The right idea from the wrong place

I have been thinking about a post on Marriage I read some time ago defending Marriage from an Eastern Orthodox liturgical point of view. It reminded me of an interview with Graham Ward I read a while back in which the subject of bodies,sexuality, Marriage and Judith Butler were brought up. It is a good read. But one thing I realized is in a lot of the discussion of marriage, gender, sexuality etc. I tend to find myself drifting to a somewhat litrugical understanding in my ways of thinking. Considering the emphasis on the sacramentality of marriage, which relates to the sacramentality of the church, in both of the previous positions (Eastern Orthodox and Ward's own) mentioned I wonder how to approach any discourse on marriage without referencing it's sacramentality.

I mean most of the people I hang out/ worship with do not have the same sacramental understanding as I do. The one even accepted the label of 'sacramental anarchist'. Yet they believe in the 'sanctity' of marriage. I agree that marriage is sacred like they say but I see no real reason for them to believe that. Thus they seem to have, as the title suggests, the right idea from the wrong place. I don't believe I should attack them, or bring it up, but I do see issues that might need to be worked out in the future.

This post was inspired by this one.

re-traditionalization

I came upon an interesting post over some time ago which used the concept of "traditionalization".

"According to Ogbu U. Kalu, during an era where Japan was trying to modernize its industry, there was something called “traditionalization,” or patterning Japanese industrial practices consistently with traditional Japanese mores (Kalu, 9)."

The idea came up in my own personal reflections. Today I spoke at an Intentional Community forum called SharedSpace in which I discussed how I entered into Intentional Community. I explained how my family's experience both in the Apostolic Christian Church and the Banat Swabian persecution. I also referenced my time in my Churches youth group and the emphasis on Service and Mission.

I realized, although I did not use this particular language, that I re-traditionalized both my family heritage and youth group experience into something which seems completely new and foreign to both, yet connected quite intimately.

All this also reminded me of anti-work articles in a recent issue of Geez that I read. It seems ironic, on the surface, that a magazine connected to Anabaptism and Mennonites who are essentialized as hard-working farmers would advocated non-work. Yet on a deeper level they are re-traditionalizing the social and political distincteness of the Anabaptist reading, which focuses on both peace, the poor and has an anarchist tinge, of Christianity in the context of the 21st Century (I hesistate to label it anything else)