I get some very strange looks when people find out i’m a Christian. Most of them expect me to jump on top of them and exorcise the demons within so they will be saved from the burning fires of hell. I don’t fit the stereotype at all. I don’t go to church, i swear, smoke and drink like a trooper, and i hate most Christians just as they do. It’s hilarious to watch the confusion. I may be judgemental in a lot of cases but it’s got very little to do with biblical damnation and a lot more to do with the fact i think someone’s a fucking retard. Most are intensely curious as they’ve entertained thoughts privately about the existence of God but never had anyone to talk it through with who won’t ridicule them or try to “convert” them.

Spirituality is quite a rebellious idea these days. If it’s not on ITV2, printed on the back of cheap Chinese takeaway menu or something you can buy with a credit card, it’s not on the radar. That includes love though, as spirituality concerns all the things we experience but cannot see.

With over 170 distinct religions counted in the 2001 Census, the religious make-up of the UK is diverse, complex, multicultural and surprising. Less than half of the British people believe in a God, yet about 72% told the 2001 census that they were Christian, and 66% of the population have no actual connection to any religion or church, despite what they tend to write down on official forms. Between 1979 and 2005, half of all Christians stopped going to church on a Sunday. Religion in Britain has suffered an immense decline since the 1950s, and all indicators show a continued secularisation of British society in line with other European countries such as France.

As we stand today, less than 6% of people in the UK attend church on a Sunday.

In 2007, Tearfund published the following results of their comprehensive review of British Christian religion in 2006:

• 10% of the UK adult population go to church at least weekly.
• 15% attend church at least monthly.
• 26% attend church at least yearly.
• 59% never or practically never go to church.

London has 11 per cent of all churches in England, and 20 per cent of all churchgoers. It has 53 per cent of all English Pentecostalists, and 27 per cent of all Charismatic Evangelicals. Also, it caters for 57 per cent of all worshippers in their 20s. 37500 churches were invited to take part in the Christian Research group’s fourth English Church Census (2004), and about half did. Some stark truths of Church attendance between 1998 and 2005:

• Between 1998 and 2005, half a million people stopped going to church on Sunday.
• Daily Telegraph’s religious affairs correspondent, Jonathan Petre, says “While 1,000 new people are joining a church each week, 2,500 are leaving”.
• 6.3% of the population go to church on an average Sunday, compared to 7.5% in 1998.
• 29% of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16% of the population.
• Sunday churchgoing is declining at 2.3% per year, slightly slower than the 1990s rate of 2.7% per year.
• Nearly all Church ‘growth’ is due to immigrants. A massive influx of Polish workers have filled some churches.
• “The Roman Catholics have recorded the largest drop [...], it has halved over the past sixteen years”. Drop in the 20-29 age group was 29%.

It’s not hard to see why. Even anecdotally, Christian friends of mine say there is a massively noticeable gap in the 18-30 age range in many churches, which is also coincidentally the same in Freemasonry lodges. When i asked them why it was, they said something very interesting back to me: “You’d be the best person to ask, as you don’t go to church either”. How right they were. There are some things i can be authoritative on, and some i can only be speculative about, but in this case i know my shit. Anyone who think the church has a lot to be proud of only need look at the decline of 50% to 6% attendance over the last 50 years.

It’s not hard to see why. I like to think we characterised it well in the script for “Aidan’s Darkest Sermon” that was influenced by many of the fucking assholes i came across growing up so near the Church of England, one of them being my own biological father with all his illogical pseudo-belief/discrimination system and authoritarian approach to the simplest of things. His recent attempt to tell me how to write a screenplay was almost as ridiculous as his great new idea about a drama sketch in church based around d the question of what would happen if Bridget Jones met a Christian. God, mercy. Please. Make it stop.

Our perception of church has become a stereotype, and rightly so. Hymns. Old ladies. Pews. Judgemental middle class whingers. Weak weird people. Hypocrisy. Cheesy jumpers and no dress sense. Preaching. Boredom. Irrelevance. Negativity. False over-happy people. Institutional. Pointlessness. Stupid singing and dancing. Slavery and worship. Crappy music and reject musicians. Weird smells. Family-friendly. Dogma. Ritual. Bigotry. Horrific crucifixion imagery. Guilt trips. Self-pity and self-sublimation. Fantasy over science. Naivety. No understanding or uptake of technology.

