On the Singularity of the Trinity
The Doctrine of the Trinity has been the basis of Church policy and practice for over 1600 years. In building up what is supposedly a monotheistic religion around multiple divine beings, the Church has sectioned itself off from the rest of western religion. Potential Jewish and Muslim converts, who were not raised in neo-Trinitarian societies (virtually everywhere outside of the Americas and Western Europe), find themselves taken aback and confused by the Doctrine. What's worse is that many of the Church's parishioners, who claim allegiance to the Trinity, do not themselves understand the full meaning of their words when they ascribe thanks, "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." While it may have been sufficient from the Middle Ages up through the Renaissance for the common person to have almost no understanding of the beliefs they were practicing, it is not so today; today a much greater portion of the population has the ability to read and write, practice religious or denominational freedom, and seek a general understanding of their religious institutions' practices. The Trinity is an exclusivist ideal at heart; that is, it is difficult to understand without a previous experience in Christianity and therefore, necessarily keeps outsiders out. Exclusivism is quite contradictory to traditional Christian thought on the conversion, in which it has been practice to make as much of the world Christian as possible, sometimes regardless of peoples' personal preference. This exclusivism breeds a superiority complex in many Christian believers; the fact that one cannot understand, or at least make the claim of understanding, the Doctrine without being in the faith in earnest, makes those within Christianity feel that they are somehow better than those outsiders who they should in all reality be attempting to convince, but are really merely holding contempt for.
