What is your religion like?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Yep, EvilBeth beat me again. And she is right that Balance and Falcon pretty much have things covered. Good job guys!

Chris, AmberK is a good author, as is Scott Cunningham. You could aslo visit the COG site. (Coven of the Goddess) Lots of info there and just be careful what you look at because there are some off sites out there.

I have no one direction with my practices, I just do what feels right. I love ritual work, and working with the earth. I follow no one god or goddess, but look to them all for help and thanks.

62

(1)What is/are your deity or deities like?

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The standard Trinitarian position.

(2)What are some basic tenets of your faith?

Hmmm… the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is the basis of Anglicanism: the scriptures as the revealed word of God, the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds as statements of faith, the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist as ordained by our Lord Jesus Christ, and the historic episcopate (apostolic succession - the theory that the line of bishops can be traced back to the Apostles themselves). Our faith is worked out in three areas: Scripture, Tradition, Reason.

(3)What is some of the dogma you follow?

The only one I can really think of is the use of the Book of Common Prayer throughout the province.

(4)Is there a heirarchy in your religion?

Yes. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, though his declarations are non-binding on the ECUSA. In the ECUSA, we have a Presiding Bishop, the diocesan bishops, parish rectors, and various clergy who operate under them.

(5)(a)Afterlife?

Yes.

(b) What’s it like?

Eternal bliss, united with and praising the Creator.

Any other details…

I belong to a lay religious order within the ECUSA, the Daughters of the King. Our Rule of Life is service and prayer.

63

So I’m back fresh from my wedding on Jul 4, which was interesting because we had it with a United Church of Christ minister (also the bride’s aunt) who helped us remove the word “God” and “Lord” from the service (remember I’m the atheist) and replace it with terms like “the Mystery” or “Loving one” and stuff like that. I thought it was interesting given our discussion here. It was kinda fun trying to come to a compromise like we did, and I think it turned out well.

Hey no problema. That’s exactly the spirit (no pun intended) we’re lookin’ for.

-S

64

Escaped catholic here. 12 years of Catholic schooling, practically failed religion every year because I just didn’t get it. Still don’t. Got in trouble in high school ( me, the quiet kid) for asking the religion teacher, " Ummm, what about the jewish faith?" To receive one of those answers that just makes you WTF? " There is only one faith…blah blah blah."

When I was old enough to go to church by myself, I started skipping. Haven’t attended regularly for going on 20 years.First from rebellion, then from the WTF syndrome. I try to go back or to other shindigs, and I just don’t feel the light. Married in Catholic church to please my mother. Baptized the kids Lutheran ( hubby’s sect) just to cover the bases. Put a major bee up my mother’s nose.

I have a very hard time believing in anything that does not let the person have control of their bodies and allows them to use their common sense, rather than hide their intelligence behind the Pope or whatever.

I don’t know what to believe in,and have been in a spiritual quandary for years. I don’t beleive in the bible and I get alot of " How can you say that, it’s the bible!" To which I reply, " It has started more wars than Websters." Silly, but I just don’t like writings that are open for any billy bob to interpret as they see fit. I want clarity. The bible, from my experience, is not it.
The saints, however, always fasinated me. The combination of being able to die for something you believe in and being an outcast in your own village for your beliefs blows me away. Today, you’d be labeled a nutjob and put in a straight jacket.
Jokingly I’ve always said that I was multi-faiths:
Jewish with my money.
Catholic in my opinions.
Christian Scientist with the way I never go to the doctor when I’m sick.

I think part of my own religion, Deiism ( Dei, (like dye)being my maiden name and sounds much cooler as a religion than Joanism or Arndtism, which sounds like
" Learning how to say No." and according to my husband, I mastered that chi along time ago :slight_smile: ) that is being designed and redesigned daily, has the basic tenets of Make People Laugh and Practice Common Sense and the big one, *Don’t worry *.

I try to gleen the good stuff off of all major religions. And Swiddles really put it best.
I think I really like Brookism. Maybe we could merge: D’Brookism. Get a cable access show.

65

Personally, I think organized religion is a crock.

That said, the most attractive religion I’ve seen so far is Bokononism. :wink:

66

Regarding this thread, here’s an interesting news item:

Find the entire article here.

-S

67

…that actually makes the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat pale in comparison (this happened last October)…

Joint Declaration on Justification

68

Medea’s Child, you are certainly invited to the next service! With a name like that, how could you not be? I’ll bring the beer, Tom Waits tapes, cheese, honey, twin Bulgarian shotputters, and the lawn rake. You bring the wine, bread, Twister game set, three red-headed women between 23 and 1/2 years old and 53, a French Maid’s costume, and any of the Straight Dope books. (Well, it is almost time for “The Feast of it’s too Fucking Hot Outside!”)

elbows, while I see the point on not defining it as religions, I disagree on Buddhism being a philosophy. Philosophies are more rigorously systemic and use an entirely different epistemology. You’re kind of playing fast and loose with the definition of religion, much like
Xian friends of mine who say that “Christianity isn’t a religion—it’s the truth.” Religion is well-defined if we think of it as an attempt to explain (in an internally consistent fashion)
>the teleology of the universe and of the soul,
>the ontology of the universe and the soul,
>at least some exploration of the purpose of existence,
>a code of conduct which is to be preferred.

