John Hunt

It was a bit of a daft suggestion, just trying to liven things up a bit. I think the debate on whether God exists or not is too often polarized between new atheists and "orthodox" Christians. We've been "believing" for at least 100,000 years, in something outside ourselves, across 100 billion or so people, there are lots of options to explore. I happen to think that what Jesus taught represents the best of the best, but it's not something you see much of in much of the church.   

I looked at it recently - but to post as a Christian you have to accept the Nicene Creed, the Trinity, etc. At least I see they've started to delete posts saying that Covid is a hoax!

I've recently been kind of thrown off TheologyWeb. I was told that to be a Christian you have to believe in the virgin birth, resurrection and trinity. Seem to be a lot fundamentalist trolls posting there. 

On both these sites I find it a bit puzzling that they have sections for other religions, given the fundamentalism of the administrators.

I've tried Christian sections on Quora, but you have to get through a lot of the flat earth/creationist/144,000 saved -type posts.

So I thought I'd try this one. Shame there aren't more on it though.

Conversions from one religion to another seem comparatively rare, unless accompanied by economic or military persuasion. Upbringing, local culture, seem to be the key influences. But if you could step outside, somehow, how would you rate them, in terms of morality, reasonableness, impact? 

Some thoughts.....

I don't think there's anything intrinsically “sacred” or “true” about religions themselves. They’re as much human constructions as schools, governments and ideologies. You can judge them, vote for them, like you do for political parties (or not). There are many options. Looked at logically, Islam makes more sense than Christianity, which split God into three as it became absorbed into the Roman Empire, and inherited many of its rituals and practices. If the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) don’t work for you, and you’re looking for an intelligently conceived monotheistic religion that makes few demands on credulity and focuses on good practice in this life, then Sikhism is a good bet. The youngest and fifth largest of the major religions, it rejects religious monopoly, puts practice above creed, and focuses on truthfulness, honesty, self-control and purity.

And of course monotheism is a recent development, followed by some just in the most recent fraction of 1% of our time on earth. We might describe Hinduism as being the most successful religion today in terms of being followed by the largest proportion of the world’s population over the last few thousand years. Some scholars say that it’s the cradle of many of the others, including the monotheistic religions, much as our languages have developed from Sanskrit. Those inclined to mysticism might claim that the central Hindu teaching of advaita, of all things being one, is at the root of all good religion. Others claim that in its exploration of consciousness it developed sophisticated views of the unity of matter and mind millennia ago that science is only just beginning to appreciate. The most revered of their classics, the Bhagavad Gita (“Song of the Beloved”), written around the fifth century BC, is the earliest attempt we have to arrive at a comprehensive view of existence. The setting is a battlefield that symbolizes life itself. As the dialogue ripples out into deeper subject a whole philosophy of life unfolds. It’s a work of deep wisdom and tolerance. As Krishna says, “Whoever with true devotion worships any deity, in him I deepen that devotion; and through it he fulfills his desire” (7:21).

But this doesn’t necessarily mean Hinduism can work for everyone. It’s hard for Westerners to embrace the idea of 350 million gods (oddly enough very similar to the number of angels that medieval monks believed existed; Hinduism has worked by virtue of its flexibility, it adds gods faster than the Hebrew kings added wives and sex-slaves), rather than one, of duty rather than love at the top of the moral equation, let alone the caste divisions (Hinduism is pluralist on a broad scale, but separation is locked in socially). We’re conditioned by our past, our present, and they are rare individuals who can determine for themselves quite different futures.

