The last episode of the Liturgists’ podcast focused on whether or not Christianity is worth reforming. We discovered that the Tree of Christianity is rife with thorny roots and poisonous branches. Despite this, there is a wealth of practices and rituals stemming from the unconditional Love of Christ that is not only worth saving but in need of fundamental reorganization. 

In the second episode, Reformation, we explore what this reformation looks like, examining past reformations and the pitfalls they faced in reorganizing the church. In doing so, we will understand what we have in common with previous reformations while understanding the role we can play in this one. 

To fully appreciate the gravity of what reformation means and entails, let’s take a brief look at the history of Christian reformation. 

 

A Brief History of Everything Reformation

The Christian church has not been a static and permanent fixture at any point in history. Despite the dogmatism and rigid beliefs of many separate sects, the vast multitude of divergent Christianities were all variations on a theme of reformation. 

We’re setting out to examine these divergences and discover what worked and what failed. There have always been reformations. The only thing all Christians seem to agree on is that something lacking in the church’s institution needs fixing. Even the scriptures, which for many are canon espoused from God Himself, are wildly different. The King James Bible, which is the source for many American-Christian ideas and beliefs, is drastically different from scriptures recorded in Aramaic thousands of years ago. 

Christianity’s history cannot be separated from the leading individuals’ political and power agendas who founded these reformations. At its core, Christianity is a powerful way to bring people together. But for most of its history, it did so by unifying people against a common enemy, trading religious tolerance for a more profound sense of xenophobia and Other. 

In the Beginning, was Reformation

At the core of Christianity is reformation. Jesus Christ was a figure who taught and lived a way of life in opposition to his time’s current power structures. His teachings of unconditional love and the unifying power of Christ consciousness were a direct reformation of the politico-religious institutions holding the Roman Empire together. 

The sacrifice Jesus made speaks volumes to his commitment to reformation and the foundations of Christianity. But as soon as he made that sacrifice, the apostles began debating how to put his core teachings into practice. These debates set the scene for all of Christianity as we know it. 

Fast-forwarding to the fourth century, we come to Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He was a pagan, following ancient earth-based practices passed down to him by his mother. But he saw the advantage Christianity, despite its quasi-heretic status at the time, could bring to uniting separate cultures and religions within the sprawling empire of Rome. 

Because at the time, religions and cultures were largely decentralized. Most of Italy and Greece had been following a Hellenic Pantheon. In contrast, Gaul (France), Hispania (Iberia), Northern Africa, Germania, and Brittania followed local druidic, fetishist, and pagan faiths. This decentralization allowed the diverse and world-shaking power to stay together. Still, rising forces in the east threatened stability. A political reformation was required to unite Constantine’s Empire against foreign enemies. 

Constantine ordered a council at Nicaea in Asia Minor, in modern-day western Turkey. What happened at the First Council of Nicaea? It was primarily a structural reorganization of the empire through the lens of reforming a national religion. Three main functions arose out of it:

1. An evaluation of the Scriptures and what they meant in a very literal sense. 
2. An establishment of a religious hierarchy with a translation into male a male-dominant patriarchy with the “Father” at the top. 
3. Development of the Christian “Brand” through the trinity that would create a dominant symbolism to centralize the empire. 

Establishing a shared understanding and Christian brand would serve as the dominant template for Christianity going into the next thousand-plus years. Centralization within the Christian world increased as divergent cultures came together in a common understanding. However, this common understanding was pitted against an Other, the enemies in religions who didn’t follow Christianity’s creed and brand. At the beginning of Christianity, we see a central theme of it being a powerful force for bringing divergent peoples together, as Christ taught. But in many ways, it became an even more powerful tool for promoting xenophobia and hatred towards others. 

Because of this duality in the church and the local cultures and religions that converted to Christianity in the next 700 years, numerous sects and political reformations arose. In each case, from the council of Chalcedonia to the Great Schism to the Protestant and Anglican reformations, individuals saw severe flaws in the church that needed to change. 

In the 16th century, during all these reformations against one another and especially against Catholics, a new flavor was entering the scene: colonialism. Great powers in Europe were beginning a race to paint the world’s map with their flags, cultures, and religions. With improvements in shipbuilding, food preservation, and population size, it was now possible to move halfway across the globe. 

This environment led many protestants to leave Europe and start over in the new world, a wild and dangerous place of new possibilities and anxieties. Despite protestants having escaped the rigid structures of catholicism, in starting over, they became fundamental, ritualistic, and paranoid in their beliefs and practices. Protecting their religion was the way of life. 

So much so that the entire framework of reformation and Protestantism underlies the foundations of the American constitution. Even the culture of the judicial, educational, and even pharmaceutical systems are based on these beliefs. We see that the church found the state, not the other way around. 

With a constant need for domination and hierarchy, the ceremonial aspects of America’s religious roots colored many of the ways the nation responded to the world. Despite having declared independence as a free state, it immediately began competing with other world powers for imperialism. The U.S. started claiming manifest destiny and expanding its sphere of influence into the great game of map-painting across the globe. 

Today’s reformation is a direct response to the ancient practices and ideas that led to the many advances and problems we see today. Colonialism, imperialism, domination, and hierarchy are tools to unite great numbers of disparate peoples against a common enemy. These tools cut down, manufacture, and export individualism over others. But if we keep cutting others down to promote ourselves, we lose the forest and its trees and are left alone in the vast wreckage of silence. 

