12 Steps to Recovering From - Religion

Religion is one of the greatest dangers to our faith.  ~Karl Barth

1. We admit we have often been powerless over religion—that our lives have become unmanageable as we focus on How we worship God, instead of celebrating Who we worship.

2. We need to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to real faith – and this power will allow us to stop defending or relying on religion.

3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him – realizing that faith is a gift that comes from God, not something we generate ourselves.

4. Make a searching & fearless moral inventory of how we have put our faith in religion, instead of, moved by the Spirit to place our faith in God.

5. Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our reliance on religion.  We can be fearless in facing our Religion, because it has no power over our lives, or eternal life.

6. We need to become entirely ready to have God remove all our reliance on religion, and to transform and restore us to people of faith.  This begins in the recognition of our own need to God’s mercy, forgiveness and love.

7. We need to practice daily the letting go of our religion, by humbly asking God to grant us the power to... sit in different pews, sing from various hymnals, support a wide range of music, and try a different worship time at least once each year!

8. Make a list of all persons we have harmed by attacking their religion, instead of listening to their hearts, and to see others as God’s children... and to become willing to make amends to them all – through expressions of the love, forgiveness and mercy of God.

9. Discover ways to open ourselves to hearing God’s voice above our own, and ways to quiet our voices so that the God-shaped hole in our hearts can be filled with God’s Spirit.

10. Recognize our hunger to place concrete worldly things in God’s place – including family, possessions, ideas and religion.

11. Seek through authentic worship, prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, so that we might deepen our ability to celebrate God, reconcile with others, and live joyously in this world.

12. Having had a spiritually-faithful awakening as the result of these Steps, we will try to carry this message to others who feel the talons of religion digging into their lives, and strive to practice these principles of Faith in all our affairs.