IN THEORY:

Filmmaker Andy Deemer is working on a documentary about a New York man starting his own religion. Deemer advertised for people willing to start their own religion and decided to focus on Joshua Boden, a musician whose religion declares that divinity can be found in common moments such as the laughter of a child or fall colors. In his religion no one tells anyone else what to believe and the congregation searches for answers together. Do you think this religion sounds promising or does the whole exercise of documenting a fledgling religion make a mockery of religious faith?

There is a prayer in one of the Jewish prayer books written by Rabindranath Tagore titled “Where Shall I Find You?” in reference to God. Some of it reads, “Behold, I find You; In the merry shouts of children at their play; in the mother’s lullaby, as she rocks her baby in the cradle.”

I agree with Boden’s statement that divinity can be found in common moments such as the laughter of a child. What I disagree with is that there are a lot of other elements to religion and God that are not found in his pseudo-religion. These elements refer to his precept that there is no God, that “we are God.”

In Boden’s religion, since he does not believe in God, there can be no prayer. Who would you be praying to? Boden’s religion does not even have a name. The world’s Western religions all find value in prayer. The Psalms are read not only for worship but to give people a sense of comfort. People need prayer. Institutional organized religion gives a person a sense of community — a place to go to and people to see when misfortune or tragedy occurs. This also is lacking in Boden’s religion.

I find other essentials of a religion, unique to Judaism, that Boden lacks in his pseudo-religion. Judaism is based on ethics and a belief in God and a sharing of Jewish civilization and history. Jewish history unfolds in the present. Long ago, in Roman society, Jupiter was a symbol, but the prophets of Israel are a voice. Mars died without ever having lived, but Moses remains a living figure. We are bound by his law given to him by God, a code of ethics. In Boden’s religion, he does not even include the Ten Commandments.

Judaism, more than most religions, manifests its attachment to the past because we need to. Judaism represents a moral code in an immoral world. What is a religious Jew? He is a synthesis of history in a vessel of ethics that in last week’s Torah portion stated, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.

A Jew is crushed and faced by the tragedies of today’s events in the wake of Islamic terrorism. Somewhere a Jew turns on the news and is overcome by sadness. He is weeping at the events of the day, looking to serve God and eradicate injustice and evil wherever and whenever it is found.

Boden looks for the good and says nothing in his religion to eradicate evil. I see something very wrong with that.

A Jew begins his life not with his own life. It is fitted into a memory that is the living tradition of his people. When Jews celebrate this Jewish New Year, they are living the ancient code of Moses today with values given to them by God, to improve the world. We call this tilkkun halolam. This is the theme of the High Holy Days at Temple Isaiah this year that begin Sept. 22.

RABBI MARC S. RUBENSTEIN

Temple Isaiah

Newport Beach

The World Christian Encyclopedia names 19 major world religions that are subdivided into 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. It notes that 34,000 distinct Christian groups have been identified in the world.

It seems there is always room in the religious panoply for one more expression of faith.

Though I would prefer to see a recognition of Theism in this new endeavor, and though I wonder where its adherents “search for answers together” (perhaps the words of the prophet are written on the subway walls and tenement halls), I agree with two of its insights: Divinity must be found in routine experiences, and there are no instant answers.

First, finding God in the mundane.

Moses is stirred to the depths as he stands at the shore of the sea and witnesses God’s might part the waters. Later, he is awestruck atop Mt. Sinai as he hears God declare his commandments amid thunder and lightning. Who in such circumstances could resist being overcome with religious ecstasy? But it is another matter for Moses, alone and in the quiet of the desert, to recognize that a lowly thorn bush is ablaze with the fire of God. It is on this everyday level that we are spiritually challenged to deepen our awareness of God’s presence in our midst.

Elijah sought God in the fierce storm and the earthquake, but the Lord was not in these. Then he found God in a “still, small voice.”

The summits of numinous experiences are rarely scaled. We spend the bulk of our days on the plains between occasional peaks of awe. The test is to maintain the dialogue and covenant with God in our daily sojourns between those exalted but fleeting moments of clarity and vision. This is our mission: to elevate the common, find eternity in the daily, and identify the spiritual within the material.

This new faith is also correct in affirming that glib and undemanding answers to complex issues are jejune. Reducing God’s message to facile formulae for instant redemption, instant health, instant wealth, trivializes faith.

Belief is about wrestling, the unremitting and laborious search for God, for our fellow, and for our authentic selves.

Jacob learned this during his nocturnal struggle from which he emerged a new man. Convictions cannot be distributed on a silver platter. Questions are at the heart of the religious quest. Religion must pose challenges, disturb our ease, and disrupt our self-satisfaction.

When Job suffered, friends voiced orthodoxies, platitudes and sureties. God rebuked them saying that Job’s insurrection against God’s justice was closer to the truth than the friends’ pieties. Congregants know when their clergy are answering by rote.

Comedian Flip Wilson created the Rev. Leroy, the larcenous, lecherous minister of the Church of What’s Happening Now. Better a religious enterprise that meets people where they are than a Church of What’s Not Happening Now.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

I’m sure this documentary will be seen and judged from every point of view on the opinion compass. Yet it shows just how diverse the public is when it comes to forming an idea about god, the infinite and the divine.

The interesting outcome to study, though, is not the novelty of the idea, but the variety of spiritual models that will emerge. Some philosophers argue that each person has his own religion and that even though religions look organized, they’re not. In fact, some believe that religions are nothing more than strategies to close the gap of fear of the unknown.

