{"id":932,"date":"2014-01-29T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/millennials-invent-new-religion-no-hell-no-priests-no-punishment.html"},"modified":"2014-01-29T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T10:30:00","slug":"millennials-invent-new-religion-no-hell-no-priests-no-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/millennials-invent-new-religion-no-hell-no-priests-no-punishment.html","title":{"rendered":"Millennials Invent New Religion: No Hell, No Priests, No Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u201cIsn\u2019t it blasphemy to invent a religion?\u201d my student asked with concern. Every semester, in the comparative religion class I teach at a local community college, I ask my students to divide into groups and create a religion from whole cloth.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cAll religions were invented at some point,\u201d I offered, reminding him that while Jesus may have assigned Peter to be the rock upon which the church would be built, it was up to everyone else to determine the details.<\/span><\/div>\n
It\u2019s fascinating to watch the young (with a smattering of older) students invent a new belief system. I give them some guidelines: their religions must include some common elements such as doctrine, dogma, symbols, music, rituals\u2014and most importantly, reformers.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
A few of the groups have had fun with the assignment, coming up with religions like The Church of Charlie Sheen, that could rival anything the\u00a0Pastafarians<\/a>\u00a0have come up with.<\/span><\/div>\n
But last semester emerged as a perfect case study of millennial religion\u2014a portrait of this generation (those between the ages of 18 and 30) in which one in four call themselves \u201catheist\u201d or \u201cagnostic\u201d or \u201cnothing in particular.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIsn\u2019t it blasphemy to invent a religion?\u201d my student asked with concern. Every semester, in the comparative religion class I teach at a local community college, I ask my students to divide into groups and create a religion from whole cloth. \u201cAll religions were invented at some point,\u201d I offered, reminding him that while Jesus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMillennials Invent New Religion: No Hell, No Priests, No Punishment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Isn't it blasphemy to invent a religion?" my student asked with concern. 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