priests

• priests

90:5.4The priests evolved from shamans up through or­a­cles, di­vin­ers, singers, dancers, weath­er­mak­ers, guard­i­ans of re­li­gious relics, tem­ple cus­to­di­ans, and fore­tellers of events, to the sta­tus of ac­tual di­rec­tors of re­li­gious wor­ship. Even­tu­ally the of­fice be­came hered­i­tary; a con­tin­u­ous priestly caste arose.

90:5.5As re­li­gion evolved, priests be­gan to spe­cial­ize ac­cord­ing to their in­nate tal­ents or spe­cial predilec­tions. Some be­came singers, oth­ers prayers, and still oth­ers sac­ri­fi­cers; later came the or­a­tors—preach­ers. And when re­li­gion be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized, these priests claimed to “hold the keys of heaven.”

90:5.6The priests have al­ways sought to im­press and awe the com­mon peo­ple by con­duct­ing the re­li­gious rit­ual in an an­cient tongue and by sundry mag­i­cal passes so to mys­tify the wor­shipers as to en­hance their own piety and au­thor­ity. The great dan­ger in all this is that the rit­ual tends to be­come a sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

90:5.7The priest­hoods have done much to de­lay sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ment and to hin­der spir­i­tual prog­ress, but they have con­tributed to the sta­bi­liza­tion of civ­i­liza­tion and to the en­hance­ment of cer­tain kinds of cul­ture. But many mod­ern priests have ceased to func­tion as di­rec­tors of the rit­ual of the wor­ship of God, hav­ing turned their at­ten­tion to the­ol­ogy—the at­tempt to de­fine God.

90:5.8It is not de­nied that the priests have been a mill­stone about the neck of the races, but the true re­li­gious lead­ers have been in­valu­able in point­ing the way to higher and bet­ter re­al­i­ties.

175:1.10“While you should honor your rulers and rev­er­ence your teach­ers, you should call no man Fa­ther in the spir­i­tual sense, for there is one who is your Fa­ther, even God. Nei­ther should you seek to lord it over your breth­ren in the king­dom. Re­mem­ber, I have taught you that he who would be great­est among you should be­come the server of all. If you pre­sume to ex­alt your­selves be­fore God, you will cer­tainly be hum­bled; but whoso truly hum­bles him­self will surely be ex­alted. Seek in your daily lives, not self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, but the glory of God. In­tel­li­gently sub­or­di­nate your own wills to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

84:4.4The sexes have had great dif­fi­culty in un­der­stand­ing each other. Man found it hard to un­der­stand woman, re­gard­ing her with a strange mix­ture of ig­no­rant mis­trust and fear­ful fas­ci­na­tion, if not with sus­pi­cion and con­tempt. Many tribal and racial tra­di­tions rel­e­gate trou­ble to Eve, Pan­dora, or some other rep­re­sen­ta­tive of wom­ankind. These nar­ra­tives were al­ways dis­torted so as to make it ap­pear that the woman brought evil upon man; and all this in­di­cates the one­time uni­ver­sal dis­trust of woman. Among the rea­sons cited in sup­port of a celi­bate priest­hood, the chief was the base­ness of woman. The fact that most sup­posed witches were women did not im­prove the olden rep­u­ta­tion of the sex.

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

91:5.6Prayer is the tech­nique whereby, sooner or later, ev­ery re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. And in time prayer be­comes as­so­ci­ated with nu­mer­ous sec­ondary agen­cies, some help­ful, oth­ers de­cid­edly dele­te­ri­ous, such as priests, holy books, wor­ship rit­u­als, and cer­e­mo­ni­als.

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

99:6.3But as re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized, its power for good is cur­tailed, while the pos­si­bil­i­ties for evil are greatly mul­ti­plied. The dan­gers of for­mal­ized re­li­gion are: fix­a­tion of be­liefs and crys­tal­liza­tion of sen­ti­ments; ac­cu­mu­la­tion of vested in­ter­ests with in­crease of sec­u­lar­iza­tion; ten­dency to stan­dard­ize and fos­silize truth; di­ver­sion of re­li­gion from the ser­vice of God to the ser­vice of the church; in­cli­na­tion of lead­ers to be­come ad­min­is­tra­tors in­stead of min­is­ters; ten­dency to form sects and com­pet­i­tive di­vi­sions; es­tab­lish­ment of op­pres­sive ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity; cre­ation of the aris­to­cratic “cho­sen-peo­ple” at­ti­tude; fos­ter­ing of false and ex­ag­ger­ated ideas of sa­cred­ness; the rou­tiniz­ing of re­li­gion and the pet­ri­fi­ca­tion of wor­ship; ten­dency to ven­er­ate the past while ig­nor­ing pres­ent de­mands; fail­ure to make up-to-date in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gion; en­tan­gle­ment with func­tions of sec­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions; it cre­ates the evil dis­crim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious castes; it be­comes an in­tol­er­ant judge of or­tho­doxy; it fails to hold the in­ter­est of ad­ven­tur­ous youth and grad­u­ally loses the sav­ing mes­sage of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

90:0.2In the ad­vanc­ing con­cepts of prim­i­tive man the spirit world was even­tu­ally re­garded as be­ing un­re­spon­sive to the or­di­nary mor­tal. Only the ex­cep­tional among hu­mans could catch the ear of the gods; only the ex­traor­di­nary man or woman would be heard by the spir­its. Re­li­gion thus en­ters upon a new phase, a stage wherein it grad­u­ally be­comes sec­ond­handed; al­ways does a med­i­cine man, a shaman, or a priest in­ter­vene be­tween the re­li­gion­ist and the ob­ject of wor­ship. And to­day most Uran­tia sys­tems of or­ga­nized re­li­gious be­lief are pass­ing through this level of evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment.

97:5.5Micah de­nounced “the rulers who judge for re­ward and the priests who teach for hire and the proph­ets who di­vine for money.” He taught of a day of free­dom from su­per­sti­tion and priestcraft, say­ing: “But ev­ery man shall sit un­der his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all peo­ple will live, each one ac­cord­ing to his un­der­stand­ing of God.”

• chief among ancient capitalists

69:5.96. Fear of the ghosts of the dead—priest fees for pro­tec­tion. Men early be­gan to give death pres­ents to the priests with a view to hav­ing their prop­erty used to fa­cil­i­tate their prog­ress through the next life. The priest­hoods thus be­came very rich; they were chief among an­cient cap­i­tal­ists.

• were worshiped

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.

98:1.1The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies might have built up a great re­li­gious struc­ture among the Greeks had it not been for their strict in­ter­pre­ta­tion of their oath of or­di­na­tion, a pledge im­posed by Ma­chi­venta which for­bade the or­ga­ni­za­tion of ex­clu­sive con­gre­ga­tions for wor­ship, and which ex­acted the prom­ise of each teacher never to func­tion as a priest, never to re­ceive fees for re­li­gious ser­vice, only food, cloth­ing, and shel­ter. When the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ers pen­e­trated to pre-Hel­lenic Greece, they found a peo­ple who still fos­tered the tra­di­tions of Adam­son and the days of the And­ites, but these teach­ings had be­come greatly adul­ter­ated with the no­tions and be­liefs of the hordes of in­fe­rior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in in­creas­ing num­bers. This adul­ter­ation pro­duced a re­ver­sion to a crude an­i­mism with bloody rites, the lower classes even mak­ing cer­e­mo­nial out of the ex­e­cu­tion of con­demned crim­i­nals.

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”