Buddhism does all of these, whereas as a philosophy, such as logical postivism, does not.

Bucky

69

I would have written more but I had a toddler on my lap and an infant yowling for room service, so I kept the mental tumbleweeds rolling somewhat short.

I do beleive in very strongly in the *You reap what you sow * dogma which is rolled up in Deiism with Reincarnation.
Lemme explain: In this life ( and any other past lives) you are surrounded by the same group of friends and people. A, B,C,D,Etc. ( Which explains why some people you are very comfortable with immediately and why other people just rub you the wrong way instantly and you don’t know why and you can never bridge the gap of ruffled feathers and raised hackles.)

If You are a prick in this life ( a run of the mill asswipe , not a career criminal) in the next life you have to get it right and keep on being reincarnated until you do figure it out. Getting it right means by learning to bite your tongue, annoy less, donate more. You know, the bad things about you that make you a run of the mill asswipe. If your inner kharma/soul isn’t strong enough to change and see the proverbial light, with each life, you become weaker and more zombie like. Which explains the surgence of pop culture, N’sync and beanie babies right there.

Those that are truly souless are the ones on their last chance to turn themselves around ( pedophiles,drug addicts, killer of puppies,politicians.) and the truly unrepentant, when they die, on their last life, vanish. No heaven, no hell, they disappear forever, because they do not deserve to be remembered. I think this souless, lifeless zombie mentality really explains why some people are afflicted with paranoid schizo stuff in life. I know I am out there on this and don’t necessarily believe it myself, but maybe it is past lives bad kharma haunting you in the present for the crap you did in the past and not chemical imbalances or head injury stuff. I mean, c’mon like science means anything anymore. ( At least my way is a little more…uh…romantic…if you will.)

Oh, and those annoyingly cheerful, happy, positive people that we all know at least one of…they are on their last life too, but instead of POOOF, their souls are gone, after many life times of try and fail, they finally got it right and will go onto their reward, which is heaven. It is this thought that is the only thing that keeps me from beating the crap out of these happy souls.

Heaven is whatever that person thinks it is. It is a custom fit reward for playing nice and sharing your toys.

Ok, back to reality, I just beleive if you crap on someone in this life, you get it back in spades

Thank you for reading this.

Oh, and if I ever get ten minutes again and really want to drop my credibility around these parts, I’ll tell you what I think angels jobs really are.

70

We are taught to love them and to extend a hand of fellowship to all men, regardless of religion. We also feel that others need to hear God’s Plan of Salvation and we actively teach the Gospel to others.

We believe that many non-members will go to Spirit Prison directly after death, where they will be given the opportunity to hear the true gospel and the chance to repent and be baptized.

If they accept the church and come unto Christ, then they can possibly be accepted into the Celestial Kingdom. Below that is the Terrestrial, then Telestial Kingdoms. They are all heaven, but Celestial is the very best.

Most everyone will go to heaven. Only if you know that the church is true and you still deny it will you be cast into outer darkness with Satan and the one-third host.

71

I’ve seen that, and the Te of Piglet in the bookstore but never thought to pick them up (since well, you hit it on the head, they looked like they were for kids). Anyway, i can probably find the books you listed at the bookstores here. Thanks (i just need money now ;)).

Oh and I’d say my two main interests in religion/philosophies would be Taoism and Buddhism. With Buddhism, i’m much more interested in the Japanese, and South East Asian varieties. (The local temple in Monterey is having their annual Obon Festival later today)

72

==What is/are your deity or deities like==

“Like…???” let’s see…
http://members.aol.com/ahunter3/psalm.txt

God is that which is, or sometimes more to the point, that which is in the process of becoming good or better. Evil is best understood as that which isn’t finished becoming, or that which is obsolete or out of whack and in need of fixing; even the evil is God in the sense that the unfinished parts of a good project exist as part of the project.

If you mean WHO is God, you are. And I am. But sort of in the same sense that life is you or sentience is you. There certainly exists life that is other than MERELY you, and there is quite often a need to refer to the unique you rather than the generic, inclusive “life”.