All of these things are characteristic of one thing – an institution, and disillusionment with it. People’s spirituality hasn’t declined, only their will to subscribe to dogma and institutionalism. As a nation we are rejecting institutions, and thank God for that. Boarding schools, marriage, holidays, war/the army, freemasonry, the establishment, the City, retirement, television, the police, rotary clubs and all the other colonial bullshit is being invisibly phased out. As we also alluded to in the Aidan script, institutions give people a sense of identity, and they will fight tooth and nail to avoid losing that sense of identity and importance. You’ll find the same types of people who went to boarding schools are also militant churchgoers, and army types are unchangeable when it comes to their support for marriage and the British establishment.

The Tory party and other right-leaning political organisations are known as “Conservative” because of their belief in conserving institutions. Which is again why you find those types of people supporting those parties. Interestingly, scientific studies have indicated that those with right-wing beliefs tend to have a much lower tolerance for fear than their centrist counterparts.

All of those institutions and beliefs are underpinned by a single thread – authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is defined as “a form of social control characterized by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organization, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measure.” Bullshit, in short. It’s not just another long political word, but a whole concept, lifestyle, belief system and code of conduct that is dangerous, corrosive and worrying. The same principle founded Stalin. Bush, Pinochet, Thatcher and Hitler’s regimes. It’s projected as strength when the people feel weak and leaderless. We may have a culture with a weaker form, but it’s the same animal.

So why don’t i go to church? Well for a start i hate hymns. Absolutely hate them. I hate the whole routine, dogma and pointless milling around. I don’t learn anything, The people are just … uninspiring, to say the least. If i want to know about God, i won’t be visiting a church anytime soon. I don’t believe He can be reduced to a dogmatically recited liturgy and don’t want to have to deal with his idiot followers who haven’t got a thing to say to me that could actually make a difference in my life. I can’t imagine a worse way to spend a Sunday morning and i don’t want to have to sit around explaining to people why Genesis wasn’t actually 7 24hr days and why the Bible does not use the word “abomination” when it comes to homosexuality. It’s just tedious and embarrassing. The people are embarrassing, as are the beliefs and the institution.

The absolute worst as these moronic street preachers who stand on roads with Bibles to “remind” people about damnation and sin, blissfully ignorant of how much damage they’re doing in the pursuit of God’s supposed salvation they prescribe. What these fuckheads don’t realise with their lack of historical understanding is that in the days before the invention of the mass media in the late 1800s, the road was the only place most people got to hear about faith. There is no need for it these days. We have lived in an age of the print press, radio, television and global Internet connectivity for nearly 100 years. If you want to reach the people, you talk to them and become part of their everyday lives that way instead, not preaching outdated Old testament violent insanity at them whilst they’re waiting to get on a bus or tube.

I’ve come to believe that if we are born with a spirit that allows us to connect with our Creator, then we are all built with an innate burning hunger for spirituality that will naturally drive us to experience it. We don’t need to be “converted”, we need to be “re-connected”. Many people fill that hole inadvertently with alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, money and status symbols, sex, infatuation, numbness and depression, shopping, crime, science, busyness, celebrity and a million other endeavours that end up hurting them. It’s not as if we need a preacher to force us to ask us how we got here, how the universe came into existence and if there is a God behind it all. We all have our own path and ways to answer those questions, and we can’t force anyone to adopt our beliefs before they have arrived at them for their own reasons.

Forcing beliefs on others is not only irresponsible; it is totally against God’s stated plan and will. The fundamental law of creation (and for the existence of evil) is that man should have the choice between good and evil, which is what almost every single story and drama has been about for over 4000 years. Our role in these days when we all have access to any information via TV and the Internet, and no end of contradictory viewpoints is simply to inform, talk, share, answer questions and live our lives faithfully according to what we believe. We must respect and empathise with the search of others, their doubts and the process they must go through themselves. God’s most basic principle is that we must have an informed and educated choice to make and make up our own minds (which is why He doesn’t burst in through the door). If we step over those bounds and try to sabotage someone else’s choice or make them think or do as we want, then we are violating that sacred law.

I can tell you right now that if anyone tries to “convert” me (as they often do), it’s a very serious mistake. It’s a very foolish Christian that decides they want to debate me on their typical lines, as they soon find out. I find the idea of “conversion” abhorrent and i certainly don’t see science as a threat and/or replacement to God (just the opposite in fact). Maybe it was appropriate in colonial times or in the early centuries when the gospel was being spread, but its anathema now.

