Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00472)

Hi, Larry:

Yes, there are lots of professional religious who do
not believe in and could not care less about the
dogmas of their churches. They look at it as a job
which pays better than selling flowers on a street
corner. One prominent example of that used to live in
Dallas. (Texas, that is. Not TenBroek.

He went to divinity school to avoid military service
during WWII. That exemption only applied to WORKING
priests, and not to aspirants, so the Selective
Service eventually called him up anyway. He then used
an old trick in which you take a cigarette, slit it
open with a razor, crush an aspirin, allow the
particles to fall on the tobacco, and then close the
thing and smoke it to do what diviity school could
not.

For 48 hours X rays will show spots on your lungs. He
was exempted from service, then finished divinity
school just in case and became an Episcopal priest.

While spouting dogma publicly, he was secretly
collecting members for a Rosicrucian study group, and
was instrumental in eventially starting a Rosicrucian
lodge in Dallas. The congregation knew nothing about
it, but he thought it wise to keep his staff and
bishop informed. One day they brought in a new
associate pastor and he wanted to find some way to get
the Rosicrucian out of the way so he could have the
top job. He therefore saw to it that the whole
congregation knew all about the Rosicrucians and that
was the end of the mahatma priest.

Now out of a job, his wife divorced him forthwith and
he found to his amazement that other congregations
were uninterested in hiring an impostor. That amazes
me, too. I guess they prefer one who has not been
exposed as such yet. He started his own "church" of
sorts in which he spouted Rosicrucian ideas openly
while doing the Episcopal ritual thing, but it was a
small operation compared to the business he got kicked
out of. He had, however, made some wealthy friends
while a priest, and one of them created a Montessori
school and named him the president. In due course his
impossible personality got him kicked out of that as
well. Nonetheless, he had some interesting
adventures, including being the officiating priest at
the wedding of Willy Nelson. He finally died in 1992
or thereabouts at the age of 82.

He said one time publicly that he knew a number of
Catholic priests and Protestant preachers who were
secretly Rosicrucians or Theosophists, and who spouted
their church's party line the same way a vegetarian
might work in a hamburger joint or a pacifist might
man a machine gun. Or for that matter a Baptist might
dance professionally or a Jehovah's Witness draw blood
for the Red Cross. Or if we get right down to it, a
Muslim work in a pig slaughterhouse or a Ba'hai lawyer
defend companies against sexual discrimination
lawsuits. You get the idea.

HYPOCRISY LIVES!

May it live long and reign.

I was also told by a local Theosophist leader, also
long since deceased, that he had been secretly
contacted by numerous preachers, etc., who were
secretly Theosophists. They do not believe their
denomination's B.S., but they teach it the same way a
Mormon High Priest might work in a soft drink plant,
or ... well, you know what I mean, being a Mormon High
Priest and all. Truth be told, half those guys
probably work for Pepsi and the other half for Coke. 
The Theosophical leader told me these guys were all
afraid their congregations would find out the truth
about them and they would end up on the unemployment
line faster than a Muslim bartender or a Church of
Christ referee in a swearing contest.

The ones that are not hypocrites are most of them
criminals. Quite a few preachers locally have been
exposed as murderers, rapists, and embezzlers. There
was a statistic published in the local paper a few
years ago that one in eight are exposed every year. 
That is an astonishing fatality rate for any
profession. It tries the faith of a man of faith, let
me tell you.

During the middle ages the religious calling was the
only way a man born low could get educated and move up
in the world. Cardinal Richelieu was a peasant when
he entered the priesthood. In due course he was de
facto viceroy of France. That kind of social mobility
was available nowhere else but through the church. A
Catholic woman told me several years ago that the
priesthood was a hideout for homosexuals, and that now
that they no longer feel any need for a hideout the
seminaries are empty. Now that priests are all coming
out of the closet, her assertion seems to be supported
by fact. What motivation will the church come up with
next? It doesn't pay anything.

As for "the divinity of Christ" that you mention, that
strikes me as a moot point since Christ himself never
claimed to be divine. The earliest documents describe
him as a channeler who claimed to go into trances and
become a mouthpiece for the Logos. He claimed that
the Logos was divine, but not that he himself was
divine. This was made explicitly clear by several
ancient writers, especially Origen. Whether the claim
is correct or not or whether anyone today believes him
is an independent issue from the fact that he did
historically claim this. Celsus and other ancient
writers say this channeling stuff was a very common
practice back then. The notion that he personally was
divine gradually evolved as his followers dumped their
original democratic structure and established a
hierarchy. If the priest is better than you and the
bishop is better than the priest and the pope is
better than the bishop, the theory went, then Christ
must be WAY up there, since he had to be better than
the pope. The more layers of hierarchy they laid on,
the more elevated had to be the claims made for
Christ. The idea that he was a divine being is
believed to date no further back than the fourth
century in its modern form.

As for people who yearn for dogma, I suspect their
mind set can be understood by the following syllogism:

Some certain set of dogmatic beliefs is infallible.
I profess that infallible set of dogmatic beliefs.
Therefore I personally am infallible and you are not.

Ultimately, being a True Believer would appear to be
an ego trip instead of a quest for truth, whereas
being a philosopher is like a traveller trying to get
to the horizon. He has some interesting adventures on
the way, but the horizon keeps receding into the
distance. Does the fact that the journey in search of
truth never ends mean it is not worth taking?

Without being dogmatic about it I would say no.