Religion does not need “God,” or “gods,” at all. Buddhism for instance is increasingly the religion of choice for many in the West (usually with a small “b,” but then most people who go to church are only Christian with a small “c”). Reincarnation is making a comeback. Originally an offshoot of Hinduism, it developed different forms as it spread; first into Theravada (Sri Lanka) and Mahayana (Tibet), then with further offshoots like Madhyamika, Tantric, Vajrayana and Zen. It then got a further boost when the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1951 scattered Buddhist teachers around the world in much the same way as the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 scattered Jews and Christians. Historically, it’s generally been the most peaceable and contemplative of the major religions. It seems the most intellectually rigorous, being based on reason rather than revelation, in some respects closer to philosophy. It's leaders tend to stress the need to test teaching against your own experience, rather than take sacred scriptures on trust. It focuses on the processes of the mind rather than what it thinks it sees. Through meditation, we gradually reduce the sense of self, clearing the mind of its junk. I struggle with it, but practices like raja yoga or vipassana meditation have been shown to lower blood pressure, slow metabolism and produce increasingly coherent brainwave patterns. Buddhism floats free of dependence on history and miracle much as Christianity freed Roman religion (or tried to, initially) from dependence on deities in the sky and statues representing them on earth (though, as in Christianity, after the Buddha’s death his followers did introduce complex theologies, gods, saints, hell, etc.). But again, it’s difficult for most of us, after centuries of competitive individualism in the West, to take on board the insignificance, or nonexistence, of the self. With the ingrained perception that sins are something you can repent of, and get wiped from the record, the idea that they come back, through karma, to determine your status in your next incarnation is a tough one. And if people are more enlightened than dogs why are so many of them nastier? And how does a dog, or a bug, make a choice to do good or evil? Or a tiger show compassion? The fact that meditation helps well-being doesn’t mean that reincarnation is “true,” any more than praying to Jesus and believing that he’s answering somehow “proves” the Resurrection. The idea of time as circular rather than a line, the endless recycling of life, where there is no real progress, no leading up to a dramatic Judgment Day, or no acceptance that we could actually make the world better (or worse), is perhaps the hardest of all.

But hell, there are so many great religions out there. Taoism at times seems closer to the teaching of Jesus than does Christianity itself; a good Taoist has few demands and doesn’t exercise power over others. Its vision of the world as determined by principles of balance and order offers an attractive alternative to one ruled by gods. The Tao Te Ching is perhaps the wisest book ever written. Its opening sentence is, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” Words cannot define the Tao, or God, you can only come to it through the silent stillness inside you. You are not your thoughts, that’s mostly mind-clutter, you are the one thinking them. It’s not easy understanding that. Imagine the struggle a chimp would have if it tried to think of itself as “me.” Now imagine yourself as not being “you.” Try thinking for a moment of your name, the letters, as a label you’ve been given, and go deeper.

Confucianism demonstrates a stronger commitment to the family, the wider social unit, and the principle of good government than most other religions have started to get their heads around. Maybe the success of the Chinese Empire over thousands of years, as a relatively peaceful, nonaggressive, inventive, well-functioning social unit has something to do with their religion. (And I’m well aware that these are very relative terms; but, broadly speaking, the Chinese still live in China; they haven’t, for instance, colonized North America, which they had the capacity to do). More broadly, perhaps the communitarian, more equal and mutually supportive societies of the East are better placed to cope with pandemics, hence the huge discrepancies in the infection and death rates related to Covid between East and West.

Then there’s Shinto: the most ancient, beautiful, and simple of all the major religions practiced today, close to paganism and just as diverse. And you have the still older tribal religions, like that of the Aborigines, which have an imaginative power, fusing the soul and the landscape, past, present, and future, that for some dwarfs our own tinkering with the world of spirit.

And if you were to give religions a “moral score” – Jainism would surely come out on top. One of the oldest religions, with Parsha, the twenty-third leader (the first we know of as a historical person), living around the eighth century BC, it’s the most demanding one on earth, the Mount Everest of them all in terms of lifestyle and self-discipline, and has still less room for any idea of God. Its first principle is that the highest duty is not to harm anything living, including through thought and speech. Never mind the brutalities of factory farming, they’ll do their best to avoid stepping on an ant (serious adepts wear face masks to avoid swallowing insects, anticipating Covid-19 precautions by many millennia). Its second principle, “many-sidedness,” is that truth and reality are complex; reality can be experienced, but never fully expressed through language. And so on. If the world could somehow convert overnight to Jainism, most of our problems would be over. The coming climate crisis would be resolved. Politicians would be judged on how truthful they are. It sounds impossible… particularly today… though there are around five million Jainists in the world.

