- Feb 5, 2002
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It’s rare for me to hold a fashionable position but I am delighted to be in the company of high-profile people, from the historian Tom Holland to Bishop Robert Barron and the authors Michael Frost and Nijay Gupta, who all recommend making Christianity “weird” again.
For Catholics this means putting our way-laid ecclesial car into reverse and backing out of the correlationist ditch theologians—notably with Flemish surnames—got us into in the 1970s.
“Correlationism” was the pastoral strategy of correlating the faith to the culture of modernity. In the 1970s it took such banal forms as festooning Catholic classrooms with posters featuring cute animals declaring “Jesus is cool.”
More recently, I read a report of the homily given at the parish church attended by the British royal family this Christmas. The vicar was reported to have held up a Terry’s Orange chocolate. This is a popular chocolate in the UK that is made in the shape of an orange with shards of chocolate that fall apart like the segments of a real orange. According to the report, the Vicar then explained to the congregation that Christianity is like a Terry’s chocolate. The spherical shape of the chocolate reminds us that the Christian message was intended for the whole globe, and the individual chocolate shards are like the good news of the Gospel to be broken and shared like the segments of an orange. Christian revelation was thus correlated to a Terry’s chocolate.
Continued below.
whatweneednow.substack.com
For Catholics this means putting our way-laid ecclesial car into reverse and backing out of the correlationist ditch theologians—notably with Flemish surnames—got us into in the 1970s.
“Correlationism” was the pastoral strategy of correlating the faith to the culture of modernity. In the 1970s it took such banal forms as festooning Catholic classrooms with posters featuring cute animals declaring “Jesus is cool.”
More recently, I read a report of the homily given at the parish church attended by the British royal family this Christmas. The vicar was reported to have held up a Terry’s Orange chocolate. This is a popular chocolate in the UK that is made in the shape of an orange with shards of chocolate that fall apart like the segments of a real orange. According to the report, the Vicar then explained to the congregation that Christianity is like a Terry’s chocolate. The spherical shape of the chocolate reminds us that the Christian message was intended for the whole globe, and the individual chocolate shards are like the good news of the Gospel to be broken and shared like the segments of an orange. Christian revelation was thus correlated to a Terry’s chocolate.
Continued below.
Making Christianity Weird Again
Tracey Rowland argues the faith is fascinatingly weird and different in light of today's bland materialism
whatweneednow.substack.com
