by Grace Golds

Created on: July 02, 2008

The Church is basically a place or worship for Christians. They find it a good place to communicate with their God, to pray and to seek comfort mainly.
Personally I think that the Church has far more important things about it than merely being a place of worship. Those who do believe in God should feel that they can find and pray to him anywhere and at anytime. They should not feel restricted to four walls of a manmade building in their religion.

I think the Church is the symbol of community personally. It is a place that almost anyone is welcome. Churches will give aid and do anormous amounts of charity work for the community, expecially younger people. It provides opportunity to form new friendships thorugh youth programmes and even the various services. Fetes and fundrasing events can be of huge benefit to people and the money raised will often go to charity.
However the church can also be a mark of overstepped authority. The Church, especially now days can be the embodiement of dictatorship. The authority and power that they have in society today is immense and some would even say unhealthy. Why should something that stands for an unproven belief have so much influence upon so many people? Although it does do good in some cases it can also create unhealthy and dangerous beliefs. Let me give the example of the AIDS crisis in Africa. The Church currently disapproves of the use of contraception within marriages and couples. However people should have the free choice I believe. I think that the Church can sometimes have too much authority over political and medical problems such as this which are hard to disprove as the criticising of religion is so difficult. It is so difficult because it is so personal to people. Criticising religion feels like a deliberate attack to the person who believes it even when it is not intended that way. I think we need to stop treading on eggshells however and give our views despite upset it may cause. We are entitled to freedom of speech are we not? Why shoul the Church eb able to persuade people one way and indoctrinate beliefs when others feel too afraid to put forward a defence. It does not always have to turn into a battle but can just be too co-existing but oposite views that people can choose to accept or not to accept. The fats should be put forward, not enforced.
This I believe is the main flaw in the Church as we know it. However do not get me wrong, I do believe that it does do a lot of good in some ways and is an important aspect of society, it should just allow other organisations in society to be able to branch out and be heard.

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