Can we do without organised religion?

Churches are in decline, certainly in the western world. People
tend not to turn to a priest for spiritual insight or advice. But
is a lived relationship with the sacred and wisdom traditions
denuded as organised religion disappears? In this
Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogue, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon talk
about religious institutions for good and ill. Rupert picks up on
a new book by Alison Milbank, Once and Future Parish, to ask how
churches can maintain connection with the seasons, place and
community, and speak to the whole of our humanity in its rituals
and rites of passage. The conversation explores why many people
are wary of organised religion, and are inclined to treat
religion more as a threat than a visionary promise. The perils of
a privatised spiritual questing are set alongside the paucity of
contemporary church life, though if it can be hard to live with
organised religion, it seems also hard to live fully without it.