I just
realized that there's a seeming irony there; the Mennonites try to live
"separate from the world", in the sense of separate from the mainstream of
society, but the result is that their religion (such as it is) is not
separate from life. Meanwhile the Reformed strand achieves a similar
degree of integration in trying to involve itself, redemptively, in the
mainstream of society.
The
compartmentalized Christian, on the other hand, is so uncritically involved in
the mainstream as to be conformed to it except for the little chunk of life
that is explicitly taken up with church, Bible study, prayer, and the
like.
Debbie
-----Original Message-----
From: Debbie Sawczak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 11:04 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [TruthTalk] Good News!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: [email protected]
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.
