What is "The Church"

Human beings are unique. They separate themselves from being with which they share the planet by manipulatiing their environment. The most powerful tool humans have is their propensity to symbolize. They are inwardly driven to create and manipulate images, sounds, numbers and letters to control the external world in which they live. In turn, these elements then lead to the formation of new concepts. These concepts become the critical channels or insturments to expand communication with one another. The consequences of effective and ineffective communication can create great civilizations at the high point . . . to catastrophic wars and destruction of our mutual environment at the lowest point.

in 1968 an organization was formed to experiment with the most powerful concept of symbology, the concept of "God." The organization was named "The Church Religious Trust" - to its participants, it simply became know as "The Church". The purpose of The Church was then and is now to explore the wide range of communications, ideas, and phenomena that lead an individual to self-realization and self-development. Special attention to individual experimentation is the norm. Experimentation with historical and philophical beliefs is central to challenge the societal concepts of God, prejudices, and jingoism that blends church and state, i.e. "In God We Trust."

The Church, though perserverance and steadfastness, is recognized as the first experimental church of its kind. There are more than 30 years of diverse multimedia events with artist and scholars, authors and educators, advertising executives and corporate communicators, craftsmen and professionals, students and others too numerous to mention. What emerged out of this amalgam of individuals was the consensus that the escalating damage that our society has wrought on our ecological resources has a direct relationship to a spiritual demise and represents our failure to accept stewardship of the planet.

An immediate task is at hand. Create a new alliance of old antagonist, religious, scientific and economic interest and make public the growing assults on earth's environment. Make public that the present Judeo-Christian-Muslim conflict is in itself a manifestation of the enviromental crisis. Make public that religions are the first to strike out at each other as they struggle to maintain their sovereignty and control. Make public that this is not a war of good against evil but a struggle with ourselves.

We have found that our culture differs from those that have preceded it. For the first time in history, we have not only the capacity to create a world, but actually have achieved the ability to destroy - not just ourselves, but to tranform life as we know it. Our beliefs and our technologies have global impact and carry with them the spector of a man-made apocalypse.

-Richard Emanuel