So that's the one I'd put on top of my list.

Merry Christmas/Noel/Yule etc...and here's hoping that 2020 sees some upturns in the fight against Covid, that we can we can start to hug again, take our masks off, that the economy picks up, that action will be taken on climate change - I'll stop here, starting to get misty-eyed/Utopian....  

Do you believe it's possible to be both Christian and Pagan? 

Short answer, in my opinion, yes.

I'm not a pagan myself, but happen to be involved in a publishing company that in one of its imprints (Moon Books) publishes a few dozen pagan titles a year. Which I completely support. It's by far our oldest religious tradition. It's based on a respect for Nature, which we're all going to have to adopt, if we're going to survive. It's decentralized to the point that you can pretty much make up your own practices/find your own gods/goddesses, but then that's pretty much what we've always been doing anyway.

And much of "Orthodox Christianity" as understood today is pretty much pagan. Key doctrines like the Virgin Birth, Son of God, Resurrection - they weren't understood as such by the very first Christians, but were common currency in the beliefs of people in the Roman Empire at the time, (and around the world), and the Church absorbed them as it became assimilated into the Empire, and eventually took it over.  

But, as already said, you'll get flak from both sides. One of our authors is Mark Townsend, an Anglican/Episcopalian priest who left the ministry to become a pagan-

https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/diary-heretic

and there are others....I find the crossover journeys between different religions (but I think they're all far more closely connected than we generally realize) fascinating.....

All the best with the journey.

Sure, "humans" is a vague term, open to interpretation. But Neanderthals cared for their sick and wounded (the anthropologist Margaret Mead called “a healed femur” the first sign of civilization), and buried their dead with ritual and ceremony, covering them with flowers, placing stones and antlers around the graves, and may have played music. They stitched clothes, carried spears, produced jewelry and pictures with manganese pigments, and probably went seafaring through the Mediterranean. Most anthropologists say we probably killed them off, whether through warfare or disease or both.

Which surely has implications for "theology," and "Christianity." That a species of homo could have gone extinct about 30,000 years before Jesus arrived with the message of salvation.

I think, actually (haven't checked the reference), that Thomas Aquinas, one of the major theologians who described God in the way it's commonly understood in the churches today, said that one of the pleasures of heaven was that you could see all the people being tortured in hell, who made the wrong decision.

I don't believe there was anyone at your birth saying, “We’ll only let you live if you believe in God.” Equally, there’s no one when you die saying, “Because you haven’t believed you’ll now be tortured in hell forever.” That’s a religion for playground bullies to preach and the fearful to practice.

In this respect, the teaching on karma makes much more sense to me, almost the definition of morality - that you reap what you sow -  (though I don't believe that either). 

Or perhaps Valhalla - spending eternity eating great food and drinking good wine - I'd opt for that, if it wasn't that I'd have to kill loads of people to get there....but at least that wouldn't be as bad as seeing 99% or so of all the people who have ever lived being condemned to hell....

Sorry Paul, new here and trying to get the hang of it; not good with computers/forums. And I'm probably spouting off too much anyway.

Thanks - that's a book I hadn't come across!

Paul Tillich, Teilhard de Chardin etc, love them. 

Fwiw, I'm not sure the "isms" are less effective than religion when it comes to binding human beings with an identity.

I'm split on this. I think the most successful societies, both in terms of economic success and "well being", like the Nordic ones, tend to practice something along the lines of democratic socialism (with a right wing slant). Focusing on the public good, investing in health, education, infrastructure, for everyone, reducing inequality. But they're generally "post-Christian." How far that's because they've absorbed Christian principles into the mainstream, and abandoned the supernatural baggage, I don't know.  But 

But will it transform?

The founders of religions were transformative. And  the values it promotes (in general) are pretty common around most religions. But within a couple of generations, what they were saying gets modified to the power structures/thinking of their time. I think that's seen more clearly in Christianity than anywhere else. 

