by Hugo Stamm on Tuesday the 17th December 2013 TAGESANZEIGER.CH

The Christian churches are stuck in an identity crisis . Less than ten percent of the population regularly visit a church any more, not even half of the Swiss believe in a personal God, as represented by the Christian faith . The religion researchers largely agree that the secularization progresses unabated. David Voas , one of the most famous sociologist of religion, believes that institutional religion is first replaced by a ” blurred religiosity ” and finally empties into the irreligion .

The modern churches are the temple of consumption of the capitalist commodity world that has almost obtained a spiritual character . The Internet provides a home , even a spiritual one. It can bring to the denominator : The Christian faith will no longer fit the modern life that is dominated by science, technology and materialism.

A similar loss of importance suffered in recent years, the Bible – and therefore the Christian doctrine of salvation . She exudes the atmosphere of the time 2000 years ago for the average believer . With the basic issues of guilt , punishment, and atonement can not do anything . Even the heaven has lost its luster. We certainly do not need Hell, global warming we are already experiencing on Earth. Life in this world is hard enough therefore the original sin can remain stolen.

A turnaround in the 21st century is not expected. This is mainly for two reasons: First, modern societies are no longer based on the foundation of church traditions and religious values ​​. The enlightened world seems to prefer to be based on the idea of ​​human rights and public policy developments.

Second, the individualization of religious advances furthe and human are alienated further from the churches. Worship with their rigid processes seem for many dusty and boring, which is why the secular faith increasingly assumes eventful and event-oriented forms. These are primarily based on our own experience . Concerts , club and sporting events not only provide a sense of community , they can be understood as secularized spiritual rituals . Thus, religious pluralism makes the Christian United Church , the spiritual monopoly in dispute, and the churches are faced with the situation of having to come to terms with a loss of importance of historic proportions .

Comic issues

For Catholics and Protestants it is particularly painful that they lose especially the youth out of the field . Today, large parts of the boys lay claim to personal and mostly Fast Luck . In their consumer mentality they do not want to invest for the afterlife. Hope and faith , as required by the Christian doctrine of salvation do not correspond to their mentality . They struggle enough with the present and seek their perspectives on life in individuality and self-realization. Since there is little room for transcendental or supernatural .

The successful Swiss snowboarder Patrizia Kummer put it in a newspaper interview to the point. When she was asked how she thought it was with her belief she replied, ” you are posing ridiculous questions. ”

But the young generations largely decide the fate of the churches. If they want to score again with the young people , they have to adapt to their needs and think in PR and marketing categories. Religion should be a brand , in which the young people could put on a Facebook ” like it ” . But how is a church cool and sexy ? That is a contradiction in terms. Churches can not mutate the event agency . To this end the Bible is in the way. And the staff . Clergy are often spiritualized individuals who are not able to give the jovial Animator in the church. And probably do not want to. Even if : You can make from the biblical Adam no Justin Bieber or DJ and do not let Eva occur as Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus.

The collective move away from the churches , however, this does not mean that the religious needs are gone. Rather, secularization and individualization in Western countries results in a religious vacuum. For many apostate churches of God was never dead, he had lost only the Christian face. They fled in an Eastern spirituality, or in the esotericism who volunteered as a substitute religion. According to the study , ” Religion , the State and society ” believe, after all, already ten percent of the Swiss moved to alternative forms of spirituality , so to esoteric phenomena. Two to three times as many are infected by esoteric ideas. Thus, the heterogeneous group esoteric creditor active devout Catholics surpassed numerically by far.

The trend towards esotericism also corresponds to an overall social development because it subjects spirituality of the economic dynamics of supply and demand. Spirituality is transformed into a consumer and occurs as a web of supernatural set pieces in appearance, from which everyone can construct his faith according to their own desires and wishes. Esotericism is therefore not a religion in the sense of a back-bonding , but a spiritual plastic world . Who adopted by the personal God can fill the sky with their own as many gods. Gods which are not demanding , but occur as heavenly servants.

Esoteric corresponds to the trend towards privatization of religion , their flexibility is proving to be an economic advantage. Within this market in Europe for several billion euros and growing due to its sheer size and maneuverability on joyfully . But the pseudo-religion performs a risky intellectual experiment : supernatural healing ideas promote superstition and magical thinking . Who is overwhelmed, calls for simple answers . And against the power of the market are rational arguments a weak force .

Yet it would be wrong to declare the end of the religious age. The longing for spiritual and psychic phenomena is deeply rooted in our consciousness and seems to be an anthropological constant . Carl Gustav Jung was convinced that human nature is inherently religious. The Swiss Bishops Felix Gmür even said in an interview that the man must believe in order to live . Undoubtedly he is right. But if he thinks that we must believe in the Christian sense , he has not studied the discharge statistics.

The belief seems to be evolutionarily related. It originated in ancient times because he brought advantages in coping with life . Some neurologists to situate their faith in the brain and have religious activities with tomography in the temporal lobe after . Faith is physiology, a biochemically explainable and understandable process in the brain. Geneticists discovered further that believers often have a particular variant of the VMAT2 gene on chromosome 10 . This gene is responsible for the regulation of moods and emotions.

Therefore , some researchers call a ” God module ” in the brain and a ” God gene ” in the human DNA. The ability to believe religiously , that is a human characteristic par excellence .

The God gene

The evolutionary advantage was formerly in the fact that the common faith strengthened internal cohesion of a community in a higher power . This favored the development in all areas of life to building social structures and the manufacture of weapons.

Such coins can not erase overnight. Therefore, the spiritual needs not solve up. And whoever turns away from the church, is not automatically irreligious . God is not dead , he is only demystified . Spiritual needs are but immune to metaphysical and transcendental content. However, people with the God gene will always need something that goes beyond the life of this world .

The Christian churches will remain in the future mainly because of their presence in the public space in the consciousness of wide circles . Churches shape in many villages and towns in the village, and give us the religious heritage in memory. Birth , marriage and death , we connect in the future with religious attributes. Public mourning after disasters will continue celebrated in churches. The Christian symbols and parables that develop a strong suggestive power , are ubiquitous and shape our thinking – divorced from spiritual origin.

The best medium of churches, however, be in the future, Easter and Christmas. The commercialization of Christian festivals will ensure that the children for a long time the story of the birth of Jesus be told in the barn and call for gifts. Commercialized spirituality is hardly within the meaning of Jesus, but any chance of survival for the churches .

The Christian faith has shaped our history and is part of human culture . That will remain so because , despite the globalization created a new world religion more . For the Christian churches , this means that they will remain the representatives of the culturally and historically important doctrine. Museums that will one day be furnished in valuable historical churches, then bear witness to the more or less glamorous eras of the Christian churches .

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