it makes sense, then, to import keralites into canada instead of sending
missionaries to kerala.
they will undergo gene therapy too to look white.


Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote in message

Pastors and priests are facing ever more empty pews in 2006

Many churches failing to meet spiritual needs

Members prefer experience of God to dogmas, creeds

By Eric Shackleton
The Canadian Press
The Toronto Star
Saturday, December 17, 2005

Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world
crowded into St. Peter's Square in Rome last April to
greet the election of a new pope.

The death of John Paul and election of his replacement,
Benedict XVI, drew worldwide attention to the Catholic
Church.

But behind the headlines, some experts say, mainline
Christian churches - Catholics included - are mostly
failing to meet the spiritual needs of members. Heading
into a new year, pastors and priests face ever more empty
pews.

By 2061 - in just 55 years - "the last Anglican will
leave the church" if the present decline in membership
continues, says Tom Harpur, a Toronto Star columnist and
one of Canada's best-known writers on spirituality.

The former Anglican clergyman was commenting during an
interview on a new study prepared for the church's
bishops.

The Anglican Church of Canada has seen its membership
fall by 53 per cent over the past 40 years, according to
the report. Membership is declining by about 2 per cent a
year, or 13,000 members.

The church likely won't be able to stem the decline
anytime soon, says Harpur, author of The Pagan Christ.
It's likely to be business as usual - "just as it was in
the beginning, is now and ever shall be."

Meanwhile, after declining for several decades,
especially in Quebec, the number of Catholics attending
church regularly has levelled off at about 20 per cent
nationally, the most recent statistics suggest.

Also in 2005, the Catholic diocese of St. George's in
Newfoundland-Labrador became the first in Canada to
declare bankruptcy.

The Catholic Church also continued to grapple with a huge
worldwide priest shortage. The shortage is so great that
the church "is in danger of losing its identity as a
church centred around the eucharist," says Susan Roll, a
professor of theology at St. Paul University, which is
affiliated with the University of Ottawa.

Although the ordination of married men was discussed at a
Vatican synod on the eucharist in October as a possible
way to fill empty pulpits, a powerful appeal by a leading
traditionalist, George Cardinal Pell of Australia, to
retain the celibacy rule won the day, says Roll.

And where are spiritually hungry Christians going? "There
are a whole lot of gurus" out there, says Maurice Boutin,
a McGill University professor of theology specializing in
contemporary religious movements.

"Eastern religions are blossoming very much in all areas
of societies ... the new age movement, astrology and
necromancy (witchcraft)," he says.

"People are trying to find out things to have control of
their lives."

The crux of the problem, says Harpur, is that "people
don't really want to be told anymore the same old (thing)
if it contradicts what their mind and as well as their
heart tells them."

People "don't want talk about God - they want God," says
Harpur. They don't want creeds or dogmas - "they want
experience."

While many Christian denominations try to come to grips
with thinning ranks, religious diversity in Canada is
growing. According to the last census, the number of
Canadians declaring themselves Muslims more than doubled
between 1991 and 2001, from 253,000 to about 600,000,
says Statistics Canada.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
People by the thousands are taking spiritual
longings into their own hands
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Among Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, the census numbers
were all up by about 80 per cent in the same period. Most
of this growth was due to immigration and birth, not
conversions, says the agency.

Canada, though, remains predominantly Catholic and
Protestant, with about 13 million declaring themselves
Catholics and 10 million calling themselves Protestants,
according to the 2001 census.

About five million Canadians says they have no religion.

Among the Protestant denominations, the United Church of
Canada is "the most encouraging" when it comes to meeting
its members' spiritual needs, says Harpur. "They're
encouraging people that the journey is what is important
.. encouraging searching."

However, this doesn't seem to have helped them boost
membership, at least not yet. The United Church, says
Harpur, has about "the same number of members that it had
when it was formed in 1925, and the population of Canada
has tripled in the meantime."

Membership in the United Church has been slipping over
the past 40 years. According to the report to the
Anglican bishops, it fell to around 638,000 in 2001 from
1.04 million in 1961, a loss of 39 per cent.

During the same period, membership in the Presbyterian
Church tumbled by 35 per cent, Baptist membership
declined by 7 per cent and Lutheran membership by 4 per
cent.

Only the revivalist Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada
appears to be growing, says the study. Its membership
rose by about 40 per cent between 1961 and 2004 to
243,000.

The Anglican Church has been concerned about why its pews
are emptying out. But the fact that this is just now
dawning on them - one bishop says at their recent
gathering "this is the first time we're addressing this
issue" - shows that they haven't been very attentive,
Harpur says.

People by the thousands, says Harpur, are taking their
spiritual longings into their own hands. He says there
are groups across the country "studying The Pagan Christ,
for example, in homes or in church basements. Or the
writings of (American liberal Episcopal theologian)
Bishop (John Shelby) Spong."

In The Pagan Christ, published in 2004, Harpur details
how the early Christian church covered up all attempts to
reveal the Bible as myth, preferring instead to stick
with a literal interpretation of Scripture.

Recently a group called the Community of Inner
Spirituality sprung up in Toronto to discuss The Pagan
Christ, says Harpur. That was followed by two or three
similar groups in the city meeting at least one night a
week.

"There's a tremendous amount of hunger out there ...
People such as myself, Spong ... we couldn't begin to
fulfil the number of requests. I could be any night of
the week somewhere in Canada lecturing because there's so
much interest" in a less literal, more spiritual approach
- Christ within instead of external to the person - to
the Bible, says Harpur.

So what do the churches need to do? "The problem is one
of translating values and truths into terms that make
sense for people ... learning to speak truths in new
languages," says Roll.

The liturgy the churches use "evolved in a pre-Copernican
world when people thought that the sun revolved around
the Earth and the Earth was flat. We still use a lot of
those metaphors in our worship," says Roll.

"On the other hand, our collective scientific knowledge
tells us when we speak of the grandeur of God, we're not
just talking about a God who reigns over the flat Earth,
we're talking about the infinite reaches of the
universe."

The challenge, and perhaps a recipe for survival, she
says, is "can we develop a vocabulary ... metaphors that
are big enough to keep up with our scientific knowledge."

Another way forward, says Harpur, could be for churches
to encourage the formation of "seekers classes" that
parallel the regular congregation and encourage
exploration.

At these seeker sessions, the only question up for grabs
would be "exchanging ideas about the journey, where you
get totally outside the box of tradition whether it's
Catholic, Anglican or United."

More at:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article
_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1134601812563

Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti

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http://www.hindu.org
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The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.

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