Divorcing

IN A HUSTLING BUSTLING university town in the United States of American south the Methodist church is splitting in two, divorcing. It must be a very serious matter, with both sides strong enough to carry on and claim the mantle of true Methodism, rather than a mere matter of a disgruntled group existing the church. The church building is big and beauritul, indicaitng a large, prosperous congregation. The half that is moving out already has made new arrangements, building, clergy, doctrine, and all. Presumably, the schism has to do with politics, within and without the actual church and religion. Perhaps one side wishes to open ordainment to women, and perhaps one side, presuablly the same side. wishes to be inclusive and welcoming towards gay and trnsgender people. Whatever the precise rift, you sense the presence of a liberal-conservative divided ideology, ideologies which extend to both religion and politics, and include both. Somehow, ya gotta believe that it is the conservatives who are mainting control of the original, big, beautiful building...The two billion member Christian faith, all around the world, is confronted with the liberal-conservative spilt, between LGBTQ lovers and haters, and between those who want equality for women, and those who do not. And so it has always been with the Christian religion, the first big permanent schism taking place in the year fifteen seventeen with the Lutherans, and the fragmentation continuing to this day. The local split in the Methodist church may as well include three factions, or maybe four, but ultimately, may as well include as many factions as there are Methodists, one person, per faction, one religion per believer. Let the Methodists, and all other denominations split and divide repeatedly, down to the individual congregate, that all human religions become individual! Even today new Christian denominations are springing into existence as the inevitable human atomization prceeds apace. New forms of Christianity have been springing up in the United States since the eigtheenth century, and the process is ongoing today. Long before the Protestant Reformation, Catholicism, the universal church, had schims, at one point there being three, count 'em three different popes reigning over fragmented Catholicism. Goethe said it best: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine." It seems unlikely that the human species will soon or even ever universally evolve to embrace this reality; that no two people can possiblly share exactly the same religious beliefs. but one can hope. One can hope that at some fine time in the future, humanity will evolve away from huge, organized religions, and simply accept the reality that eveyoe invents his own religion, resulting in a"universal piesthood of believers", as the early Prostestants put it, a universal priesthood of believers all of whom believe in their own beliefs, and noone else's.