Worship in scale:

Houston, Texas, USA boasts claim to one of the largest "megachurches" in the world. The Lakewood Church has a capacity of over 17,000 seated (up to 20,000 in total).

Is this the way Christianity needs to go to keep up-to-date with the C21st?

Should religion be practiced in this way, does it lose a certain personal/private aspect of worship?

The Church broadcasts its services both live and via a video blog channel:

If charesmatic worship and congregational energy is your thing, then this seems to be a great environment for likeminded Christians. However this does make a change from dwindling parish attendance records in the Anglican churches spattered across the UK.

The Lakewood church is non-denominational. This not only means that their is an 'open-door' policy to worship, but that the community spirit seems to be amalgomated and positive. Could the UK benefit from a shift in worship practices like this? What do you think?

What is Christianity?

In order to understand Christianity we must first explore its history as the doctrinal development of the religion has influenced greatly the way in which it is practiced globally.

The fundamental core doctrinal beliefs of Christianity are that it is a monotheistic religion; it has a Trinitarian concept of God, this is that God comprises God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Whereby there are three distinct yet unified entities within the one united God. Christians believe that God the son: Jesus Christ was sent by Him to be the Messiah which fulfils the prophecies of the Jewish Pentateuch and the Old Testament. Jesus is believed to be both son of God and son of Man, therefore transcending the boundaries between God and humanity, which is why, Christians believe, He was able to sacrifice himself for the salvation of mankind.

The Christian Holy text is the Bible. This comprises the Jewish Pentateuch (the first 5 books in the OT) more OT writings and prophecies, and the New Testament canon. This is made up of the four Gospels, some additional texts and the Pauline scriptures. The canon was decided upon over a series of Councils in the first few centuries CE.

The life and teaching of Jesus Christ led those who believed that He was the son of God to form themselves into a spiritual and political movement where they were known as Christians. Greco-Roman society in C1-2 CE was dangerous to be a Christian. At the time Christians lived in the Roman Empire and the Romans believed had an eclectic polytheistic and pagan spiritual mix, where Caesar was God. The Romans persecuted Christians who refused to accept that.

This all changed in 313CE when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire and the influence of the Christian religion increased rapidly. Predominately the two most important historical figures of early Christianity were Peter and Paul. Paul spread the Gospel into the wider Middle-east and to Greece; Peter based his teachings of Christ in Rome. By C10^th CE there were two main centres of power; The Western Catholic Church which was based with the Pope in Rome, Italy; and the Eastern Orthodox Church based with the Patriarch of the Church of Constantinople, Turkey.

The reformation C16^thsaw the doctrinal discrepancies of the accessibility of God’s work in the Bible; the transubstantiation in the Eucharist; the worship of saints; ‘faith through works’ and Luther’s sola scriptura create a schism between the Catholic and the ‘now termed’ Protestant factions of Christianity. Another schism took place before the reformation in 1054CE and centred on the core concepts of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox Church has remained relatively unchanged to this day since the ‘Great Schism’ of 1054CE occurred.

When one analyses the doctrine of Christianity and its history, one can see that Christianity is not just a belief system centred on the teachings of one man. It is about an identity and a faith structure which is fundamental to Western history and the political development of the Globe over the last two thousand years.

Immortality of the soul

One of the main themes in the Phaedo is the idea that the soul is immortal. Socrates offers four arguments for the soul's immortality:

• The Opposites Argument explains that as the Forms are eternal and unchanging, and as the soul always brings life, then it must not die, and is necessarily "imperishable". As the body is mortal and is subject to physical death, the soul must be its indestructible opposite. Plato then suggests the analogy of fire and cold. If the form of cold is imperishable, and fire, its opposite, was within close proximity, it would have to withdraw intact as does the soul during death. This could be likened to the idea of the opposite charges of magnets.

• The Theory of Recollection explains that we possess some non-empirical knowledge (e.g. The Form of Equality) at birth, implying the soul existed before birth to carry that knowledge. Another account of the theory is found in Plato's Meno, although in that case Socrates implies anamnesis (previous knowledge of everything) whereas he is not so bold in Phaedo.

• The Affinity Argument explains that invisible, immortal, and incorporeal things are different from visible, mortal, and corporeal things. Our soul is of the former, while our body is of the latter, so when our bodies die and decay, our soul will continue to live. 

• The Argument from Form of Life explains that the Forms, incorporeal and static entities, are the cause of all things in the world, and all things participate in Forms. For example, beautiful things participate in the Form of Beauty; the number four participates in the Form of the Even, etc. The soul, by its very nature, participates in the Form of Life, which would mean the soul could never die.