Watching the way the old time religions try to resolve their antagonisms with each other is always interesting. They usually begin by invoking a common deity and a shared interest in a united front against the forces of atheism (read “evil”) in the world.

This approach is never sustainable, however, since much of the world’s terrorism is fuelled by adherents of those same religions. It’s an internal problem, not an external one.

It’s true that many terrorists are not “religious” at all but psychopaths looking for a cause that will allow them to express their blind anger and vent their blood lust. But, if a faith harbours such animosity that it acts as a magnet for such people, it has only itself to blame.

The worst cases of this religious hatred are to be found in the three Abrahamic religions : Judaism, Roman Christianity and Islam. Why should that be?

They are all “book” religions, depending on “revelatory” texts to underscore their beliefs. These beliefs, of course, are a moveable feast which feed off contradictions in the texts to support just about anything they want. Protestant Christians are said to have over 20,000 denominations. Atheists, not unreasonably, claim that this invalidates them altogether.

The Abrahamic faiths also come from that hotbed of incendiary politics, the Middle East, where religious faith has been ruthlessly politicized for two or more millennia.

In the West now, a sharp reaction to the Abrahamic frenzy has been discernible for some time. People are turning away in droves from the old, barnacle-encrusted religions towards a more “modern” spirituality. That is to say, to practices which emphasize direct experience of spiritual reality, without the intervention of a “church”, although it may involve a “guru”, or teacher.

If this is the way the world — or a significant part of it — is going, why not use that trend to mitigate the failures of the old system, without seeming to attack it.

If every church or faith, reiterated its support for a universal spirituality that transcended the cultural forms that dominate individual religions, their members would not find themselves in the awkward position of having to defend a set of old rules and rituals against another set of old rules and rituals, thus in a bound removing the sparking points of religious conflict.

In other words, recognize a global mysticism above religion and its institutions.

It could be done, but it would take a lot of will and sacrifice on the part of religious leaders who are already inculcated with the need to hold their own “turf”.

This is a preliminary review of National Geographic’s new book, The Gospel of Judas, which contains a translation of the recently-discovered manuscript and three scholarly articles written for a general readership.

I have covered the discovery and recent history of the Gospel in another post, so I just want to throw out a few first impression here.

The main point the press picked up on was the way Jesus regards Judas as a friend, someone who enables him to escape from his mortal body and fulfil his mission on Earth.

From the start, I didn’t think that was a well developed point, especially since Judas apparently took 30 silver coins for his pains. Of course, that may well have been a later addition to strengthen the view that Judas was a devil incarnate. But there’s a far more interesting point.

Judas seems to belong to a Gnostic group of Christians known as Sethians. Jesus is also portrayed as one of their number. They believed that only some people contained the “divine spark” that would take them after bodily death to a higher region called the Barbelo. Those who lacked this spiritual element would perish after death.

These ideas are rehearsed in the Gospel of John, the most spiritual of the four New Testament Gospels and the one with the greatest affinity with Gnosticism. In John, there is famous, much-quoted passage:

“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit.”

There are echoes here of a salvationist philosophy as believed by later groups like the Cathars who were known more as heirs to the Gnostics than Rome.

When Jesus tells Judas that he will destroy the “man who clothes me”, Jesus regards that as a great service, not because of atonement or bodily resurrection, but because it frees him to return to the spiritual realm of Barbelo, where “his generation” live. He and Judas don’t belong to the “human generation” who will perish.

This is a very different strand of Christianity, unknown to those who follow what was written by Rome and its apologists. The more information we discover, the more we see a darker and far more spiritual side to Christianity than is generally accepted today.

Books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its offshoot, The Da Vinci Code are only reflecting incompletely this new knowledge, which has still to be fully expounded and assimilated into our culture

Michael Fass, 61, the Episcopalian priest of Rosslyn Capel near Edinburgh which featured heavily in the ending to The Da Vinci Code, will leave his post in July.

Reverend Fass said he has been overwhelmed by thousands of Da Vinci fans visiting the chapel following Dan Brown’s claims that the Holy Grail is situated in one of the columns, known as the Apprentice Pillar. The priest said the fabulously ornate building has “become a Disneyland for Da Vinci Code fans.”

Before Da Vinci, Rosslyn had 9,500 tourists a year. Last year that rose to 117,000 visitors. Even more are expected this year after the chapel was used as a location in the film version of the book.

Michael Fass has been at the church for nine years. Yesterday, a friend said: “Rev Fass is a serious and committed man. He thought it was unbearable when services were interrupted by tourists. This has been a place of worship for hundreds of years. You cannot just trample over that because of a book. He raised his concerns with the trust that runs the chapel but the impression was that their interest lies in only getting more people through the door. He was swimming against the tide.”

One can’t help wondering what the size of the congregation was before the book. The Da Vinci Code has certainly made the Church and Christianity more exciting subjects than they were before.

With The Da Vinci Code movie now on general release, interest in the story is widespread. Specifically, is it true, or how much of it is true?

I’ve tried to analyse the book’s basic themes over on Syntagma, and discover how much is really factual in the whole package, bearing in mind that it is a novel. However, it’s a novel that takes its broad themes from an earlier book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, so I’ve especially looked at that book too.

Here’s the link: The Surprising Truth in The Da Vinci Code.