Can there be New Ways of Understanding and Practicing Ancient Religious Teachings?

[Ferrocyanide]

Islam isn't the most progressive ideology, but I still think it would be interesting if there were some kind of "update" for it, although I would not want it to go the same way as mainstream Christianity.

Yes, very much so.

I think one of the main problems with modern Christianity is that it has adapted too much to an alienating society. Christians who declare that Jesus wanted us to be capitalists and to pass judgment on people unlike ourselves (thereby alienating them) seem (in my opinion) to have completely jettisoned the original message. 

But this is always the way it goes -- reformers and modernizers nearly always claim to be recovering something old that has been lost.

You seem to be talking about christianity in the USA mostly, where I don’t know what exactly happened but I guess someone decided to use the “new” technology available to spread Jesus’s message.
Christianity in the USA seems very disorganized. It looks like any random person who has a passion for Jesus can start a church. Then, he starts doing whatever he feels like with no input from his peers.

So, I guess someone in the 20 th century decided to start a radio program. He noticed that his popularity is rising.
I think such priests are attention hogs. They like people to listen to them for hours. The more people listen, the more they feel big.
Since the parishioners goes up, the priest makes more money from donations.

Other priests notice the success of RADIO priest and they think “Hey, I should be doing that.”

Each priests goes a step further.
One buys an entire radio channel so the other does it as well.
One gets a show on TV, the other has to do it as well. So the big televangelist movement begins.

They each start writing books and give it for free and welcome big donations.
Then they start selling 18 L food buckets for the armagedon that is coming (Jim Baker does this sort of thing in the 80s). You have to send him 2600$.

Some of the priests had other full time jobs before. An example is that guy who started the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I think his name is Fred Phelps. He died a few years ago.
He was a lawyer and he turned his house into a church and became a full time priest.


OTHER CHURCHES:
Even the catholics do that kind of thing. They have TV and radio shows and it has been a while. I see their TV shows in Quebec but they aren’t charismatic leaders selling products.
In Quebec, there are almost no independent churches.
In the orthodox world, they don’t use the “new” technology. I imagine that they basically don’t have independent churches as well.