Google Gang note, "We can all support our own view of things from the rational to the wildly disparate and plain wrong by occupying our chosen echo chamber".

People with the brains and memories of goldfish who don't even remember the seven day cycle of media generated trash, and who are trained by communist teacher's unions to believe that the past doesn't matter, are unlikely to be able to think about the "two thousand years of Christian thought that has formed our society".

As for "grounds for our society turning its back on the Church" - is modern society such that it is fit to pass judgement on the errors of the past? I think not.

The attack on the jugular:

Theologism defines Christian sensualism.

Dan

Dear Peter,

We can remember some of the things that Christianity has done. One can hearken to the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Mathew 7:16 “By their fruits shall ye know them.”

Some of these fruits are the occupation of lands inhabited by Aborigines, American Indians and other indigenous cultures and the extirpation of those cultures along with the enslavement and murder of the peoples and forcing Christianity on them, massacres of Jews and other non-Christians, murder of Servetus, Hypatia, Vanini, Bruno and other scientists and thinkers who questioned the Christian worldview, house arrest of Galileo, Wars of the Reformation where Christians of one kind killed Christians of another kind, the slave trade, the Inquisition and the support of most of the churches in Nazi occupied lands for Hitler.

In South Africa there was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which the powers in the Apartheid regime acknowledged their crimes and made peace with those they have oppressed. Christian churches might do the same.

No David f.

South Africa is now the anarchy of Capitalist plunder: Under Apartheid it was a well ordered society, Now all die equally disastrously.

This:

http://youtu.be/f6yhdBMqWJU

Dan

The decline of (paganized) Christianity is not some of a decline in faith but a decline in church membership. And it's claimed Authority, which seems to have spilled over into areas that are not faith related, but what happens in the privacy of bedrooms and who can marry who. And has absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the original esoteric Christians.

As for what Christianity and what it has done? It includes the Spanish inquisition, torture, the iron maiden and 6 million Muslims put to the sword, with blood-soaked bishops at the head of sword wheeling Crusaders. That had and has absolutely nothing common with the example Of the Master!

It also includes centuries of pedophile Priests buggering boys and even raping girls!

It has gotten itself involved in politics to the detriment of the church and has amassed a small fortune (trillions) in real estate and commercial business that competes with regular business but with an unfair advantage. And for all those above reasons and many more (word limits) it, has become a sty in the eye of God!
Alan B.

This essay provides a unique Illuminated Understanding of the shift in human consciousness and the all-the-way-down-the-line cultural consequences as a result of the European Renaissance. Elsewhere he pointed out that this shift began several hundred years prior to the Renaissance.
http://www.daplastique.com/essay/the-maze-of-ecstasy

It could even be said that this shift began when the church "fathers" appealed to the Aristotle's reason to bolster the "theological" justifications of the Christian dogma and belief system. Remember too that there are many cultural taboo's against anyone becoming too "mystical".
This brief reference provides a critique of left-brained reason
http://fearnomore.vision/the-vision-of-fear-no-more/love

This reference describes the cultural taboo's against Higher (yogic) knowledge and Realization http://www.dabase.org/up-1-3.htm

This reference provides a unique Understanding of what human beings represent http://fearnomore.vision/human/what-man-represents - pointing out that we are "living" way-way-down in the scale of our evolutionary potential.
Also http://fearnomore.vision/world-2/the-divine-has-no-purpose

This reference describes the non-religious universal Teaching of Saint Jesus of Galilee http://www.dabase.org/up-5-2.htm

This reference provides a scathing critique of our dreadful sanity
http://www.beezone.com/adida/jesusandme.html

A later extended version of the above essay can be found in section 17 of this reference http://www.dabase.org/up-6.htm

And of course what was/is called "official" institutional Christian-ism only began at least 300 years later when/after Constantine made Christian-ism the official religion of the Roman State.