God is superplural. Self= “I am” (singular), “We are” (plural). God = That Which Is. God is a valid sense of self. A valid sense of self includes a sense of being God. You and your perplexing kind are indeed “created in the image of God”. If your sense of what constitutes your “kind” is too limited, though, you may need to discover that God is more than for and of your plurality. Homo sapiens of Earth does not constitute “the chosen people” or “God’s children” and your silly-ass self-defined nation ethnic group or subculture doesn’t either.
==What are some basic tenets of your faith?==

I am a fallible human being who at any moment could be wrong. Receiving divine revelations from God (or being under the impression that I have received divine revelations from God) doesn’t change or fix that. There is no divine scripture or Holy Truth that I can know without the possibility of being wrong about it. Except, paradoxically, this one, from which all else, including understandings of how to interact with others and how to structure a social system, tends to follow.

==What is some of the dogma you follow?==

I don’t do dogma.

==Is there a heirarchy in your religion?==

You mean like people with power over other people? People with authority to make decisions for other people? Absolutely not. See the fallibility thingie above.

==Afterlife? What’s it like?==

You will be reincarnated as a person more or less at random, which is to say that you will be reborn in a future you helped create. In fact, you already have been and will continue to be. It is like what you make it like, you and the rest of your perplexing kind. Or, to describe it slightly differently, God is in a library and you are a book. When God gets finished reading you, God puts the book back and selects another. You, as God, will read them all. You, as God, are not trapped on the same time-line as the plot of any of the books, so in a sense from the book’s perspective you as God are reading all the books simultaneously. But you experience each book (each life) separately.

==Any other details==

To paraphrase Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Agriculture, God make-a the rules but God no play-a the game, at least not as “God”. You yourself ARE God playing the game. (So are the rest of your perplexing kind). Or, to describe it “koanically”, God as a unified self got bored one eon once upon a time and split Godself up into a zillion particles with varying degrees of consciousness and a lot of amnesia and entertained Godself rediscovering God’s self in self and other and reclaiming / remembering the fact that self is God. Existence is God having fun.

73

Hey, did I accidentally drop a manhole cover on this thread or something??? I wish at this time to apologize for slightly cynical comments about “silly ass ethnic groups” and etc. Y’all come back and post now, y’hear?

74

It’s nothing personal to you, AHunter, we’re just hanging back waiting for more people to post about their own religions! If Shadenwawa (or anyone else) has any questions about your religion, I’m sure they will be along shortly to respond! BTW, thanks for contributing! And don’t worry about killing the thread (I’ve already assured that you didn’t!) because this thread has been known to sit dormant for a couple days at a time before!

75

The following is NOT a description about my personal beliefs. Rather, it is my interpretation of some of the more common ideas in quite a few new age books that people I know have read and talked about with me. I thought it was interesting that if these ideas were to be formed into a religion, it might be a rather popular one.

We are all souls; we do not have souls, we ARE souls. Our bodies are merely vehicles for us. Naturally, we are beings of pure energy and/or thought. This world we live in is one of countless forms of existence. There are many other worlds/dimensions/universes which are drastically different from one another. We live many lives, each for one fundamental reason: to learn. The purpose of each soul's existence is to learn, and develop. The best way (and for many things, the only way) to learn is through experience. In each life, one learns one or more things (what it's like to be a stock broker, to be a rickshaw driver, to be a farmer, to be a serial killer, to be murdered by a serial killer, to eat meat, to be a cow who lives only to be slaughtered for meat, to be killed by a horrible organ-liquefying disease... the list is nearly endless). Each incarnation, if successful, teaches one something and therefore imporves one. There is no punishement for being "bad" or "evil". One of the worst things you can do during your life is commit suicide, because then you'd have to live another similar life to learn what you meant to but failed to learn in the previous one. The main reason why you shouldn't kill yourself is because it wastes your time. Each incarnation tends to be a more sophisticated than the last. Chances are, you've be a worker ant before, but won't be one again (because if you've come this far, you've learned all one can learn as a worker ant). We don't remember any of our past lives in our current lives, otherwise that would seriously mess up your sense of identity during this life and that would likely interfere with your current life's purpose (so if you were a german panzer commander in a past life, you wouldn't remember any of it). However, previous lives, especially recent ones, can influence our hehavior/personality in one's current life (so if you were a german panzer commander in your previous life, you might be a rather demmanding person who (on some level) expects others to obey him/her).
The existence of God isn't really addressed, but one usually has a guide. A guide is a more experienced soul who helps you along in your development. Usually one is only aware of one's guide between lives. A guide serves largely as an advisor ("I think that in your next life you should be a Hutu soldier; it will give you a greater understanding of hate.").
Souls might (depending on which book you consult) "travel" in groups. They usually live lives close to one another, so people who are your friends and relatives in this life are likely your friends between lives. Your mother in this live may have in a previous life been your husband, cousin, niece, uncle, or best friend. I don't think there's a major reason for this, except that it's usually more fun to hang out with your friends than with people you don't know.
Well, that's a semi-coherent summary of some of the new-age books out there. I hope you found it at least somewhat interesting.