Forgive if I bore on too long.

I really liked the video. For me, science and religion do different things. Science can be a source of beauty and wonder, whether in maths, cosmology, biology, whatever. But it's essentially "mechanical." It doesn't impart or create "value", or "meaning." Those are things we have to do for ourselves. And science without values - how it's used - is the route to nightmare (we can see it happening for instance right now with climate change; we have the power to destroy civilization over the next century through continuing to exploit natural resources through ever-better technology. But should we? That's not a "scientific" question).

How I see it - the first meaning of religio is “relationship.” There’s a common, universal and ancient thread in religious tradition that takes us back to when “relationship” began. It says that once we were content. We didn’t worry. We lived in what is described in different traditions as the Age of Perfection, the Krita Yuga, the Garden of Eden, the Eternal Springtime, and so on, in innocence. We were at one with nature, because we were nature. We didn’t know good and evil. We couldn’t mess up. We couldn’t even think. Then at some point in our history, whether 100,000 or 7 million years ago (lowest and highest estimates, depending in part on how many species of “Homo” you include), we became “self-aware.” Armadillos specialize in body armor, cheetahs in speed, this is our own specialty, it’s what we “do.” We began to watch ourselves “living.” We divided the world into “me” and “it.” We made a conscious choice to eat the apple (or not), to have sex (or not). Like Adam in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:20) we began naming them, and talking to each other. So on the one hand we began to enjoy the fruits of self-awareness, of communication, and love; on the other hand we learned the ashes of separation, uncertainty and the fear of death. Ever since then, since the “Fall,” we’ve been trying to put the two together again – the “me” and the “it,” turning “it” into “you,” figuring out how one should relate to the other, groping around the edges of our lives, wondering what’s over the horizon.

We started asking the questions we still ask today: Why can’t we just be happy with what we’ve got? What is love really about? Can it survive death – we’ve been investing in elaborate burial rituals and provisions to help the deceased into the next life for at least a hundred thousand years? Why is there anything at all? Is there a Big Truth? A God? Maybe we should shut up and relax. Accept things as they are. But if we could, and did, we’d still be up in the trees, chucking sticks at leopards.

Religion began as a response to the dilemmas that self-awareness created. For instance, rather than acting solely in the interests of the species, or the genetic pull of family, individuals could now override their biological programming and act in the interests of the self. By the way – killing, cheating, lying – these are “natural,” with the first being the principle behind most forms of life, other than plants – you only live by eating something else – the second common amongst animals and birds; it’s only the third, lying, that is unique to us, special to humans, because of our capacity to talk (lying is easy; it’s telling the truth we have to work at - and as evidenced recently, in some ways we're going backwards). But to act solely in the interests of the self is self-destructive for everyone in the longer term. Religions grew to connect us again with the larger whole, replacing our lost instinct. It’s our “big idea” that ties us together; the one that stops the self from getting drunk on its new sense of power; a “larger truth.” A solid religion creates structures that control the appetites of the self and encourages service and inspiration. The wisdom tradition of Homo sapiens sapiens – of relating to our selves and the world around us wisely, of developing the vision of a good life and a moral code to frame it, of transcending our biology – this is what separates us from nature.

So in the first meaning of the word, religion helps provide the framework for relating to each other, rituals for the key moments in life, for building societies. It’s our means of defining and confronting what is good and bad, honed through millions of years of cooperation and stored in our genes. It gives us benchmarks to guide us, targets to aim for, stories to get us there, standards to judge ourselves and our societies by. If we didn’t have religion, we’d need something close to it. And in the hole left in the twentieth century by the ebbing belief in God we’ve tried a number of different ideas, organizing ourselves around race (fascism), country (nationalism), production (communism), consumption (capitalism). Maybe the jury is still out, but these ideas don’t seem to have worked.

