Making my morning rounds recently I’ve been struck by the number of essays, news items, and “other” that in one way or another touch on the idea of why religion matters to us, to the world around us. This morning, for example I read a discussion guide of Krista Tippet’s book Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters – and How to Talk About It. Not long ago in the Guardian’s belief section, one writers commented on how contemporary Christianity has lost its sense of purpose. The Pew Forum’s site on Religion and Public Life too – often touches on why religion matters – not only to its adherents, but also to the “Public Square”.

I have been asked on more than one occasion recently to answer the question – why does religion matter – or more spcifically, why does the church, “this church” matter? What does it “do”?

Having thought about it off and on over the past weeks and months – I am struck by one thing. Unlike most other traditions, whose adherants often have a particular style of answer: a vocabulary, a turn of phrase, a particular point of reference, as an OC/IC beleiver I find it is more challenging to answer the question.

How do you talk about your experience of faith, and the value of life in our community? What vocabulary do you find yourself using that you’ve also noticed other OC/IC folk using? What has been your experience of other people’s reactions to your sharing your religious experiences – discovering that it is completely out of the expected collection of traditions and denomonations?

I came across this vid over at Emergent Village and it started me thinking again about what it means to belive, why we believe, and how we express and share that conviction in the little things – daily life.

Interestingly enough, this vid is also closely tied in with yesterday’s post on helping the poor (it’s towards the end – but be sure to watch the whole thing).

My friend Micki Shirey a UCC pastor in Oregon has a lovely blog here. She’s been “tagged” with a simple, but rather interesting question – why blog? what are the rules? and of course the obligatory tag three others. I’ll start by saying, Chris, John, and Tim are “IT”!

Why do I blog? Hmmmmm . . . . well I’ve got two blogs and each serves a different function. I’m posting different answers on the other so you’ll have to visit that one too (grin). Here, my purpose is to explore and give voice to things OC/IC I think we as a movement need to be more visible, not less; and we need to articulate our ideas and theologies from an OC/IC perspective rather than falling into step with the tunes of other traditions. I believe that in sharing our story, in exploring our ideas with one another we discover that as diverse as our motley movement is, we share more in common with one another than we sometimes think. I think that in that process of talking, sharing, and realising common ground, we make friends in unlikely places, and from that forge a stronger sense of connection, and community within the wider movement.

What are the rules? erm, ahhhh, well . . . . it might sound like a cliche, but the person typing at you, or at whom you are typing, is a living embodiment of Christ, act accordingly.

Right, I’m off to do this over at my “summer palace” and hope you’ll visit me there too (it’s got pictures, and movies and cats!)

You may remember earlier posts here about conversion. I’ve long found it unsettling how the wider OC/IC community does not often encourage, or talk about converting from X to and OC/IC identity. What is interesting is that in a number of the interviews I’ve conducted for the Indie Voices Archive this topic has been raised directly or indirectly in the conversation – this by way of pointing out that others are thinking about similar issues.

I’m about half way through an interesting little book I picked up a week ago: Conversion: Old Worlds and New (ISBN 1580461239); a collection of essays exploring cultural/historical/theological issues involved in historic conversion and missionary settings.

One essay talks about resisting conversion within the Christian tradition – that is resisting outside pressures to convert either to Protestantism or Roman Catholicism in in the late medieval period. This particular essay was interesting in our OC/IC setting because – for me at least – it raised the question of why, at least in some quarters, there is a resistence within our community to full conversion? What are the issues and questions involved that are hindering that full transition from one “tradition” within the faith to another?

Another essay was even more interesting as it explored the effect of missionary effort on language, and how missionaries struggled, even altered the language of the audience to convey not only the message of the Gospel – but the message in a particular way so as to also carry political and imperial ideologies. The working example in the essay was Tamil and the Portugese padroado system – very interesting because this too has a historic link with our IC heritage through Vilatte and the Goa Schism.

What it got me to thinking about however, was how it is that today, in our collective effort to present the OC/IC tradition we effectively (and not so effectively) manipulate our choice of language – re-define “standard” or “familiar” thoelogical and linguistic terms thereby challenging ideas we believe are mis-guided even harmful to the faith. What arises from the example of Tamil Christians is that eventually the converted, take over the program, forcing the “imperial” ideology out – and reshaping the langugage and imagery yet again to best suit the local need. I wonder – have we yet come to the point within our context of having our own independent usage of language and imagery – one that expresses our ideas and theology rather than being inherited or borrowed from other traditions? If so what are these?

Finally, the essay I just finished is interesting because it explores the experience of Andean tribes during the Spanish conquest – how their understanding of conversion differed from the expectations of the Spanish. The Andeans did not set the imagined boundary of the new religion in the same place as the Spanish whose borders were perhaps more constricted. Thus, practices deemed idolatrous and pagan to the Spanish spilled over into the life of the Andean Roman Catholic convert community.

What I find interesting here is a reflection on the process of give and take – and the eventual re-setting of the boundaries. If we look now at the shape of Roman Catholicism in South America we see the “final” outcome is quite different from what the 17th century Spanish would have liked. This is a new mission field – looking at a much older one – from my own ethnicity I can see that many of the customs and practices we Central & Eastern Europeans have are holdover’s re-interpreted from our pagan past. This process of negotiating the boundaries has made the shape of Roman Catholicism, and indeed liturgical Christianity wonderfully diverse. I wonder in our setting how this conversation is working? How, for example are the so called continuing Anglican, ISM, and Gnostic groups contributing to our re-negotiation of the boundaries of OC/IC Christianity?

Given that we are “insiders” it is difficult to step outside and see the results of these things at work now within our community; but I think that it is an interesting and worthwhile exercise to sit in our context and consider some of these questions.

Earlier this month I banged out a brief post asking why we believe. I did so having viewed both an episode of Dawkins’ series attacking and belittling people of faith, and a thoughtful three minute vlog by a young woman who talked about her own reasons for being atheist (sorry I did not keep that link – it was really good). At the time it dawned on me, as I think I mentioned in the post, that I don’t think I could adequately answer the question: why I believe.

I’ve thought about it off & on now for most of August – looking for a way to put into words and images something tangible about why it is I believe so passionately in Jesus, and in our OC/IC tradition (I know its an expansion of the original point, but not entirely un-related). When I posted I thought to myself it would be fun to create a video exploring the elements that I find compelling in Christ that persuade me to believe. I started looking for examples of what others have done – just to see if anyone has done similar, and what they are like. Here, thanks to Ministry Camp (which is a neat site in itself) I’ve found some other examples.

As part of the interviews I’m doing to build the Indie Voices Archive, one of the base questions I’ve been asking is: tell me about your journey to the Indie community. Here, in this post, I’m asking if you would not mind sharing what persuades you to believe in Christ. Anyone wanting to do a video answer, or a non-text answer is welcome – if you need help simply drop me a note.

In the meantime I’m still sitting with the question – and exploring ways of conveying, if only in fragments, what compells me to believe.