I’m interested in how people form their opinions of god. Most, I find, do not have a particularly well formed idea of god, and a large amount adhere to their cultural defaults. Religions tend to imprint customs and social orders in the hearts and minds of those who are raised by believers. But Americans are an interesting group. The studies I’ve examined tend to see most Americans as having a wide range of spiritual interests. Once people feel free to chose, they explore the spectrum and mix and match what they find until they develop some kind of a feel for what makes sense. People do want answers to the obvious questions about morality, death, and redemption. But beyond that, people just want to feel secure and safe that there is an afterlife that offers them peace and love.

When I find people who are suffering from a low-grade fear of death, or who are confused by the world and how it is behaving, I offer this advice: You may not know what you’re doing, but something within you does. Trust the inner knowing, even though you can’t always see exactly how it all works. Believe in the basic goodness of life, even though you may be surrounded by stinkers. Persist in your faith and life will reveal your true self; the self that God created so that you could know life and know it richly.

SENIOR PASTOR JIM TURREL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

Costa Mesa

There is an inherent capacity in human beings for exploration of reality beyond our five senses that is the presupposition of all particular and concrete religions, psychologically; so understandings of religion are as vast as is great and glorious Alaska from which I have just returned.

Sociologically, religion is what societies hold to be sacred and comprises an institutionalized system of symbols, beliefs, values and practices focused on questions of ultimate meaning. Theologically, religion is a personal or institutional system grounded in belief in, and reverence for, a divine source, power and being regarded as creator, sustainer and challenger resulting in values and practices based on teachings or spiritual leaders and community.

So, religious ideals can be espoused by any one person, but they will not become truly a religion until they are embraced by a community of individuals who share those beliefs as the motivational center of their lives. True religion centers human lives in relationship with God. Common moments become glimpses into eternal life; joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures, are given perspective by the divine life of God, the one who creates, sustains and challenges.

Andy Deemer and Joshua Boden seem to be creative. There are so very many new religions that I think are based on poor theology, psychology and sociology that I rejoice that Boden has good ideas including finding the holy in the common and learning to live questions rather than answers.

But wait! Didn’t sages long before Moses or Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad believe similarly?

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a new religion or an old religion — just whether it’s a good religion. At a parish, Buddhist Temple, 12-step program or psychotherapist’s office, people find resources to help them live well and relieve suffering.

What is a good religion? Each person decides this for himself or herself.

I believe there are two important threshold choices: The first is selfish pursuit of one’s own happiness (as a conscious choice or an unconscious attitude), and the second is service to others. All of the world’s major religious traditions teach service, but our commercialized culture tends to emphasize personal gratification. A good religious tradition teaches that personal satisfaction comes as a result of caring for family, friends, community and the world, while learning to grow beyond egocentric tendencies.

I’m not sure what is going on with Deemer’s film or Boden’s new religion, but I do know that college courses in religious studies and sociology sometimes assign students to create a religion. This exercise can help students to see freshly some of the elements of religion, for example, ritual, doctrine, ethics, scripture and institution.

Religion is personal and creative, even when it is practiced in the context of a major religious tradition, with thousands of years of history and millions of adherents. Religions do change, they are reformed, denominational labels don’t necessarily fit, leaders may be corrupt, protest groups break away, and new religions are started. Each person must take personal responsibility for her or his beliefs and practices.

Zen Buddhism is often viewed as a new religion because it is new to the United States. It is often misunderstood because it is quite different from the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish traditions that most people grew up with. I appreciate that the Zen tradition has thousands of years of history, and yet it expresses itself anew in each culture. On the one hand, Zen practice now is the same as it was for the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree in Magada, and on the other hand Zen in Orange County in 2006 is different from Zen in India, Japan, Germany or Mexico.

I don’t find Boden’s principles especially interesting, but then I don’t find some of the teachings of the established religions attractive either. I do appreciate religious, educational and art works that challenge people to think more carefully about spirituality, and perhaps Deemer’s film will do that, especially for young people.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

Many of the precepts of Boden’s new faith I agree with. I have always believed you can hear the voice of God in the laughter of a child, and the book of Genesis says that Adam and Eve heard God in the “breeze of the trees.”

As a Baptist, I believe that I am responsible for my faith and not someone else, so though I rely on the sages of the past, it is up to me to interpret the Scriptures for my life and times. No one tells me what to believe, nor do I tell others what to believe. The Christian testament of the Scriptures are full of commendations that the Christ life is meant to be done in community and not in isolation. So many of his beliefs are not shocking.

On the other hand, many of his beliefs are indicative of his culture. They are very narcissistic and materialistic.

My deeper concern is for Deemer. The idea that you can experiment with the fate of people’s souls is more than a mockery — it is arrogant and dangerous. It is playing god if I have ever heard it.

In the article about Deemer’s experiment, the executive director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions at UC Santa Barbara, J. Gordon Melton, told of 40 to 45 new religious groups emerging every year in North America. This compares to only a few dozen that appeared along with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and others. Perhaps he can use these as an inspiration for his faith.

In 1823 (seven years prior to the printing of the Book of Mormon), Ethan Smith wrote a book about what it might have been like had Jesus visited the Americas. Not long after that, Joseph Smith took that story and built a grander story that he would play a key role in. Soon after, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded. It has become one of the fastest-growing religions in the world. That’s inspirational to a guy like Boden.

The problem with all of this discussion is that God doesn’t want our religion. It is our hearts he desires. Religion is the human attempt to appease God or reach God or be a god. God is more interested in being in relationship with us, and laughing with us and walking with us through life.

LEAD PASTOR RIC OLSEN

The Beacon

Anaheim