Imposed religion
I have had an interesting conversation with my parents. In fact, many. Here is one.
A week ago my Mum was talking about the mistakes Great Britain has made over the last half century or so. She saw the fundamental problem lying in the UK’s ‘forsaken promise’ regarding the Balfour Declaration, seeing the 1947 ending of the UK’s Mandate for ruling Palestine as the first snowball in an avalanche of bad government. I'm not an expert on Israel/Palestine so won't comment.
She included the legitimisation of witchcraft as one of these terrible decisions. Dad soon joined the conversation. We launched into a full-scale debate about whether religions that aren’t Christianity should be out-lawed, because we're traditionally a 'Christian country'. We were once a 'Pagan country', should then Christianity be an illicit religion on such a basis? It got a a little heated, and I'm not sure either side really understood the other. But it's food for thought.
A week ago my Mum was talking about the mistakes Great Britain has made over the last half century or so. She saw the fundamental problem lying in the UK’s ‘forsaken promise’ regarding the Balfour Declaration, seeing the 1947 ending of the UK’s Mandate for ruling Palestine as the first snowball in an avalanche of bad government. I'm not an expert on Israel/Palestine so won't comment.
She included the legitimisation of witchcraft as one of these terrible decisions. Dad soon joined the conversation. We launched into a full-scale debate about whether religions that aren’t Christianity should be out-lawed, because we're traditionally a 'Christian country'. We were once a 'Pagan country', should then Christianity be an illicit religion on such a basis? It got a a little heated, and I'm not sure either side really understood the other. But it's food for thought.
posted by kit at 05:21
3 Comments:
well, here is a proper reply to your post rather than the span one that appears to be there as well. thanks for telling me about the site and also popping me in the Blogroll! i'll try not to be too fundamentalist in my writings...
i had a couple of questions. 1) with hindsight, what was going through your mind when you were 'conforming' to your family - did you have the thoughts you have now at any level. remember, i first met you as a keeno cell group leader. 2) apart from faith, what else are you questionning?
R
:-) nice to hear from you Rob. Tough questions, made me think.
1) I don't think I was simply conforming to my family. I genuinely believed all of what I professed, it was my life for as long as I can remember. Back then I DID have some of the thoughts I have now, but in embryonic form. In some ways I swallowed the whole evangelical truth thing hook, line, and sinker, but over my years at uni, this slowly changed. Major influences:
1)SPEAK, who showed me my religion had missed a BIG point: social justice.
2)Social constructionist critique of knowledge and truth.
3)Feminism.
4)Philosophy.
5)Living increasingly in the real world, outside the Christian bubble.
After much slow change, these many of my core, solid beliefs were in question, and on seeing how wrong I was about so much, the whole thing came crashing down in a blur.
2) Apart from faith, I've really been questioning everything. Bit of a dodge of your question, but I've slowly been disseminating most things in myself and the world.
Honesty!
Hey Beth,
I'm always happy to be challenged. It'd be very boring if I stayed the same for too long.
The key to this is that I said "my religion". I refered to Christianity, but to my particular flavour. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians. I didn't say that all Christians have missed the point: that would've been a sweeping statement!
My use of language has shifted subtly but importantly, more in line with critical psychologists/sociologists. They don't talk of identity, but identities, highlighting that the way we are, and consequently the way we are defined is not a cohesive unity, but fragmented and disparate. Another common example is sexualities vs. sexuality, and masculinities/feminities vs. masculinity/femininity. I was doing the same for faith labels.
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