I sense that what you mean by "church age" really means "the age of formal religions".
A Church, in it's basic sense, is a social and spiritual community, which does not have to be religious; it may be philosophical, as is the case for what we call "Hindu philosophy."
The early Christian "church" was more this way in the beginning, before Paul entered the scene and began introducing an alien theology based on Greek and Roman paganism, which ended up becoming the central theology for what later became a religion as opposed to the kind of spiritual community from which it had sprung..
My extended family and spiritual community may be viewed as a "church" in this broad, classical sense. We are from different religous backgrounds, some practicing, but mostly non-practicing their individual family religions, and are very individualistic,independent minded overall about spiritual and/or philosophical matters. Some of us come from atheistic backgrounds as well.
Our community began around the late 1960's or early 1970's, and has held together through storm and strife of personal contradictions and relationships. We used to hold regular "Family Meetings", which one could construe as "church"meetings in the classical sense, but now only have meetings as needed, now and then.
My early religious up-bringing and resultant life experience is perhaps illustrative of your topic.
I've recently realized that both my parents were aspies, and they showed it in certain ways.
My Mother was Episcopalian and raised my two sisters and I in that church; there's an old story that her family was originally Catholic, and converted to Episcopalian when one of the family, who was a Priest, married a Protestant woman!
I'm the kid in the middle, and my older sister was very independent minded as a teen, and would go to different churches with a girlfriend every Sunday for a while, looking for one she liked.
My mom was conventional minded, having grown up in a conservative, rural environment, and was not a "woman of the world." She stuck to her Episcopal upbringing.
My dad was a "man of the world", and was not friendly toward religious dogma. He used to attend a Presbyterian church that had a very good and well loved speaker.
I stopped going to church regularly once I left home an went into the world to seek my fortune. I was turned on during the 1960's to what we call, from our modern western perspective, "Eastern Sprituality", which rang my bell as it was philosophically based, not religious, and seems to have a common-sense approach to spiritutality which for me, leaves mere man-made, and therefore questionable from my aspie perspiective, organized religion behind.
Since then I have only visited the Episcopal church when I visited my elderly late mother and accompanied her to the services, or occasionally with my ex-wife; I go just to be polite.
So I really feel that the "age of "Big Professional Divinity Organized Religion Churches" is over, and that agrees with the Revelation of John that makes the statement that "there was no temple in the great city, for all the people were filled with the spirit of God"
This also agrees with Vedic prophecies and philosophy.
The late Chiranjiva gave a little-known translation of the Isha Upanishad, containing the phrase "when the world will become covered by the influence of Jesus Christ," which fortells a time when organized religion of the kind we grew up in would become a thing of the past, to be replaced by a more universal sense of spirituality.
So, yes, my logic and intuition suggest that we are indeed in that period of Time where this transformation is beginning to take place.
Yours in Truth,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Kshatriya-Brahmin and Household Fixit-man,
_________________
He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none -- Isha Upanishad
Bom Shankar Bholenath! I do not "have a syndrome", nor do I "have a disorder," I am a "Natural Born Scholar!"
01 Jan 2008, 8:17 am