Maybe the reason they don’t work is because they’re all based on “us,” rather than the “other.” They lack respect for a sense of the “sacred” (for the moment, let’s call it God for short), which is the second meaning of religio. In this view, developing good relationships is not just a personal, moral issue, it’s a universal one, an absolute. It’s the meaning behind everything. Religion is about acknowledging it, bowing to it.

All religions suggest that values are more than our invention. They’re rooted in something that’s bigger and more important than ourselves, a next level up, something that’s beyond our control, that we can’t twist to our advantage. To put it in terms of practical relationships, there are higher values that we can’t compromise on, for which we’re prepared to sacrifice more than seems rational.

This is more controversial. Why put yourself out for something you can’t see? But the “sacred” has been with us so long it may even be something hardwired into the brain, that makes us human. It’s what the word “human” means. It probably originates from the Arabic hu, meaning spirit, or God; and the Sanskrit manah, or mind. We think that we are what we have become because we are essentially spiritual beings, minds seeking God, whatever those terms might signify. For tens of thousands of years we’ve practiced this search in religion, and more recently have described it in philosophy. Religion is usually preferred to philosophy because it engages the heart, even the body, as well as the mind. It offers the medicine as well as the diagnosis. It describes what we have in here as well as how we relate to what’s out there.

Religion is primary. So much so that most deeply religious cultures don’t even have a word for it. For them, to explain why they’re “religious” would be like trying to explain why they breathe. Reading, writing, math, science, these are secondary. They’re what we have to go to school for. We have a hunger for the meaning that we describe in religion, for the stories that bind us together, that tell us where we came from and where we’re going, that explain how we should relate to each other and the world around us, like we have a hunger for food and relationship. Indeed in most religions these are linked together in sacrifice and ritual meals. Communion, eating the flesh of another to partake of its spirit, is the most ancient and widespread of all religious practices. And theology is to religion like cookery is to eating, like love is to sex. We’ve been doing it ever since our remote ancestors came down from the trees and started burying their dead.

That might all be well over the top - but I don't see religion disappearing any time soon, if ever. The reverse. The more power we can wield through science and technology, the more we need a framework of values and meaning to direct its use. Which takes us to the main issue - there's "good" religion, but there's also "bad", destructive religion. Which seems to be winning the day. Quite apart from the growing fundamentalism in sections of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam etc, I think it's very difficult today, for instance, for any well-meaning Christian, trying to live according to the principles that Jesus gave us, to identify as evangelical, when 4 out of 5 of white evangelical voters plumped for Trump, in both the last elections. 

ps; some good books in this area-   Cosmosapiens J. Hands Climbing Mount Improbable R. Dawkins Wonderful Life S. J. Gould

The Diversity of Life E. O. Wilson The Demon-haunted World C. Sagan The Elegant Universe B. Greene The Road to Reality R. Penrose Seven Brief Lessons on Physics C. Rovelli Six Impossible Things J. Gribbin The Science Delusion R. Sheldrake

The Mind of God P. Davies A Brief History of Time S. Hawking Our Cosmic Habitat M. Rees

Awakening Earth P. Russell The Book of Nothing J. Barrow Life: an Unauthorised Biography R. Fortey Mapping the Mind R. Carter The Runaway Brain C. Wills The Wisdom of Bones A. Walker and P. Shipman

There are so many potential issues raised here it's hard to know where to begin. Today no reputable geologist would accept a biblical account of how the earth was formed (or, to be more precise, Gallup polls suggest that even in the USA the number of earth and life scientists who accept creationism is under 0.1% – far fewer, statistically speaking, than the number who are likely to be mentally ill, let alone incompetent). No biologist would dispute the broad processes or the approximate timeframe of evolution; the questions are on whether it’s gradual or punctuated, how it started and what drives it. No anthropologist would agree that people emerged “ready-made.”