So what changed things for me? One man did.

Joel Osteen.

You might have seen the link on the menu up there on your right to his online TV feed. My sister had been nagging me to watch his weekly Sunday night TV program on Daystar for months as she knew i would love his message. And i did. I saw something new. GOD TV just sucks, as does Revelation. TV evangelism is almost as revolting as conversion in my not-so-humble world. I was blown away. Here was a guy who was so positive it was unreal. A life coach, talking about life. A rejection of denominations and evangelism, no religious symbols. So immensely popular that his 20,000 strong congregation (the largest in the US) had to move to an old basketball stadium to keep up, and whose self-development books stayed on the New York Times list for months on end. And what was even more fascinating was that over 30% of his audience were normal people, non-believers, muslims, Hindus and atheists who were attracted to what he was saying.

Now i’m not a big fan of a lot of it – the Southern drawl, the invitation to invite Christ into your life, the silly talking over the music, or the cheesy Amercianisms, but there is something magical about that service of his. From the very moment he goes on, the audience is enthralled with positivity in the anticipation he’s going to come out and be full of joy everyone’s there. I have it on every single morning and just last week Virgilio and i were blasting it out of the window in Clapham to unwitting passers-by (“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU ARE AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON! YOU ARE A MIRACLE, BABY!”).

Joel’s message is known in theological circles as the “Prosperity Gospel” – a school of thought that focuses on the overwhelmingly positive message of scripture, and the Bible as the ultimate self-development resource built on thousands of years of human experience. It’s abjectly positive in every way and addictive in a wonderfully healthy way. He refuses to condemn anyone and concentrates on just how amazing we were born to be and what a loving and encouraging light the Father sees us in. If you wanted to sum it up, you’d say he was The Great Encourager. It’s made an immense difference in my life and in millions of other people’s.

So as i was sitting there in Acorn a while back listening to the liturgy, it dawned on me how negative it is. Elizabeth (the pastor) was encouraging us to be cheered on by the Good News as people were reciting their guilt, their sins, how they didn’t deserve to exist and all the other crap. It’s a contradictory and incredibly oppressive approach. Yes, we may not be up to much and need forgiveness, but do we focus on our guilt, or on our will to be better? Why do we choose penance and self-punishing over knowing how much we are loved and being encouraged? Which side of the coin do you fix your gaze on when t he world is enough on its own to make us feel bad enough?

I listened, but i was phasing in and out. On the inside of me, the same thing kept resounding.

We need to build a new church.

Over and over.

I don’t want to be part of this anymore. We can’t do this anymore. It’s time for a new way of doing things. We need to “re-frame” the Bible, and re-think God. We can’t carry on like this or there will be no church left. These people have run amok for hundreds of years defaming the name of the Father with their dogma, bullshit, institutionalism, oppression and negativity. It’s time for a new world. Time for a place and a movement that stands above the rest of anything humanity has ever done. And it will mean turning our back on everything that has come before.

And suddenly, just like that, i realised why i had been kept out of the church for all my life. I thought i just hated it, but it was for a purpose. Only when you can see from the outside can see what’s wrong, and i’m inspired by the notion that when God wants something done, he almost always goes outside the system and picks something or someone very offensive that always comes as a massive surprise. If you look through scripture, every incident involves someone totally unexpected and unworthy in human eyes. But the Father doesn’t see as we see, or think as we do. And He doesn’t ask our permission or approval. If He wants change, he crashes the financial system to remind us who is King. Or rather, He lets us ruin things for ourselves and lets us take the fall, and then shines through.

I asked myself what kind of church would make me never want to miss my time there, and it was surprisingly hard. I want something that’s so good it makes people want to bring their friends – that they *have* to go to and be a part of. Something i wouldn’t be embarrassed about or worried about asking someone along to.

After a while, one thing was clear. We need to throw the rulebook out. Completely. Start from scratch right from the beginning. Strip it down, re-frame and begin again.

What is a church? It is a body of people. Not a building. A group of people who share the same beliefs and enthusiasm for spirituality. So, forget the building and all its content. Forget the symbols. Throw out the old archaic language. All of it. Goodbye dogma, routine and institutionalism. Start from the beginning. Nothing feels better than ripping down an institution and replacing it with something better. Maybe we’d go for a big theatre or other type of secular auditorium that wasn’t being used and would love having its corridors filled out several times a week with passionate go-getters.

