Religions/churches are living entities seeking to promote their own survival.
They consume members and resources as the food of their inheritance
and at the expense of others of their kind.

Religions take spirituality and suck it dry for their refreshment
Take the interface to divinity and make, from it, a sacrament.
Take the celebrations of man and make them into Festivals.
Take the acts of God and make them into legends.

For religions are places of temporal power,
exercised by an anointed, self-perpetuating hierarchy,
whilst presenting a facade of spirituality to their world.

Power rests at the roots of religious ritual;
Power through the threat of exclusion from eternal life.
Power through priestly granted absolution.
The Power of the dominant Cross!

It was, and will be, ever thus.
We, who meet with God, are channelled down the faucet of conformity
to find divinity only by following the way our religion specifies;
for we can believe and belong, or find another pasture.

We may all serve in different ways, know God in different guises,
but we adopt a standard vision; conform for the sake of unity;
surrender self for community, loving our neighbour and
ignoring the reality of our view of God.

The Way of Jesus lies beyond the path of the churches.
The churches need to modernise their ways and doctrine,
if they are to continue to serve the purposes of divinity
and relate to the community around them
that they exist to serve.

Gospel of Matthew Chapter 23
23:13"Woe to you, priests and bishops, hypocrites!
For you devour widows' houses,
and as a pretense you make long prayers.
Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

23:14 But woe to you, priests and deacons, hypocrites!
Because you shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against men;
for you don't enter in yourselves, neither
do you allow those who are entering in to enter.

23:15 Woe to you, missioners and evangelists, hypocrites!
For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte;
and when he becomes one,
you make him twice as much of a son of Gehenna as yourselves.

23:16 Woe to you, you blind guides, who say,
'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing;
but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.'

23:17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold,
or the temple that sanctifies the gold?

23:18 Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing;
but whoever swears by the gift that is on it,
he is obligated.'

23:19 You blind fools! For which is greater,
the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift?

23:20 He therefore who swears by the altar,
swears by it, and by everything on it.

23:21 He who swears by the temple, swears by it,
and by him who was living in it.

23:22 He who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God,
and by him who sits on it.

23:23 Woe to you, Christian congregationss, hypocrites!
For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin,
and have left undone the weightier matters of the law:
justice, mercy, and faith.
But you ought to have done these,
and not to have left the other undone.

23:24 You blind guides,
who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel!

23:34 Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets,
wise men, and scribes.
Some of them you will kill and crucify;
and some of them you will scourge in your churchues,
and persecute from city to city;