Warm Greetings, All,
While I am not formally a Buddhist, I have studied Buddhist philosophy and scripture and have practiced forms of meditation that come from Buddhist teachings.
First of all, to reply to your question as to "what Buddhists do in churches," Revpo, is that Buddhists don't gather in churches. There are Buddhist temples, although what one would do there would depend upon what type of Buddhism one is practicing. There are, as in Christianity, many branches and divisions in Buddhism. The major division is hinayana vs. mahayana Buddhism. Hinayana is more prevalent in Southeast Asia whereas mahayana is most prevalent in the more northerly countries of Asia. Hinayana Buddhists have developed a system of thought and liturgy in which the Buddha certainly borders on being viewed as a deity. The Mahayana tradition is more insistent on regarding the Buddha as just a man, although a supremely enlightened one. A major outgrowth of the Hinayana tradition was the development of Zen, which initially occurred in China, but is more prevalent in Japan in recent centuries. In Zen thinking, which is the branch I am most conversant with, the fact that the Buddha was just a man is highly stressed, and practitioners of Zen really don't worship any deity. They venerate and revere the Buddha, and some of his successors (usually referred to as the "patriarchs") but do not worship. There are occasional petitionary prayers in Zen, but this is probably more rare than in almost any other religion. Zen teaches that one must come to enlightenment by one's own efforts, and so seeking assistance from supernatural entities is not encouraged. In fact, Zen thought really does not regard anything as "supernatural," and even the enlightened state is viewed as entirely natural. When Zen students experience visions of angels or buddhas or anything else, these are dismissed by the teacher (Roshi) as "makyo," that is, hallucinations, and the student is taught to simply disregard these as distractions from the real purpose. While the concept of reincarnation is present in Buddhism, which it acquired from the Hinduism it emerged from, Zen as a whole pays little attention to it. One could say, in essence, that Zen Buddhism, and to differing degrees other branches of Buddhism, is a non-theistic religion. It is not atheist--neither the Buddha nor his recognized successors taught that God does not exist--but divinity and concepts of theology are not stressed and are not matters of dogma.
I hope that answers your question. To me, the idea that a religion could be non-theistic without being atheistic brought about a real expansion in my consciousness in itself. To those steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition of worship and obedience to a single deity, the concept of a non-theistic religion usually makes no sense. But then we in the West tend to have a very narrow view of religion, and most Americans know almost nothing about any other faith besides their own (and, I might add, most American "Christians" really don't know much about Christianity, either).
In Unity,
j.j.salt
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