Christianity

Having dealt with the question of goodness— which was thought to be related to happiness— it makes sense to treat of the greatest assistance to goodness and thus happiness. This is Christianity. Our current world—both religious and secular—has by and large forsaken the teachings of Christ, and so we will need to treat things a little differently than we would have at almost any time in the last 2000 years.
If one can recognize that our public forms of religious devotion are not the same kind Christianity as advocated by Christ and His apostles, one may be in a position to consider the teachings of Christ, Paul, and John in a new way. The main avenue to see this is to consider what kind of people the early Christians were, versus the kind of people we are today. Though an unpleasant thought at times, this allows us to see that we are not basing our lives today upon the reality that the people in the great streams of Christian devotion have always done.
Christianity can be considered in the abstract apart from any particular tradition because it is universal. It is simply information about the reality of God, the human soul and body, human community, and human history. It provides simple means by which anyone can interact profitably with these things. As such, it could exist as a way of life for an entire nation, or for the whole earth, without recourse to a specifically religious institution. And in fact, the only way it could operate on that scale would be for it to exist apart from a particular institution. Thus a political but non-religious Christianity is the only hope for the earth as a whole. Presumably, this will be how the earth is organized upon Christ’s return.
Everyone is aware of the historical devastations that Christian institutions have wrought upon the earth. Morbid streams of monasticism, the Crusades, the Protestant religious wars, and many practices and teachings of the present spring quickly to mind. This is enough in itself to motivate the claim that we do not need more religious institutions. Something more fundamental must change. We must not seek to establish a new version of Christianity, nor a new institution of devotion. Instead, as individuals and as groups, we must base our lives upon the teachings of the New Testament.
This simple principle is actually quite powerful. In fact, things such as baptism, communion, prayer, Christian ethics, Christian behavior, and Christian theology (and psychology) hold much more power when they are practiced apart from an institution. To institutionalize them is to limit them, and to drain them of their power. They are simply means for human beings to deal with ultimate reality to bring the greatest goodness and thus happiness to the earth. We will try to deal with these by turns so as to get a grasp on Christianity in itself, apart from the Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox movements.