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<\/a><\/p>\nWe don\u2019t know how the ready access to information will ultimately change the human condition, but religions are already feeling the heat. A person today can, with a few keystrokes, discover facts about religions that, when I was young, were assiduously and successfully suppressed\u2014particularly in those traditions common among disadvantaged people such as I was.<\/p>\n
A search of \u201cOneness Pentecostalism\u201d reveals more than I learned in twenty years of attending a Oneness Pentecostal church.<\/p>\n
Can religions survive the availability of information? Of course they can . . . and will, by two methods\u2014accommodation or rejection.<\/p>\n
Rejection will continue to rely on the sort of faulty logic that leads many to think that disproving Darwin will put one god or another right back on a heavenly throne. Spoiler alert: why would it?<\/p>\n
I expect that rejection as a mode of resistance to knowledge will intensify with time and that fundamentalisms in great variety will spring up in nearly all religions. Filters and homeschool and religious schools will proliferate.
\nAs to accommodation, it has its place, because a world view is a terrible thing to reevaluate. For many, concepts such as god or that there is a meaningful direction to the universe are just too difficult to give up. Accommodation will continue to change those concepts, and I expect a \u201cgod of the gaps\u201d will always be a personal preference for many.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, patience and conscience wear out, however. For example, Bart Campolo, currently the Humanist chaplain at UCLA, moved theologically from a liberal Evangelical (his dad is famous in Evangelical circles) to a progressive Christian to Humanism. For Campolo, progressive Christianity, an accommodation tradition that views scripture as metaphor and story, is a way station on the way to agnosticism and atheism.<\/p>\n
These transitions will become more common\u2014and more temporary\u2014with time, as more and more people learn more and more about religions. Accommodation of the sort that leads to Atheist Christians, for example, will continue to exist as a half-way resting place for those who have done some research on the internet.<\/p>\n
Just how secular a religion can become and still be a religion is an excellent philosophical question. Of a more practical hue is the question of the sustainability of accommodationist religious traditions. How many Bart Compolos will stay in the middle, and will they adequately support traditional religious institutions? Will people be willing to pay for the rites and rituals merely because those are comfortable and traditional rites and rituals?<\/p>\n
You may have heard about the United Church of Canada minister in Toronto, Gretta Vosper, fighting to keep her church, despite the fact that she has come out as an atheist. Her congregation, parenthetically, wants her to stay. The congregation wants its freedom and chooses to end the accommodation.<\/p>\n
You may have heard of the Clergy Project, a group of ministers\u2014some out as atheists who have been fired as a consequence, some still employed and hiding their atheism. http:\/\/clergyproject.org<\/p>\n
What is beyond accommodation and rejection?<\/p>\n
I agree with Christian minister and blogger Carey Nieuwhof that we have plenty of information but not enough meaning; that churches have plenty of followers but offer little in the way of connection; and that there are plenty of options but little in the way of direction.\u00a0(churchleaders.com)<\/p>\n
Religions begin to look cobbled-together, pale, and parochial in a networked world. That\u2019s because . . . they are. I believe more and more people will join Bart Compolo, Gretta Vosper, and me, in taking the plunge.<\/p>\n
What does post-theistic community look like? There is no one answer. From bars and coffee shops to lectures and even congregational humanism in tradition buildings, the venues vary, though the message is much the same\u2014though traditional religions are tired, the human spirit continues bright and unabated, creating meaning and purpose relevant to our world, right now, as it is.<\/p>\n
As a prophet once said, \u201call in all is all we are.\u201d<\/p>\n