Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Organised religion, organised anything, requires commitment and requires an engagement with something. A lot of the time, we don't want to commit.
The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.
Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.
It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.
When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.
I'm not religious. I was as a child, and like lots of people, I suppose, rapidly became very disillusioned with the whole thing. I also feel that organised religion has caused far more problems than it has solved.
My biggest problem with organized religion is that God has been imagined as a human being with emotions. I feel if you let go of that, then it's possible to see God as a force, to connect to him or her spiritually.
I never found much comfort in overly organized religion of any sort.
Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.