So a “church” that is not a church as we know it today, but one that would come to define it for the next decades.

So what would some of the characteristics of that new church be?

• Open to anyone and everyone of any creed, colour, denomination. Focused on 15-45.
• Comfy surroundings, just like the sofas and coffee world of Starbucks. A wine bar and cinema as much as a conference.
• Completely positive in every way – the prosperity Gospel from beginning to end. No preaching, no negativity, just encouragement, celebration and a real buzz of excitement from that encouragement.
• A place to debate, educate, discover, learn, grow and be immersed in the important things that matter in life, as well as the big controversial global issues. A big focus on scientific, historical and theological understanding. A place to re-learn the principles of evolution if you flunked GCSE biology.
• A Bible “re-framed” as self-development and personal life coaching. Leagues of inspirational speakers.
• Internationalised, with global TV and the massive power of the Internet as its backbone.
• An electronically linked community with all of its materials and activities available anywhere, anytime, on any device.
• A massive push for management of PR and a willingness to absolutely honesty and to get hands dirty on difficult topics.
• Focused on caring every single day for the vulnerable and setting an example (e.g. going out and bringing in rough sleepers). Action always, not words.
• Creating and driving unique and innovative projects that blow people’s minds, and helping every person reach their own personal potential.

What would never, ever be seen, ever again?

First off, no hymns. No concept of a “service”. No subservient we’re-not-worthy “worship” or cheesy attempts to be “cool”. No half-baked amateur musicians who still think it’s ok to play Status Quo or shit church worship music on stage in your 40s because it’s as embarrassing as your trying to play Hank Marvin at the shit school disco. No pews. No symbols or images. No fucking organ. No altar either. No uniforms. No stained glass windows, processions, tea and biscuits or anything as fucking pointless as that. No Sunday mornings when the evening is better and you want to play football or lay in then instead. No bible study groups or women’s mornings when helping others would be more worthwhile.

Fuck the old people. Let them go to the old piece of shit building down the road. If you want family friendly, go to a crèche. If you want to be told what you want to hear, go to an AA meeting. It’s debate, challenging talks, inspiring stories, powerful projects and encouragement 24/7 that nurtures the very best in everyone rather than putting them down and dressing like Margaret Thatcher is around or you’re in a bad sitcom. It would be a place for people to learn to be driven, motivated, encouraged and have the positivity rub off on them, as well as spreading it amongst others – a massive self-development crowd evolving as one. A community that engage together in challenging themselves and being part of something bigger in changing the world around them, and the lives of people they come into contact with.

A “hive” of positivity energy, you could say. A community that has changing the world as its goal and is interested in achieving higher things than financial gain, status or any other of the world’s pretentious bullshit. And has a ball doing it, celebrating in the meantime whilst the rest of the world struggling. A total rejection of all the fake shit in favour of something higher, better, more inspiring and long-lasting. Projects that leave people’s mouths open, a focus on having an effect that lasts decades, and an ongoing list of changed lives that are unrecognisable. A positive elitism, if you will. Something everyone wants in on.

You couldn’t just cut out the music and communion, i know. I guess you’d have to segment the calendar so those who wanted to sing and dance together could go to a gig, those who wanted quiet prayer and therapy had the same time, and those who wanted to debate and have talks could drag in people of every other faith and viewpoint to discuss as vigorously as they could manage. A multilateral agenda, perhaps. I think the key to it would be to ditch the idea of a weekly “service” and start thinking about a series of parallel events, meetings, gatherings or whatever you might want to call them. The heartbeat would be a democratic involvement in building the world together, not just following some tiresome routine made up by some jumped-up local theologian in a dog collar with a CoE pension.

But just as important as diversity and learning is … balls. A church needs to stand up for its beliefs and fight for a cause. No more being timid or PC. With a highly-educated crowd practising the positivity it preaches with every breath, it carries authority. It stands out and makes a noise. It is politically active and takes on the media and government relentlessly without ceasing. It makes no secret of its internal debates but doesn’t try to be acceptable to anyone – just to represent the truth as academically adn spiritually determined, and beliefs that reflect everyday ordinary people’s values and concerns, with arguments that have been thought through. No mercy, no backing down, and no being frightened – just a show of strength and unity, even against other older-school churches who don’t like the new upstart’s ideas. And if they don’t like it, fuck ‘em. We work under God. Let them take it up with Him.

