Great blessings and great harms may emerge from religious teachings.  How might one assess a religion’s value?  Methodist minister Howard Clinebell suggested posing several questions.  He asked whether the particular religious thought and practice:

• Builds bridges or barriers between people?
• Strengthens or weakens basic trust in the universe?
• Stimulates or hampers inner freedom and personal responsibility?
• Encourages a mature or immature dependency relationship with authority?
• Advocates well-defined, significant ethical guidelines or ethical trivia?
• Increases or lessens enjoyment of life?
• Values or deprecates people’s feelings?
• Helps people move from a sense of guilt to forgiveness?
• Inspires the acceptance or denial of reality?
• Encourages intellectual honesty with respect to doubts?
• Oversimplifies the human situation or faces its tangled complexity?

March 10, 2023