The churches should not have to dig too deep to find the real cuase of a constipated theological discussion. I would suggest the causes of stifeld debate lay in thier own back yards.

It is far too easy to externalise the blame for failing institutions on cultural relativism or secualr rationalism which Peter seems to be doing here when the real cuase lies within the churches themselves.

In the tradition of each of the three mainstream religions it was their nature to lay claim to the debate - theological discussion was limited to those in positions of power - and the so called truths were dispensed down to the masses. Church leaders were sceptrical about printing the bible for the masses.

The other church based reason that stifles debates was the threat of compliance/blind faith versus damnation and the the third is rooted in the claim each of the three biggies , and latterly others, laying claim to exclusive knowledge of the truth when it comes to matters godly.

Not a great deal has changed in the 21st century.

The rise of science might have provided a few explanations of phenomenon Church leaders used to shore up their position and secular rationailism offered others alternative ways of thinking - but the concept of people being free to engage in theological discussion died a long time ago if it ever existed at all.

Any analysis of the corporate world, organisations big and small, into failures will invariably find mismanagement at the top; the same can be said of features of religions that are faltering - just like fish, religious organisation usually start to rot from the head down.

What a strange piece. Being quite readable for a change, it starts to provide me with a clue why Mr Sellick and I can so very frequently be looking at the same object, but see it quite differently.

For example, the questions "Is there a God" and "Am I religious" seem to me to be the distillation of many centuries of thought. To Mr Sellick, they appear to be the starting point of intellectual anarchy, and ultimate impoverishment.

He argues that as soon as individuals started to become aware that there was more than one means by which to express ones faith, the purity of that faith became diluted. Hence the appearance of the concept of religion, which, he asserts, automatically fell prey to the Enlightenment's tendency to question anything that wasn't tied down.

His rhetorical flourish, "How could theology be taken seriously after such a move?" enables him to tell us how "if we get our theology wrong we see only a distortion of reality, the consequences of which will blight our lives". Naturally, this leads to "...National Socialism in Germany and ... Communism in the West and in Asia, where it still holds fast in China and North Korea."

All well and good (or ill and bad, presumably) if you accept the first premise. That replacing blind faith with religious reasoning was a mistake.

In my view of history, the Enlightenment saw the re-birth of man as a thinking being. Mr Sellick believes this was an error; we shouldn't think, we should simply have faith.

His faith, that is. Any other manifestation of what an individual might describe as "my faith" is merely religion, susceptible to interpretation therefore merely relativistic. And being relativistic is, of course, automatically a bad thing.

But it all sounds to me so very "post hoc, ergo propter hoc".

The position here can only be sustained by an individual who has chosen *not* to think about theology, but instead simply excoriates beliefs that diverge from his own as "relativism". Seems altogether very self-serving to me.

It's not clear to me just how Mr Sellick proposes that this parlous state of affairs should be remedied. Does it involve returning the clergy and theologians (united in heart and mind as to the true nature of reality) to their previous exalted state so that we lay people can then hang on their every word as to how our lives should be ordered? And do we also take steps to remove from society those whose views are deemed heretical?

Organised Religion is died, Long live reality!

Thanks Peter for your article. There are different forces in society that subtlely erode and corrupt that which is good and wholesome. We cannot blame science for this. The religous need to understand that what has been handed down and proved to be good needs to be preserved. The church needs to continue to proclaim and hold on to what is good so that society does not lose its bearings. We are called to be light at all times. What has happened is that other forces and voices have eroded the sense of meaning and purpose that religion offers. It is time that the church rose up and begins to counter these forces and restore what has been lost. The church needs to continue to be salt and light to the darkness around us. God is alive and well and those who know Him can and will prevail. God is spirit and we are spirit beings and without Him we grope in darkness. Let those who have eyes to see and ears to hear be encouraged.

I pretty much agree with the above posts.

From the ending:
"All of this is aided by the separation between church and state which has restricted faith knowledge to the private sphere.
"Where to from here? It seems that our society will have to learn even harder lessons before it will learn that it has been duped by what has been called “secular rationalism”. This movement will have to produce even more absurdity before we will see it for what it is."

Okay so what's your unity model then?

Currently, the biggest influence on world events are Islamicist terrorists and their absurdist theatre (who are taking up more political real estate than they are worth IMHO) and who believe, not just in a reunion of church and state, but a complete submission of all human activities to a particular religious belief.

Another unity option is for the church to totally submit to the state. Still popular in Orthodox Christianity, this was Constantine's idea, who curiously, was a Roman Emperor, a statist with a dream of a monothesitic state, which I suppose you can call unity. I assume it is this late early Christian period that the writer refers to in the middle of the article:
"The unity of the church, established in the unity of the person of Jesus was destroyed, leaving a heritage of relativism in religious matters."

However, this unity (and it did not last long at all) was destroyed not as the writer suggests by secular relatavism but a bunch of uppity Greek monks who thought the then current Byzantine Emperor was too pagan, and they scurried off to Rome, forged the Donation of Constantine and advocated for the submission of disunited proto-states in Western Europe to the Vatican. IE it was broken by power hungry priests with their own agenda, a vision of a trans-generational corporation selling crown franchises to selected warrior-kings, usually offered through female fiances.

Which of these options does the writer envisage?