Modular Christianity

It's such a problem, finding a form of Christianity that meets your real needs, in the real world. Either the world doesn't fit your faith, or your faith doesn't fit the world.

We've been doing some thinking and we've realised that the problem is that the Christian religion, as traditionally envisaged, is an all-in-one unit. If you're a Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic, you'll be into Marian devotion, frilly liturgy, the occasional genuflection  and a secret (or not-so-secret) longing for the priest to face East for the Eucharist. If you're a Funambulist Baptist, you'll be into long sermons, doctrinal certainty, complementarianism, belief in all of the Biblical miracles (including that stuff with Elisha and the axe-head) and a disbelief in Evolution. Now these positions can be OK in isolation - but come up against the real world and there's a bit of a crunch. You have to swallow all or nothing - and "nothing" is always gonna be a viable option.

But now the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley are proud to announce Modular Christianity. Let's take an example, and build it up slowly.

So in the first instance, you might just be taking up "feeling vaguely spiritual".

 There's nothing wrong with feeling vaguely spiritual, of course. some Beaker People manage to feel vaguely spiritual for years, and not advance one inch, and no harm done. But maybe you feel that you want to move into a deeper religious experience. In this case, you see how Modular Christianity can help you. Without needing to invest in a complete belief system, you can easily add a couple of modules - for example, "Lights a tea light" or "Something nice about kittens".

But again, this might not be enough. In the end, what does this combination get you? Apart from vaguely spiritual feelings about the danger of singed kittens. You can add some more modules.

This shows the sheer power of Modular Christianity, but also the danger that this kind of flexibility can bring. Notice the way some altruism has crept into the mix.

Take the example below:

This is somebody who just got into Methodism because they liked singing hymns loudly in empty chapels. But by getting carried away with the modular nature of our new model of Christianity, they've ended up thinking they are John Wesley.

And of course it doesn't stop there. The basic principle of Modular Christianity is that you can mix 'n' match. So there's nothing to stop you ending up with something like this:

Now even I can see that that's not going to work. It's the danger of that kind of  chaos that prompted us to construct a number of "pre-pack spiritualities". You can still tailor them, but you get a decent core grouping to build on. Currently this is our favourite. We issue this spirituality to all our Beaker People as a starter, and do you know - we get very little sales resistance and a lot of fuzzy feeling.

With thanks to 3 Minute Theo for the inspiration.