On “Organized Religion”

What a fearful phrase this is when one stops to think about it, and how calamitous that Christians should have come to find themselves committed to its defence.  That the Church has a concern with religion – as with every other aspect of human life – no one would doubt.  That it must be organized – and efficiently organized – is equally clear.  But that Christianity should be equated in the public mind, inside as well as outside the Church, with ‘organized religion’ merely shows how far we have departed from the New Testament.  For the last thing the Church exists to be is an organization for the religious.  Its character is to be the servant of the world.

-Bishop John A.T. Robinson, in Honest to God