Years ago, my church did a seder around Easter. It was as authentic as people could manage, though still a cultural blend. We stopped, partly because it was too hard and partly because of worries about appropriating other people's stuff. I think that was a bad call. The Christian Easter liturgy and the Passover celebration are two different journeys, two different educational and emotional technologies, and to see them together clarifies both, in part by helping people understand the point and structure of ritual journeys. It is as odd to have access to one major liturgy as to to only look at one painting.
In the same way, I think exactly the same way, it is helpful to ride the subway while still remembering what it is like to drive the freeway. These are our familiar ritual journeys, and they carry a load of attitudes and expectations and natural thoughts.
It seems important that great traditions have grown up in environments in which their adherents had to constantly explain how they differed from the observances right next door: the Jews in exile, the Christians as a minority group within the religion-rich Roman Empire.
When school prayer was a big issue, years ago, I wanted to propose a constitutional amendment protecting prayer and sacrifice in the public schools. As the Hmong population in the cities grew, I learned that this was no joke: when a child was hurt in school, the parents sometimes asked to do a chicken sacrifice on the site of the injury. I'll bet the kids who witnessed those sacrifices will remember them after they have forgotten their fourth grade teacher's name.
Religion makes us think and feel and remember in organized and directed ways. The developed technologies for doing this are very powerful. And a public culture has this strange dual task: to free people from such technologies and for such technologies.
Posted by shea0017 at March 23, 2005 9:44 AM