Anyone for Organised Religion?

Who is a fan of organised religion?

Certainly not novelist Philip Pullman who once said, “I know whom we must fight... it is the Church. For all its history, it has tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, and obliterate every good feeling.”

I don’t agree with that. A community of oppressed individuals, devoid of good feelings, controlled by Machiavellian clergy is not what I see at All Saints' or Saint Mary's at all. pretty well the exact opposite actually. 'The gentleman doth protest too much methinks.' 

But like Pullman I’m not a fan of organised religion either. And I'm a vicar! It seems, in fact, that there is hardly anyone ready to stick up for it. Even the pope these days seems to prefer a simple, unfussy approach to all the pomp and circumstance of religious piety.

Like the person tasked with arguing the case on Radio 5’s Fighting Talk for Wayne Rooney being a greater England captain than World Cup winning legend Bobby Moore, endorsing organised religion feels like defending the indefensible.

Why does western culture hate organised religion though? We would protest if our children were being educated in a disorganised school. We would never go under the knife of a disorganised surgeon. We would vote out a disorganised government. We would withdraw our money from a disorganised bank.

Our problem is not with organisation at all. It's surely with religion. I think it’s the churchiness, religiosity and political manoeuvring you get when the Church loses the plot that is such a turn off for so many. If anyone was ever opposed to organised religion in that sense it was Jesus. That, humanly speaking, is what got him crucified.

But the disciplines we associate with Lent; worship, prayer, fasting, studying scripture, giving, mastering temptation and self-denial - organised religion if you like - are all things that Jesus specifically singled out for endorsement, not condemnation (see Matthew 6.6, 6.17, 22.29, 6.3, 26.41 and 16.24). They are not about 'obliterating good feelings'; they are intended to maximise our joy in Christ.

It is human nature to centre our lives on ourselves instead of on the Lord, to magnify our own worth above his. Something within the human heart just doesn't want Jesus to be Lord of our lives. There’s probably a bit of this too at the heart of our otherwise healthy aversion to organised religion. 

The focus of Lent is to root out all the clutter until our faith is simple, straightforward, Jesus-centred and unencumbered by the sin that so easily entangles.