Posted on 12/22/2008 8:42:49 PM PST by ReligiousLibertyTV
The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an appeal from a religion that you probably never heard of until it hit the news yesterday. Summum is rooted in gnostic Christianity (or, at least modern understandings of gnosticism) and ancient Egyptian religion (or, at least contemporary understandings of ancient Egyptian religion). It was founded in 1975 and has its headquarters in (of all places) Utah. You can get more information at the official Summum web site.
The case before the Supreme Court is based on the fact that the small town in Utah has a large, stone monument in the city park of the Ten Commandments. The believers in Summum petitioned the city council to add another monument with their seven principles of good behavior. The city council refused, thereby establishing the religions of the Ten Commandments (Judaism and Christianity) over the little sect of Summum. The small religion has raised enough funds to hire attorneys and appeal their case all the way to the top court in America.
There are serious constitutional issues about religious liberty in this case even if you have a hard time taking Summum seriously. But, I want to focus on something else: The way new religions are being invented and why so many people are moving away from the large, historic faiths.
U.S. society today is dominated by three social realities: (1) a free market, (2) individualism and (3) access to information (unconfirmed and well-proven, but with no easy way to tell the two apart). In this context everyone has the freedom to make their own decision (unfettered by real logic and facts, among other things) about what to believe. Because faith is clearly a fundamental part of what it means to be human, this does not mean that religion simply shrivels and fades away (as sociologists of religion generally believed when I first studied the discipline in the 1960s). It means that people who find existing religions unsatisfying are free to create their own custom-built spiritualities. If they have any capacity for being influential or their creation appeals to others, then any of these custom spiritualities can become a religion. Consequently we live in a time when more new religions are being created than any time in about 2,000 years.
Does anyone still believe ancient Egyptian religion? Even in Egypt?
The central belief of the "religion is: "Nothing and Possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment"
Well, that explains everything. All becomes clear after a pitcher of beer and four shooters of peppermint schnapps at Dusty Rhodes Tavern.
After reading the link (Wikipedia) it occurred to me that the revelation of this religion sound very similar to many other religions. By this I mean that a person was visited by other worldly beings and was given a new revelation. Sounds very much like the roots of the three major religions on earth.
I say let them erect and maintain their monument.
Freedom works for them also.
Hey, I bought coffee for They Might Be Giants at a Dunkin’ Donuts in NJ! Are you saying I don’t exist?
Sounds like an eighth-grader explaining quantum physics.
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