The problem with reconstructionism: the short version

[kiya]

The basic problem with the axioms of reconstructionism in paganism is that, as a descendant of Puritans, the religion of my ancestors turns out to be Unitarian Universalism.

Some gaps no amount of lore can fill.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Ayup. If it's a core tenet of your religious expression to honor your ancestors, you need to think about what would make them feel honored.

[kiya]

Indeed! I know one person who converted to Christianity for ancestor veneration reasons.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

That gets you into the odd sort of Christianity my Irish ancestors practiced, where many of the customs have nothing at all to do with the Vatican.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

Christianity is a big umbrella, and much of it *doesn't* involve the Vatican. Catholicism is a subset of Christianity, just like the Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, and so on. I am not sure how many of the groups respect the Vatican as the final authority, but it's certainly not all of them.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

While that's true, it was pretty irrelevant for Irish Catholics in the centuries between Elizabethan times and Irish independence. For those people, who included my ancestors, Irish Catholicism was their cultural identity. So please be considering the context of my comment, which I thought I'd made fairly obvious.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

My bad -- thought you were referring to now, not then. (: My misunderstanding.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

<ore accurately: our family records only go back to 18-somethingsomething, so when I hear the word "ancestor", I seem to be thinking about people much more recent than you are thinking of. My apologies.

[sigerson.livejournal.com]

I shall now invoke my Cranky Scottish Presbyterian forebears!

Or maybe the Anglicans. Much more pleasant. Except when they were dealing with the Scots...OH NO I AM A HERETIC TO MYSELF

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

The really really funny thing about this is that given my ancestry and the country I live in, I could choose to take the American Constitution as my religion.

It is, after all, derived directly from the Roman system, which made precious little distinction between church and state. (;

[liminal-spaces.livejournal.com]

So that means that coffee hour is a sacrament?
;-)

[kiya]

Almost but not quite completely unlike tea.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

I picked the right clergy, I did. Someday I'll be issued my official collar and official library card and official coffee mug, and I'll never let go of any of them ever again.

...I need a ministry icon, don't I.

[belledejavu.livejournal.com]

My ancestors are 1) secular humanists 2) going back far enough I suppose, your basic traditional adherents of Judaism, which as a religion has never appealed to me much, even though -culturally- I'm quite comfortably and securely Jewish. I dunno. Ancient Canaanites? The only person I know of who's even mentioned such a thing is an utter tool. *shrug*

maybe being a neurotic skeptic with existentialist/agnostic leanings IS my heritage. How else do you honor that?

And I give up on Wicca, I'm afraid.

[kiya]

I know a couple of (current or former I don't actually know) Canaanite recons, actually.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

I certainly tip my hat when I go by, though I'm hardly a proper recon.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that the Puritans split by the end of the eighteenth century into a more conservative wing, which became what is now the United Church of Christ, and a more liberal wing, which became Unitarian.

It's possible to argue that the roots of the split go back a bit further; in 1701, a group of Harvard alumni, unhappy with what they perceived as creeping liberalism at their alma mater, founded what is now Yale as a strict Calvinist alternative.

My own New England ancestors seem to have been Episcopalian even though some of them were here as early as 1640. My mother's old church, where I sing in the choir, will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2013.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It's funny that the UCC has ended up one of the most left-wing mainline Protestant denominations, given that--and given their convergent evolution with, say, the United Methodists or the Mennonites, both of whom come from such different theological lineages. Liberal mainline Protestantism is a fascinating coalition. And then you contrast the UUA and UCC roots in Puritanism (and Transylvanian Universalism, of course, for the UUs) with a look at the way the individual-affirming, Scripture-democratizing, feelings-based enthusiastic tradition has come around to being the root of the most hardline conservative Protestant theology out there, and it kind of boggles the mind. Who would have predicted?

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

My immediate ancestors were (mostly) Methodist. Part of my education about the frictions between Protestant denominations was learning in my teens that my mother's parents had argued over which church their kids would be raised in; Grandma was Church of Christ.

Our kids were recently invited to church by some of their school friends. We've taken them a few times, and they've enjoyed it, but E & I are struggling a bit with feeling like hypocrites for attending church when we're not really believers ourselves, and didn't really plan for our kids to grow up with that. (UUs seem laid back enough that we wouldn't feel that way, but these friends are Presbyterian.)