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For Christianity, the system of beliefs is fundamental to the Religion.
This is most clearly expressed in the centrality of the Creeds.
It is demonstrated in the focus on segregated acts of worship.
For most other religions the fundamental is their way of life;
how its members behave and interact with he world.
Historic Christianity sees this as secondary.

The Creedal emphasis allowed the religion to move easily across borders
and into a range of different cultures, as it has done.
Christianity is spread across the whole world.

Where the religion is largely based on a Way of Life,
its movement between cultures becomes more difficult,
for the religion carries its culture within it.


Where a religion is settled within a culture
the Way of Life and the Creedal aspect can become one
and the Way of Life can, eventually, take over the Creedal aspect.
Thus Christianity, in the Western World has become what Jesus taught,
and the belief system, the doctrine about him has become largely irrelevant.
As a result, churches (still Creedally based) are emptying
and the teaching of Jesus permeates the secular world.

Many fill the void left in their lives with new forms of God:
the hedonism of luxury holidays, the worship of talented artists or pop stars, or
the comradeship of the football terraces - worshipping "the beautiful game",
finding the meaning of life in things of no meaning.

Others are fully focussed on themselves -their position, power, eternal personal glory,
their life of self-indulgent luxury and resource consumption, maybe.
They ignore the plight of the planet and the needs of others.
In rejecting the outmoded doctrines of popular religion,
they ignore the purposes of God.