Roots, shoots and branches

The sad irony of religion is that it so often cuts itself off from its roots and then wonders why it finds itself struggling for survival. If a plant gets cut off from its roots, its branches will eventually wither and die.

Religious institutions are generally the result of the dogmatization of spirituality. While they have the potential for doing good, they are also very dangerous places because of their insistence on the application of uniformity of practice or belief. While differing from their so-called secular counterparts in that their self-validation is in the form of god-speak, they nonetheless share a propensity to harden and atrophy, eventually losing touch with the purpose in which they were originally rooted; to bring about change.