There
are several threads on my loom, Slade. Probably the two most important, in terms
of your comment, are Mennonite and Reformed (oddly enough, given the history of
those two groups). I mean the horse-and-buggy,
no-phone Mennonites, who, as an ethnoreligious minority (like devout Jews)
have their faith and culture inextricably bound up together. In their case it
has held because they've chosen to live as separate from the world as they
can, and this choice comes out of what they believe about God and salvation. I
wasn't raised in this type of Mennonite community, but my mother was (until her
parents were excommunicated), and I inherited from her the idea that faith
permeates all of life. Pennsylvania Dutch is a lot like Yiddish, BTW!
:-)
The
same idea is central to the Reformed tradition. That thread has
entered my life through Christian schooling (as student, teacher, and involved
parent), a Reformed specialty. I could blather on forever about this, but
for now I'll just say there are two kinds of Christian education, one of
which maintains an unconsciously compartmentalized (and therefore
"safe") approach while the other works hard and fearlessly
at integration and the engagement of culture. Most people don't know about the
second kind (and in fact the huge, rapid influx of frightened non-Reformed
folk into the Christian school movement is threatening it), but I'm very
grateful to God for the privilege of having experienced
it.
Other
major threads are Catholic (my husband--and I could write a whole nother
discourse about this in relation to David's comments about marriage,
unity, and "saying the same thing") and evangelical. I grew up in
your standard evangelical-type church, against whose compartmentalizing
effect the other influences prevailed.
As for
what I've been exposed to recently: Trinitarianism, Lesslie Newbigin, and N.T.
Wright, for starters. Thanks for asking!
Debbie
-----Original Message-----
From: Slade Henson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 8:24 PM
To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org
Subject: RE: [TruthTalk] Good News!Hello again, Debbie.I enjoyed your thoughts here. Your noncompartmentalization is Hebraic in context. Pray tell... what is your background or what have you been exposed to recently?-- slade-----Original Message-----
From: Debbie Sawczak
Sent: Monday, 17 January, 2005 17.29
Subject: RE: [TruthTalk] Good News!Hi Judy, let me paraphrase/periphrase "there is no sacred vs profane", as that is a dualism perhaps unfamiliar to you, which uses the word "profane" differently than the texts you mention below. "There is no sacred vs profane" means that life is not divided into two compartments, a spiritual/religious/faithy/Bibley compartment on the one hand and everything else on the other. It means there is no part of life which is not affected by our relationship with God; there is no sphere of activity over which he does not have the supreme claim, or to which he is not relevant.
