Although the specific reasons elude me, I do get nostalgic for “holiday music” during the Christmas season. I’ve written before about growing up in a fundamentalist, Protestant, missionary family. My parents left their homeland (USA), their respective families, and everything familiar to them in order to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to people (mainly Jews) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, believing Jews had been blinded to the “truth” of Jesus being THE Messiah. My parents’ job (as they saw it) was to be catalytic in removing the scales from blind eyes.
The community they (and I, by default) belonged to and worked with was loosely structured, however, a dour-faced, albeit sincere, Scotsman quietly exerted his will into the day-to-day running of the organization, claiming that his decisions were in fact God’s decisions. Missionaries who disagreed with him could easily find themselves “placed” (all God’s will, of course) several hundred kilometers away to carry on “the Lord’s work” in a remote location–up the Parana River, for example. From the community’s viewpoint (informed by the dour-faced Scotsman), Christmas was a “pagan” (heathen, idolatrous) holiday. We (the church–cult?) did not “esteem one day above another” (see Romans 14:5). Our church community did not celebrate holidays. Continue reading “What’s in a Community? by Esther Nelson”
Feminism and Religion 