I’m pleased to announce that the Church of the Churchless has opened its doors. This is a spin-off HinesSight weblog devoted to preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.
Until today I’d been plugging away on making the Church of the Churchless a regular website. But frustrations with the website creation software I had been using, coupled with a wave of fondness for the simplicity and power of weblogging, led me to recast all of the content into its present form.
Which, naturally, will evolve. If you want to explore the current Church offerings, entirely logically I suggest you start with the "Welcome" page. This provides an overview of what the Church of the Churchless is all about. Then the posts listed in the "Basics of our faithless faith" portal can be explored.
The world has plenty of religions and spiritual faiths. The last thing I want to do is add to the confusion. That’s why this is a church for the churchless, which naturally includes me. People who don’t belong need a place to belong. That place is inside us, not outside. But we need to be reminded of this. So this weblog is a way for me to remind myself of what I already know, but forget all the time.
Right now I’m reading a book about Skeptics and True Believers. Each group has a strong support system. For Skeptics it is science; for True Believers it is religion. However, what about people like me who are Skeptical Believers? We believe that there is more to reality and the cosmos than what science knows (or can ever know), yet are skeptical that the path of organized religion leads to these higher truths.
Laurel and I keep thinking about forming a group here in Salem that would be a support for the spiritually independent who yearn for a dash more of togetherness to mix in with their otherwise tasty independence. We haven’t quite figured out whether, or how, to do this. So the Church of the Churchless is a way for me to share ideas in cyberspace that might someday also be communicated face-to-face.
HinesSight will continue to be my main creative weblogging outlet. I’ll use the Church of the Churchless as a venue to express most of my mystical/spiritual/metaphysical ponderings, a.k.a. to some, “weirdness.” The thought of which—weirdness—just stimulated the seeds of a Church sermon: “Which is weirder: reality or religion?”
Why, I think I’m going to enjoy being the unpastor of my own unchurch.
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