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Claire Rae Randall's avatar

The thing I most felt about the sermon was that it was lecturing. And this was delivered in a way which was sneering. I mean look at her face! The curled lip and condescending tone! She was loving every minute of it.

It would have been entirely different if exactly the same words had been delivered in a more measured and respectful tone. I kept expecting to see her wag her finger at the Don!

It really wasn't a good look.

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Gazeboist's avatar

I have such mixed feelings about this post. The end of it resonates strongly with me - I am likewise of the view that, if norms are being shattered, the appropriate response is to build new and independent ones, not simply to argue over whether the old norms should be restored or, in fact, they either still exist or never were.

And yet that resonant core resides at the center of a chasm I do not know how to bridge. I am a pragmatic atheist. I have no feelings I am comfortable labeling "religious" - indeed, I broadly do not understand what is meant by that term. And because I lack that understanding, I cannot but read statements like "religion is upstream of culture" as fundamentally exclusionary. If a religious person's root connection to the world around them necessarily runs through their faith, and I partake in no such thing, how then can I truly connect with them, their individual self? And worse, if *I* insist on a society that values that individual selfhood over any collective or religious identity, am I not creating for that person the same struggle of connection and exclusion that I am now experiencing for myself?

Someday I would like to write on this topic more directly, but it is a difficult thing to do when the core problem is this deeply personal thing that I neither understand, nor particularly feel the lack of, which yet is such a fundamental part of those around me.

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