churches

• church buildings › open air arenas of worship in light and life
• church buildings › should be houses of beauty, appealing simplicity

55:5.5Schools are vastly im­proved and are de­voted to the train­ing of mind and the ex­pan­sion of soul. The art cen­ters are ex­qui­site and the mu­si­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions su­perb. The tem­ples of wor­ship with their as­so­ci­ated schools of phi­los­o­phy and ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­li­gion are cre­ations of beauty and grandeur. The open-air are­nas of wor­ship as­sem­bly are equally sub­lime in the sim­plic­ity of their artis­tic ap­point­ment.

• avoid union of church and state

70:1.147. Re­li­gion—the de­sire to make con­verts to the cult. The prim­i­tive re­li­gions all sanc­tioned war. Only in re­cent times has re­li­gion be­gun to frown upon war. The early priest­hoods were, un­for­tu­nately, usu­ally al­lied with the mil­i­tary power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the at­tempt to sep­a­rate church and state.

• secret societies evolved into

70:7.19By and by these se­cret as­so­ci­a­tions grew into the first char­i­ta­ble or­ga­ni­za­tions and later evolved into the ear­lier re­li­gious so­ci­eties—the fore­run­ners of churches. Fi­nally some of these so­ci­eties be­came in­ter­tribal, the first in­ter­na­tional fra­ter­ni­ties.

• avoid union of church and state

70:12.6If men would main­tain their free­dom, they must, af­ter hav­ing cho­sen their char­ter of lib­erty, pro­vide for its wise, in­tel­li­gent, and fear­less in­ter­pre­ta­tion to the end that there may be pre­vented:

• avoid union of church and state

71:8.42. The free­dom of so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties.

• avoid union of church and state

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

• primitive man’s response to illusory ghost environment

86:6.1Man in­her­ited a nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment, ac­quired a so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, and imag­ined a ghost en­vi­ron­ment. The state is man’s re­ac­tion to his nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment, the home to his so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, the church to his il­lu­sory ghost en­vi­ron­ment.

• authority derived from invocation of sacred books

88:2.10To be­come fe­tishes, words had to be con­sid­ered in­spired, and the in­vo­ca­tion of sup­posed di­vinely in­spired writ­ings led di­rectly to the es­tab­lish­ment of the au­thor­ity of the church, while the evo­lu­tion of civil forms led to the fruition of the au­thor­ity of the state.

• function in shaping cultural progress

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

• church buildings › should be houses of beauty, appealing simplicity

167:6.5It was also at Jeri­cho, in con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion of the early re­li­gious train­ing of chil­dren in habits of di­vine wor­ship, that Je­sus im­pressed upon his apos­tles the great value of beauty as an in­flu­ence lead­ing to the urge to wor­ship, es­pe­cially with chil­dren. The Mas­ter by pre­cept and ex­am­ple taught the value of wor­ship­ing the Cre­ator in the midst of the nat­u­ral sur­round­ings of cre­ation. He pre­ferred to com­mune with the heav­enly Fa­ther amidst the trees and among the lowly crea­tures of the nat­u­ral world. He re­joiced to con­tem­plate the Fa­ther through the in­spir­ing spec­ta­cle of the starry realms of the Cre­ator Sons.

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

• avoid union of church and state

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

• true church is Jesus brotherhood; invisible, spiritual, characterized by unity, not uniformity

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.