the rix mix

This weekend is Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm. I recommend visiting the website. There are always good links to individual blogs.

I don't participate directly in the event. A number of my posts throughout the year are tagged with the theme, & I do a lot of commenting on the separation of church & state elsewhere. I also disagree with Blue Gal's timing. Many progressive Jews & Christians are focused on very important spiritual observances this week involving religious community & family, so it's probably the least convenient time to invite their participation. Although the BAT website says it is "not a blogswarm against religion," it does seem to skew in that direction because it loses articulate voices from the "faithful" left.

This week, I've been thinking about the rediscovery & resurgence of Christian heterodoxy, & how wonderful & organic that is, with the decline of creedal Christianity because it is no longer enforceable on any wide scale in Eurocentric culture. This process has been gaining presence for well over 100 years, but only recently begun to find community, inspired by the earliest forms of the Jesus Movement, before the "reforms" of Constantine narrowed what had been a broad spiritual path with many lovely expressions of Jesus' teachings. Perhaps that was necessary to insure the survival of the movement. But since the Reformation, & especially since the possibility of a real global community began emerging (theoretically, at least) in the mid-19th Century, a return to heterodoxy was inevitable, & it is this very natural impulse toward religious diversity, as much as secularism, that fundamentalism resents & resists.

Labels: blogging against theocracy, religion