Pantheist "churches": what would they be like?

Featured, Dec. 12, 1996.

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Churches form supportive bonds between members and strengthen convictions. In pantheism they can deepen our perception and heighten our senses.

The role of religious groups

Local groups and places for worship play a key role in the world's religions.

For believers they are a social meeting place. They form supportive bonds between members. They help to deepen beliefs, though learning and discussion of texts or topics.

For the religion they help to reinforce and spread beliefs. Because a belief held alone is often more insecure, more open to change than a belief shared, they strengthen beliefs.

Pantheism in the West, represented classically by the Stoics, has never formed an organized religion. It has never had a clergy or separate buildings for worship. This partly explains why pantheism has never really got going on a large scale so far.

In classical times pantheists were philosophers and their discussion circles, usually in public places like Athens' Stoa Poikile. From then till around 1700 pantheists were usually heretics, outcast from other religions such as Christianity and Islam. In modern times they tend to be religious individualists, having developed their own beliefs in the school of reality and nature, often without the support of fellow believers.

As numbers grow, more and more pantheists will want to form local groups, meeting to share experiences, to strengthen each others' beliefs, and to join in reverence for nature and the Universe, and in social and environmental action.

What would a pantheist group do at a regular meeting?

Every group will decide for itself, in the light of its location and the interests and preferences of its members. But here are a few suggestions: [Administrator's Note: No content was found beyond this point}