That is our mission: to unify, keep unifying until we reach total harmony with the Divine, each other, ourselves. All the arguments about who to include and exclude, who to raze down and raise up, who to dominate, and who to bow down to are becoming outdated. The fabric of our beliefs cannot stretch any further into contradiction. 

It is time to unify without unifying against. 

 

True Christianity is Unconditional Love as Christ Consciousness

There is nothing inherently wrong with the scriptures and practices of Christianity. It is how we use the scriptures and traditions that determine their effect and scope. They are tools to be wielded for specific purposes, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. 

We see a perfect example of this in Buddhism, which many in the west assume to be a peaceful, harmonious, and nonviolent religion. The Buddha’s religious teachings espouse nonviolence and harmony with the Kosmos. However, many Buddhist sects have used these teachings and tools for disintegration and destruction. The surface-level application of Buddhist teachings can be harnessed towards the intentions of the user. But these applications do not define the scriptures from which they arose. 

Similarly, the teachings of Christ offer us many tools for integration and harmony with each other. Some of these tools can be abused to pursue power, regardless of Christ’s original intentions. Thus it is our responsibility to curate and understand the appropriate practices to express Christ’s message to the world. 

The most incredible tool we can employ is that of unconditional love and nonjudgment. Perhaps the most difficult to wield and understand, unconditional love is the most potent force in integrating all individuals within the loving embrace of Christ’s consciousness.

Unconditional nonjudgment does not mean that we condone bad behavior, congratulate harm, or simply believe everything people say to us is absolute truth. It means knowing that we don’t know anything, that we can only approximate the truth, and try to heal the wounds rent by Christianity’s dark and diverse history. 

Authentic Christianity, in its purest form, is restorative justice. It is restoring individuality, restoring uniqueness, restoring the message of Jesus: that Christ Consciousness is available now, in this moment, not in some futuristic opium den in the clouds.

Once Christianity aligns what it believes with what it is, Christ Consciousness, true reformation can occur. 

 

But How Does Unconditional Love Even Work?

“Christ Consciousness” sounds well and good. Still, you may wonder how this fundamental belief of what Christianity actually is aligns with modern-day fundamentalist Christianity. To quote Michael Gungor, wouldn’t expecting nonjudgment and love out of Christianity be like expecting health advice from Big Tobacco?

The sticking point is that much of Christianity creates conditional love, punitive justice, and faith dependent on mutual belief. Our need for reformation is based on these conditional factors. The fact that Christianity needs reforming is not new. There have always been problems (and always will be) that led to permanent reformations and the evolution of new sects and practices. 

Like all the previous reformations, we’re trying to figure out the best way to integrate the necessary and shed the disintegratory. In the past, the Tree of Christianity’s reformations focused on different bad fruit and monopolized their focus. No matter what gets “fixed,” it only leads to more things to fix, more problems to solve. We endlessly jump from branch to branch, polishing the pieces of fruit that we don’t like. 

In all of these reformations, the roots of the Tree have remained the same. Our mission is to plunge into Christianity’s roots in our reformation and change the fundamental message from fragmentation to integration. 

 

The Dao of Christianity: Integration and Fragmentation

When we look at all the issues with Christianity, we see a significant theme of disintegration and fragmentation. Christianity’s limiting factors separate us and reinforce the illusion that we do not all share in the same Christ Consciousness. 

Themes like shame, which alienates us and makes us feel both judged and judging, bigotry and the archetype of hell divide us. These themes inherently imply a reality where some can be loved, and the rest are not worthy. These techniques are tools of dualism meant to divide the whole into many, divide reality, set us apart from ourselves, our neighbors, and the Source. 

The truth is, we are worthy. There is nothing that inherently separates us, and illusions of division are just that. We see now that what has worked in Christianity is integration, wholeness, and forgiveness. 

In integration, the fragmented pieces of so many souls are brought back to one Soul, that of Christ Consciousness. It is not an extraordinary realization or an illuminating aura or even something that has to be worked towards through heavy devotion. It is This Moment in all of its infinite glory. 

The church’s history has taught us time and time again that the practices that haven’t worked are those that break us apart. Best practices bring us together. In reaching a true reformation of Christianity, we strive towards wholeness and integration.

 

A Fundamental Reformation of Christianity

When we put Christianity in terms of a belief system, it becomes inherently dualistic and divisive. To believe is to create an abstraction of reality and assume that abstraction is the only possible way of viewing reality. 

In saying “we believe,” we have already boxed ourselves into a limited model of the world. As a belief system, Christianity does two things very well. It helps us form identities with its own model of reality and helps divide us against anyone who doesn’t hold the same models. 

In saying “we believe,” we do so as a means to an end. We believe this to get that, whether it be eternal life, saving the planet, or a million dollars. In believing solely in one model of reality, we stand above reality, ignoring this moment’s wholeness and controlling it with those beliefs. 

This moment is the only reality, the wholeness of existence. We can ignore reality with powerful tools of disintegration and dissatisfaction, employing memories and projections of the future to take us away from Right Now. 

But Christ taught us that the kingdom of God is already here. There is nothing to believe about it, just open your eyes and breathe. Because we’re already in heaven, silly, heaven is right now. Hell can also be right now if we choose to employ the tools that separate reality into imperceivable abstractions. 

We at the Liturgists are curating and offering tools that bring us back into this moment. Our aim in this reformation is to expound the Way of Christ, the way of forgiveness, re-membering, integration, love, and dualism becoming wholeness.

Reformation is integration at this moment. This moment is always happening right now.