Steve

--- Larry F Kolts <llkingston2@juno.com> wrote:
> Paul & Steve
> 
> First let me say that I am glad my humble
> contributions merit response.
> Thank you all.
> 
> Very interesting Steve. I'm aware of HPB's 75th year
> prediction but never
> concidered it in light of what we have been
> discussing. All you say sure
> sounds reasonable.
> 
> As to Paul's observations, one element we have not
> yet discussed in light
> of Liberal Christian decline is the disparity of
> belief between clergy
> and laity. For some years now (forty or so) polls
> taken of mainline
> Protestant clergy show an increasing lack of faith
> for the dogmatic
> tenents their churches once held true. Many doubt
> the divinity of Christ.
> Many hold the Bible to be little more than a book of
> fables. Most are
> more involved with political correctness and social
> injustice than the
> preaching of the old gospel.
> 
> On the other hand, many more parishiners percent
> wise still believe in
> the old ways. But the clergy are destroying their
> own churches while
> membership leaks elsewhere. 
> 
> The Unitarians are totally different. No one ever
> became a Unitarian
> thinking they were joining a conservative
> organization! That's the
> difference. Methodists were the conservatives of the
> 19th century and
> have only slowly crept towards liberalism in this
> last. Unitarians were
> founded on the rock of liberalism. The Puritans were
> as conservative as
> they come. They became somewhat lax as all do. When
> their "revival" of
> the 1720's came around (the Great Awakening) it
> split the puritans
> assunder. The liberals who could not fathom a return
> to the old ways
> formed the Unitarian Church while the conservatives
> remained as the
> Congregationalists. The Unitarians became even more
> liberal when they
> merged with the Universalists some years ago. They
> draw from the
> intelligencia of society.
> I dated a Unitarian girl for two years in college
> and even attended an
> Easter service. Boy, was that an eye opener!
> 
> As for the Southern Baptists, I think there was some
> political
> factionalism at the last conventions and rumors that
> some congregations
> may withdraw to do their own thing. Maybe some of
> that is showing.
> 
> I guess we can fine tune this til the cows come home
> (oops, my country
> background is slipping through) I think we've got
> the overall picture.
> 
> Larry 
> 
> Steve: One of the ideas I found in Blavatsky and
> followed up
> > was the notion that there is a 100 year cycle in
> the
> > consciousness of the masses regarding matters
> > transcendental. Specifically, she says her
> > organization sends out a messenger in the seventy
> > fifth year of every century. Following up on
> that, I
> > found the whole story to be considerably more
> > interesting.
> > 
> > For several centuries now the first half of the
> > century seems to be dominated by the conservative
> > religious groups. Christianity was founded during
> the
> > first half of the first century and Mormonism and
> the
> > Ba'hai "faith" during the first half of the
> > nineteenth. It was between 1618 and 1648 that the
> > Thirty Years War was fought.
> > 
> > Then in the forty eighth year something of great
> > significance seems to happen to mark the shift. 
> In
> > 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia marked the formal
> end of
> > the Thirty Years War. It was then and thereafter
> that
> > the Rosicrucians began to rise to prominence, the
> > writings of Boehme were published in English, etc.
> It
> > was in 1647 that the Rosicrucian lodge at
> Nuremberg
> > was reconstituted with Leibniz as secretary. In
> 1748
> > there was once again a resurgence in European
> > Rosicrucianism, followed by a plethora of copycat
> > groups. In 1848 the Rochester Manifestations
> marked
> > the beginning of the spiritualist movement, etc.
> > 
> > The second half of the century also marks some
> > increase in materialsm and anti spirituality. 
> This
> > was quite marked in the nineteenth century, but
> can
> > also be seen in the sighteenth, with the
> Rosicrucians
> > setting up an absurd council to consider and
> censor
> > books, including Kant's RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS
> OF
> > REASON ALONE.
> > 
> > At the end of the century, liberalism and
> esotericism
> > starts to decline and we see a resurgence of
> > conservatism, fanaticism, intolerance, etc., such
> as
> > we are seeing today. Blavatsky predicted that her
> WB
> > would withdraw from the TS in 1897. That is
> probably
> > true, and there rs no reason to believe that they
> came
> > back after withdrawing.
> > 
> > Whether Blavatsky's prophecy of the new messenger
> in
> > 1975 was ever fulfilled or not I cannot say, but
> > NEWSWEEK ran a special issue reporting on the fact
> > that it was in that year that esoteric stuff
> peaked,
> > with the Maharishi, some Brazilian group whose
> name I
> > do not remember, and so on. The entire issue was
> > dedicated to that.
> > 
> > Those may all just be coincidences, but they seem
> > consistent enough to be at least interesting
> > historically.
> > 
> > The decline of "liberal Christianity" (which
> frankly
> > sounds like an oxymoron to me) is therefore in
> line
> > with what has happened in the past, and will
> probably
> > be accompanied by a decline in esoteric groups as
> > well. That will continue until about 2048, and
> then
> > the cycle will begin anew.
> > 
> > Steve
> > 
> > --- kpauljohnson <kpauljohnson@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Larry,
> > > 
> > > Your presence adds something to the list and I
> > > welcome the kind of 
> > > contributions you make below:
> > > > 
> > > > This liberal/fundimentalist trend is not
> unique.
> > > In Protestant
> > > > Christianity, all the old mainline churches
> which
> > > now view 
> > > themselves as liberal, are in decline.
> Methodists,
> > > Lutherans, 
> > > Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Reformed, all
> these
> > > have lost 
> > > significant membership in the last thirty to
> forty
> > > years. 
> > > 
> > > Disciples of Christ also. But one
> non-mainstream
> > > church that is 
> > > liberal is definitely not declining: the
> Unitarian
> > > Universalists are 
> > > growing at a rapid rate last I read. Another
> 
=== message truncated ===


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! 
http://auctions.yahoo.com