There are two versions of the Creation story in Genesis because Chapter 1 is from the “Deuteronomist” source, written around the sixth century BC, when the Israelites called God Yahweh, but were developing a more sophisticated idea of Him as spirit, under Persian influence – the “Spirit of God” in verse 2, “ruach”, is actually female. The second version of the story in the later chapters 2 and 3 come from a couple of hundred years earlier, around the eighth century BC, from the “Priestly” source, involving a different God, Elohim. The construction of the earth is different, the sequence is different, and here the earlier God is physical; talking and walking in the garden like a man, avoiding the noonday sun, calling out for Adam and Eve because He doesn’t know where they are. A third writer combined the two sometime in the fifth century BC – both traditions were by then so well established that neither could be left out.

But of course this isn’t a specifically Christian, or even Jewish/Christian, story. The plot details of both are drawn from Mesopotamian myth, and go back thousands of years earlier to the Sumerian cylinder seals, and they’re found in the rituals and art of ancient people from around the world. Every culture has a creation myth, usually involving deities, humans or human-like figures, and speaking animals or reptiles like the snake in Eden. The serpent has been interpreted by the Church as the devil tempting Eve, but he’s actually one of the oldest religious characters, seen as a god in his own right in many religions, often associated with healing, wisdom and immortality. He was worshipped by the Hebrews for many centuries, is still the emblem of medicine, and many traditions are still fascinated by him, like the snake-handling churches of the Ozarks in the USA. And the basic theme of a deity creating order (good) out of chaos (bad), shaping the formless void, is common religious currency around the world (the Christian article of faith that God created “ex nihilo,” from nothing, didn’t emerge till the third century AD ).

So… we’re already into four versions of divinity in the first few verses of the Bible; the almighty creator of the universe, a female spirit, a physical God walking in a garden who doesn’t know what’s going on, and a divine snake.

It's not just a question of "which god are we talking about", but "which image"? There have been at least half a dozen other species of Homo walking the earth while we've been around, who we probably killed off.

I'm not sure there's much in the Bible at all about "hell." Several very different cultural traditions are lumped together in that word - Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, even Tartarus. I remember arguing with my mother about it, as a youngster. Brought up in a Baptist family ( Baptism was an adult choice (or rather teenage, in my case), I didn’t feel convinced enough. In fact, the closest I’ve some to any kind of religious initiation was being blessed by a tribal witchdoctor in Sudan (I still have the cow bracelets). There have been other attempts – being prayed over by a group from the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship for instance – that didn’t seem to “take.” Speaking in tongues has always escaped me.

Anyway, I pointed out to her that if I wasn’t baptized into the Elect I was going to hell. Did she really believe that? She replied that she’d go to hell with me. Love beats doctrine, or should do. That was probably the point where I started to think for myself. It's surely an obscene idea. It’s also immoral. No teaching has led to more mental agony, physical suffering, and villainy. If an individual’s original sin condemns him or her to eternal hellfire (presumably continuing till after the universe ends, in a trillion or so years time? or would it just be till the planet burns up, in billions?) then torturing their bodies to save their souls makes sense. It would be wrong not to. Most Christians down the ages have agreed with the logic of this, including all mainstream church leaders and saints up till a few centuries ago when humanist values began to spread through society. The hardline church leaders of today, the conservative evangelicals and Catholic fundamentalists, are the inquisitors and witch-burners of yesterday, forced (often resentfully) into more mellow positions by secular society.

Ah, gotcha, on the "following". Thanks Paul.

as humans began to question their existence and

I don't think that's even confined to humans. After all, Neanderthal man had a bigger brain than ours, around 1.8 liters to our 1.4 - that's disputed, but they certainly seemed to have buried their dead with ritual and ceremony. And there's good evidence that Homo erectus, even earlier, did the same, in the Choukoutien burials outside Peking.

"what might a faithful re-organization of the Christian religion look like?"

Well, that's a tough one, too.

"faithful" - depends on how far back you're going, whether to the first few years after the death of Jesus (when Christians, as they later came to be known, were practicing a form of communism (Acts 2:44), or the next few decades when women seemed to be fairly prominent and the options seemed open, or the first century or two when everything was up for grabs, or the 3rd and 4th centuries when it became a religion of Empire...

