What do you think about this quote by Charles Dickens on organized religion?

The quote was apropos for Dickens’ time, because English society had a strong proscriptive view of everyone going to church on Sunday.

Now, most people don’t go to church on Sunday, they are as likely out getting a spiritual connection in nature by walking or hiking or gardening or riding a bicycle.

This was John Wesley’s exact complaint. He’s the guy who started the Methodist Church. He kept complaining to his bishop that he was preaching to empty pews, that the Anglican Church and it’s doctrines had become irrelevant in the industrial age. The bishop kept telling him that if he preached properly, the pews would fill up again. Wesley pointed out that it wasn’t just his parish, it was happening all over England.

He finally just took it to the streets and a cow pasture some guy let him use. The Bishops threw the lout out. The preaching of the holy gospels and praise of Jesus must be done within the four walls of their clean, dignified church buildings, not in the filthy streets among the vulgar, dissolute masses—and certainly not in a shit-strewn cow field.

I think the quote describes the failure of today’s organized religions rather well. That’s the thing about Dickens. Many of his ethical lessons and social observations, especially those concerning social welfare and the common weal, still apply today—regardless of what the Republicans have to say to the contrary.

I am reminded of what Mark Twain once said:

“Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.”

I think it was more relevant in Victorian times when people felt they had a duty to go to church. Nowadays, there is little societal pressure to attend church (or synagogue or temple) so while religious affiliation has fallen off substantially, those who do attend generally want to be there.

I think a lot of people go to church wanting a spiritual connection but not really finding one. It has devolved into a social event.

Organized Religion has a problem
it talks, and talks but never gives
a direct experience of God. True that’s all they have ever done,
but the talk is distorted, and not of the pristine truth.
...God is within…
When the mind is still and free of thought
the light of our Soul can be experienced
as a direct experience of the living God within ourselves…
...imo more people are moving toward a spiritual lifestyle,
where through Meditation that direct experience can be known.