Can we do without organised religion?

Churches are in decline, certainly in the western world. People tend not to turn to a priest for spiritual insight or advice. But is a lived relationship with the sacred and wisdom traditions denuded as organised religion disappears? In this Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogue, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon talk about religious institutions for good and ill. Rupert picks up on a new book by Alison Milbank, Once and Future Parish, to ask how churches can maintain connection with the seasons, place and community, and speak to the whole of our humanity in its rituals and rites of passage. The conversation explores why many people are wary of organised religion, and are inclined to treat religion more as a threat than a visionary promise. The perils of a privatised spiritual questing are set alongside the paucity of contemporary church life, though if it can be hard to live with organised religion, it seems also hard to live fully without it.

You can listen to Can we do without organised religion? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Can we do without organised religion? is an episode from The Sheldrake Vernon Dialogues by Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon.

This episode is 37:59 long.

This episode was published on Oct 22, 2023.

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