It’s never going to be easy. Not in a million years. But that’s what attracts me to the idea, as well as doing something new so amazing that everyone would want to be part of it regardless of their (lack of) spiritual belief. That is what God and spirituality mean to me – something you seen in someone else that you want for yourself because you see the blessing on that person’s life and the way it spills over to the lives of anyone they come into contact with. That’s God’s plan too. He shines through us. You meet Him in the kindness of others, and the amazement of who they are and what they do. Actions, heart and faith count for more than anything else.

That was Abraham’s purpose and appeal – he, like David and Saul after him, became the wealthiest man in the region, and the populace thought that if they could reach his God they could be the same. And they could. The God of Abraham became the greatest goal of every individual who knew him because they wanted the same blessing for themselves –a wonderfully brilliant inversion of fundamental human nature. But that’s the Father for you – smarter and wiser than anyone or anything else, and working differently to how the buckteeth-bible-bashing brigade represent Him to be.

Wouldn’t you like to be a part of something like that? I know i would. When was the last time you were excited and inspired by something that? If you don’t think we crave that encouragement, purpose and strength, just take a look at Obama-mania all over the world and Joel Osteen’s reach to millions across the planet. We should be inspired and encouraged by their example, but be ready to better them. Follow maybe, but be energised to build on what they have started and take it further to a much higher level. They have laid the groundwork, now it is time for us to reach towards the sky and think, believe and work to create something that blows people away. That must be our goal – not to equal, but to always supersede.

How’s that for a new take on the The Great Commission?

But it’s not enough just to theorise and talk about it. I’ve learned that, as Ghandi said, you need to become the change you want to see in this world. It’s pointless to sit around complaining and pull something to bits unless you have an alternative or a new plan to replace it. It’s just air. We need to find a way to do it, and commit to a bigger, bolder vision that goes beyond what we understand, know or can imagine. What is the point whingeing when you can use the same energy to create something new? To seek out new ways of doing things, search your imagination for a revolution and become an author of a more positive and advanced upgrade to the current scenario?

So in that vein, i start today. Just as we did with the Rockstar 2.0 project to reinvent music, as we did with the collaborative writing to give new talent a platform and as we are doing with Blue Alien to launch hundreds of new bands through a new way to do things, it’s time to lay the groundwork. Not talk, just do. Even if it’s small at first and grows from there. I have a million projects i want to unleash on this planet, but this one is special.

I call it “21CC” or “21st Century Church”.

In 2009, we will find a backwards church and retro-fit it to be the most electronically-equipped and technological advanced organisation of its kind, almost entirely at no cost, to be a role model for every other church in the country. We will take a no-hope failing place and transform it over a few weeks as a flagship community linked together via the Internet, and re-built with a new, daring philosophy in mind. We will then publish the whole thing everywhere we can, and film it. Like Rockstar it will probably take a year or two for people to wake up and get the idea, but this one is going to be 100x bigger and wider-reaching because of its ultimate goal. I kind of thing we may just have some spiritual back-up to make it fly along too.

In case you were wondering, that was your invitation to join me. We’re going to need a lot of people with varying skills and experience to make it work, but the preparations are underway now. If you know of a church that needs an overhaul, let me know. If you want to be part of the project, get yourself on board and get strapped in. I’m not stopping or slowing down now. The more money, power, contacts, resources and inspiration that comes my way, the more we take on and get done. The more you eat, the more your stomach learns to take and the hungrier we get. You have to live this life knowing that you won’t live long, and what you do down here is down to you and whether you are willing to live in a way that means your memory outlasts the generations.

Everything we choose to embark on must be bigger than we ever think we can accomplish. We’re not confined to the size of other people’s imaginations; we’re released to the size of our God and our destiny. The size of our problems indicates the breadth of our potential as extraordinary people face extraordinary challenges. Ordinary people have ordinary problems and never challenge themselves. The choice lies within you, as does the strength to make it. We either sit by the roadside or we pull up our guns and decide to crash on down the road even if we don’t know where it will lead us. You’ll be amazed at what you can do and how powerful your imagination is if you just give yourself a chance to shine, even in the darkness of other people’s agendas, bullshit and judgement. Fuck ‘em. We’re not here long enough to have to worry about what they’re doing anyway.

And if you think this kind of bold new vision for music, film and eventually the church is radical, just you wait until you see what the Father put on the inside of me for the country and its government. I’m only 29 now. I have another 40 or so years yet, and i’ve only really got started in the last 5.