Credit: ABC News
During the final Mass at the All Saints Parish in Buffalo, New York, on a warm Sunday in July, the priests encouraged the few parishioners who came to take comfort in holy scripture.
“For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” the passage read.
On Earth, many parishes are accepting that it’s time to sell their properties. As the person leading renewal and development for the Diocese of Buffalo, Father Bryan Zielenieski is one of many religious leaders across America who have closed houses of worship in recent years.
“We essentially went to half of what we used to back in the early 2000s,” he told ABC News. “We lost about 100 parishes.”
Zielenieski expects he’ll need to shut down another 70 churches in what the Diocese is calling its “road to renewal.” It’s a very biblical name for the challenge facing churches: People just aren’t going as much as they used to.
On average, more than half of the diocese’s churches today are baptizing fewer […]
This article’s focus is upon Christianity, which has been dwindling for decades. There are other religious traditions which are thriving and expanding, often “under the radar”. Keeping my focus on those traditions which continue their connection to the vitality which started them is where my interest continues to be. It is in this place that renewal will be found.
The majority of churches have done nothing to edit or alter the numerous Bible teachings that need to be examined in the light of the knowledge we now have. Very little attention was given to the simple but large errors due to old language translations that have been proven wrong. One such error that appears throughout is in the simple, but massive misnomers. When approx. 5. years ago, a famous Biblical linguisrics scholar, reknowned for their knowledge of ancient Hebrew, revealed that a massive number of of persons previously known, accepted and worshipped as males, were, in fact, women. That, of course, changed the nature of Bible stories people had read, and are reading. There is a ‘synchroniciy’ to this in relation to the current women’s movement that is working a more life affirming status a, more compassionate way of being for and with all genders.
Hi Sam,
Can you provide details on this scholarship?
As my search for a positive version of religion developed, I began to understand how much of the established religions depend on codifications of human prejudices and the accumulation of power, and the distortion of original ideas to accomplish that. It’s nice that others are finally catching on: established religions are not a force of goodness.
In place of that I’ve built my own morality, and beliefs taken from the foundations of religions (like the perennial philosophy). The beliefs, mostly built on 19th century Spiritualism and channeled sources from that, don’t matter here, but the morality was based on the Golden Rule. Since learning of it, I’ve added Stephan’s Quotidian Choice. I don’t believe a true God would welcome or need worship, but I respect him by how I treat his creation.