12.05.11

More on the virtual church…

Posted in General at 1:18 pm by nemo

Comment on Virtual Church

You miss my point: what is ugly, actually, is the egoic founding of a religious movement without the proper insight into beginnings. Ron Hubbard was very ugly in that respect.
The results are visible in many contemporary cults. The ‘founders’ during the Axial Age, or the Reformation were part of an irrestible historical momentum, anyone outside those moments should be wary of not creating an abortive mess. That tends to make religious traditions seem more sacrosanct that they are. If we examine later Xtianity we see many of the problems, and ugliness, of cults, rather than religions. But all in all Xtianity fulfilled a good part of its promise. Still, we see the suspicious ‘second attempt’ to try again with Islam. The hopeless confusion of Jews and Xians was clearly an unforeseen catastrophe of religious beginnings: that’s what you get when you rush to add water to mortar to lay the holy brick.
We don’t see the hidden gnostic creators of these religions, and these (the tale of the three magi actually senses the presence of these hidden operators) figures were never held to any responsibility.

My point then is that we can outflank this issue with a new mode of ‘religious foundations’. The idea ofa virtual church of the holy brick, outlandish, and a toss-off, strikes me as actually right, in a funny way.

You can see the problem in today’s post on Chris Hedges: he is at risk, perhaps, of trying to constrict OWS around a christian tenor. Or maybe not, but my proposal for a virtual church with quaker style circles is post-christian, simply a question about the last phase of the Reformation.
And buddhists should be considering the issue of the Reformation, because without a consideration of modernity it cannot survive except as a retrograde movement.

In any case my Virtual Church was not a plea for a Christian presence in the OWS (as any reader of this blog will understand). At the same time it is an idea for an open assembly that must welcome religionists to the left, after the failure of the atheist humanism of the left since the time of Feuerbach.

I think the ‘virtual church of the holy brick’ should be massive a study group, and ‘boot camp’ for religious consideration, prior to religious comittment. Such an assembly could prosper better at a virtual stage, in a discipline of meditation, historical study and research into religion, examination of secularism and the potential for a spiritual psychology for modern man (a tough assignment).

We should also consider the larger framework of gnostic esotericism whose hidden logic is dangerous and toxic medicine to any religious public: witness the realm of the esoteric Xtianity of a Gurdjieff with its dark and and shadowy reactionary occultism, frightening, and Xtians as they exit their religious sanctuary in secularism are at risk, more even than atheist humanists, of demonic possession, and occult chaotification. I think the left needs to remain an ‘open clinic’ of religious hysterics (the term ‘ashram’ means clinic) with a robust agnosticism, sparing us any more lunatic collisions over the futile theism/atheism dialectic.
A lot of this work has already been done, and if we examine Kant, Hegel, et al. we see the last phase of the Reformation reach philosophy. But a quaker-like movement for a Xtian left might dovetail with a larger framework in such movements as the OWS which in a global phase needs to consider stances beyond religious dogmas, without the narrow fundamentalism of cults like that of the new atheists, or the stance on religion of the older ‘lefts’. Those groups, however, were aware of the dangers of compromise. Christians will tend to trojan horse conservative strains into any movement, behind a few progressives. The wisdom of the old left here should not be forgotten, but their equally flawed ‘atheism humanism’ isn’t really much of an answer either.

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