By Rudy Barnes, Jr., April 5, 2025
In a slow evolution, individual faith is gaining on institutional religion. Both are “beliefs in what we hope for, but cannot see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Religion is a prepackaged set of beliefs with holy scriptures that we are expected to believe in as God’s truth. Individual faith usually begins with a religion, but most often it evolves into heterodox beliefs.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral describes our theological task as based on scripture, tradition, experience and reason, and describes how our Christian beliefs can evolve based on our experience and reason. Many Christians have made a journey of faith from the doctrines of orthodox Christianity to heterodox beliefs based on their personal experience and reason.
A journey of faith from religious orthodoxy to heterodoxy is only natural in a changing world, but most church leaders discourage Christians questioning orthodox doctrines and dogmas. Even so, many Christians have become nones with no religious preference, but they continue to believe that the teachings of Jesus are God’s truth.
The teachings of Jesus are summarized in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves, including our neighbors of other races and religions. Many Muslims have accepted the greatest commandment as an interfaith common word of faith, so that many Christians and Muslims now seek to be reconciled as neighbors in a globalized world.
The teachings of Jesus in the greatest commandment were taken from the Hebrew Bible, taught by Jesus, and have become a common word of faith for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Even so, few in the Abrahamic religions practice that common word of faith. Nationalism has corrupted Judaism in Israel, Christianity in America and Islam throughout the Middle East.
Since the Reformation, the Christian religion has mutated into many different faiths and denominations, aided and abetted by critical biblical scholarship. That has diffused exclusivist religions in libertarian democracies of the West, but not in the Islamic East where apostasy and blasphemy laws continue to prohibit the fundamental freedoms of religion and speech.
Recently the United Methodist Church, or UMC, has undergone disaffiliation based primarily on differences over sexual preferences, rather than other theological issues; but it has left the UMC with many fewer members and churches. I’m a UMC pastor who retired in 2012, and my church never considered disaffiliation from the UMC while I was a pastor.
The world needs more faith and less religion. The freedoms of religion and speech have enabled believers in libertarian democracies of the West to escape exclusivist Christian doctrines, but many have fallen victim to extremist and nationalistic beliefs promoted by charlatans that defy reason. Once Jews and Muslims disavow the oppression of apostasy and blasphemy laws, they can begin to experience true religious and political freedom.
Notes:
See Religion and Faith: The Same But Different at https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/10/faith-and-religion-same-but-different.html.
Previous blogs on related topics are: Religion and Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith and Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion and New Beginnings: Salvation and Reconciliation into the Family of God, January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment, January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Promoting Religion through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness? February 8, 2015; Jesus: A Prophet, God’s only Son, or the Logos? April 19, 2015; An Introduction to God is Not One, by Stephen Prothero, April 26, 2015; A Fundamental Problem with Religion, May 3, 2015; Religion, Human Rights and National Security, May 10, 2015; The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing, June 7, 2015; Christians Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Fear and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; and Politics and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015.
The four components of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral—scripture, tradition, experience and reason—are described in Our Theological Task in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2012 (The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville Tennessee) at pages 78-91. See https://www.cokesbury.com/forms/DynamicContent.aspx?id=87&pageid=920. It should be noted that reason includes critical biblical scholarship that relates to interpretations of scripture that are part of tradition, illustrating how the four components are interrelated.
On how nones often leave religion without abandoning their faith and spirituality, see the interview of Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones are Alright, at http://w
ww.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kaya-oakes-the-nones-are-alright_560d8787e4b0af3706dff3b1.
Church for ‘nones’: Anti-dogma spiritual collectives emerge across the U.S. These spiritual communities discard doctrine, prefer questions over answers and have no intention of converting anybody to anything. https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/12/21/us-religion-nones/.
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