Greta made an observation about the gap between religious "theory" (religion as taught in seminary and the academic world) and religious "practice" (religion as it is actually lived in congregations and communities):
Truth to tell, though? I honestly don't care all that much about advanced modern theology. If you have an argument to make, I'll certainly read it. But for the most part, I'm just not all that interested in religion as it's believed and practiced by a handful of theological scholars. I am primarily interested in religion as it overwhelmingly plays out in the real world.Greta's comment got me to wondering about Unitarian Universalism. Do we have a gap between academic "theory" and day-to-day "practice" in the Unitarian Universalist tradition?
4 comments:
U*Us tell me. . .
http://www.youtube.com/user/RobinEdgar
The religion that is practiced by theological scholars trickles down to the pews over time, though, much as scientists invent things in labs and those inventions become popularly useful and show up on store shelves.
I'm not up on what the UU theologians are doing in their professional work much. But I would say there is certainly a gap between, say, what Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock had to say about violence and redemptive suffering in Christianity and the way UU Christians and UU non-Christians usually think about things.
And that book was written for lay reading.
CC
Writing as both an academic scholar and an ordained (and settled!) parish minister, I need to say that I feel the fundamental premise of this entire argument is deeply flawed. "Lived Religion," especially as it is influenced by by factors such as race, gender, and social location, is a very dynamic area of academic scholarship right now -- both for historians (like myself), and also more traditional theologians seeking to articulate a "praxis" for what you seem to want to dismiss as theory. Likewise, without GOOD academic theology, what we end up with is brain-dead fundamentalism...on both the conservative and the liberal side, I'm afraid. But this theology doesn't just translate itself directly to the pew...and nobody really comes to church just to listen to an academic lecture either (any more than they "sign the book" because they desperately want to attend interminable evening committee meetings and give away their money, which in too many churches in my experience seems to be all that we are really offering -- or at least all we really expect). That act of translation falls primarily on the clergy-- and when we do it well, we all become empowered to "take it to the next level."
I hate to have to say so Eclectic Cleric, but when U*U clergy do that act of translation badly, they and the DIM Thinking U*Us who aid and abet them become empowered to "take it to the next level" and the next and the next etc. ad nauseum. . . I guess the real question is,
"Just how low can (and will. . .) U*Us go when it comes to the numerous and glaring gaps between their "religious" "theory" and actual practice of what they so hypocritically preach?
Time will tell, and so will I. . .
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