Christianity accounts for 33 per cent.

Still, back at the end of the 19th Century the next one was dubbed "The Christian Century" in hopes that the entire world would somehow convert.

Or at least there would be recognition that Christianity was the dominant player on the stage. At best, at the beginning of the 21st, it is looking like a minority government sort of position.

Andrew Coyne, the editor for MacLean's magazine wrote last month that pointed out that Stephen Harper's minority government had brought politics back into parliament. Think of it, by being in a minority they are forced to argue every issue -- not only that, but for a bill to be passed it must be good enough to attract support from even the opponents.

And this is how it should be; because it brings out the best, and it forces us to try and decide issues based on how they would benefit everyone; not just in a partisan sort of way. When the disciples started out to take their message on the road they did so facing steep opposition -- much of it religious. Romans, Greeks, Jews, Arabs -- they all had their own religious positions; and religion and politics was pretty much the same thing. Christianity believed that it had a message, a way of life that would improve the lot of everyone -- so they became evangelists in other cultures.

We too face steep opposition, but we are confused as to who that is. Religion -- whether you are talking about major world religions, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the like; or local branches of Catholics, Baptists, Wesleyans, United, Mosques and Synagogues should not face opposition from each other.

Our opponents are secular humanism, greed, commercialism and the like. If Jesus sent out disciples now, they would not go out to convert people who are already religious -- whatever their religion... they would go out to convert those who no longer feel the presence of God in their lives; no longer feel any connection to the divine -- and are therefore trapped within a society that does not give them life. After all, if it is just about making money, life probably gets a little lonely and meaningless once you have enough doesn't it?

Jesus also said, and we forget this some of the time, that whoever is not against us is for us. In other words, if you value the things that God values; which are creativity, love, harmony, and all of creation... and if you actively try and keep in touch with the sacred through prayer, meditation, community or social action... then you are a part of the solution, not the problem.

Karen Armstrong, a religious scholar from England suggests that the different religions have more in common than we previously imagined. Consider that humans have been around for a long time; in 2004 National Geographic found bones from a human dating back 13 million years. Yet in all those years there was an amazingly brief period of history, from about 900BC to 100AD when all of the major religions of the world came into existence.

Each of these traditions also developed its own Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and moved from believing in many gods to one God, seen as some form of energy, either personal or as cosmic energy which interacts and gives direction.

No -- the fact that Christianity did not grow at the exponential rate everybody once hoped for does not worry me, rather, the fact that people are becoming less and less religious is the real problem. When stripped of rhetoric, religion makes the simple claim that we are all valuable. We need more of that in our world.