Or, in terms of organization, you could go right back to the gospels - Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
In other words, there wasn't any. It wasn't a new religion, it had no intention of being so, and it had no organization. Nothing was even written down till a generation or two later. Jesus never wrote anything down.

I do think - we’re social animals, needing crowds as well as privacy, constructing our stories out of the collective imagination. So churches of some form are needed, though perhaps most of what we have is the packaging that can now be left behind, much like the early Christians were thrown out of the synagogues. We can't live without some form of organization - unless everyone converts to a kind of Jesus-anarchism, of the kind he talks about.

But if it makes sense to be religious and be organized it’s logical to accept the best practices from the broad range of traditions. Meditation and yoga are as natural parts of a healthy spiritual life as curry and rice are now staples of our diet. It’s through embracing diversity that we come closer to truth. It’s clear that God didn’t want us to be too sure of where it lies. Differences are part of the solution rather than the problem. If we added all the religious insights of the world together we’d get a better picture of a tiny part of who He might be.

There have been many attempts at setting up a more broad consensus on religion, but none have captured the popular imagination. We're essentially narrow, tribal people, most of us - and to some extent, inevitably, all of us.

'Fraid I have some vague thoughts in this area, but certainly no solutions....

Hi Irreverance -I'd say the answers on Quora on the Christianity section (those I've seen, anyway, are more of the fundamentalist/flat earth variety, than evangelical (most of my aunts/nephews/nieces are charismatic/evangelical, but not missionary/proselytizing types - and I both love and am in many respects envious of them}.

"Local parish church" - Anglican (roughly Episcopalian). The community I live in (about 1500 people) is too small to support others.

Also, can you share what you are hoping to find here (or elsewhere on the web)? I'm interested in hearing where your spiritual quest is taking you. Well, tough one; I kind of feel I'm too old to learn any new tricks. But I'd like to learn ways of living more faithfully, being a more complete, centered, better person.

Hi Paul - many thanks. Australia - one of the countries I've always wanted to visit, but looking increasingly less likely.

Hi Joseph - Thanks for that.

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have pretty well made the rounds in Christianity. 

Yes, pretty much seen every side of it. And of some other religions - I own a publishing company, which started in the area of Christianity in childrens' books, about 35+ years ago. Nowadays we publish a couple of hundred titles a year, under different imprints. Religion accounts for about half of them. Half of those, are on paganism. Which makes a kind of sense to me, even though I don't follow it - it's by far the oldest; it's based on respect for Nature, which we're all going to have to adopt, I reckon, if civilization is going to survive; it's decentralized to the point where you can pretty much make up your own gods/goddesses, but that's what I reckon we've always been doing anyway...

So I'm pretty pluralist. and realize the disadvantages of that, not being able to settle in one tradition. Know a bit about everything, experience nothing.

would like to hear some of your thoughts on Christianity today and some of your personal inspirational stories 

I'll try and chip in - one immediate issue is that new posts/replies don't seem to generate notifications that there's something on the forum you might want to see. So I guess it means logging in now and again to find out who's commenting. But maybe I'm getting that wrong, I'm more of a quill pen and ink kind of guy, struggled for decades to get the hang of computers. 

But thanks for the welcome.

so as requested - a little background. I'm 67 and live in Hampshire, UK - though think of myself as half-American - went to school for a while in Minneapolis, worked a number of years for a US publishing company, and have been there dozens of times, seeing more of America than most Americans. Actually, I love the USA, which is not fashionable in Europe nowadays. I studied at Oxford University, set up my own publishing business nearly forty years ago, and have recently taken a back seat - I do a little writing and a lot of gardening. It's given me time to explore the internet a bit, I've followed the Christianity section on Quora for a few months, but find the level of comment there a bit dispiriting, so am looking for something else.

Spiritually, I grew up in an evangelical family which included a number of ministers, and was heavily involved in missionary organizations like the Navigators in my teens. Nowadays, I occasionally go to Quaker or Unitarian services, but more often to the local parish church. Been happily married for almost 40 years, and have two great boys (adults now, I suppose).