Christian suggestion

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 05:49 PM 11/8/99 -0500, Lynne Murphy wrote:

>An ex of mine was a Lutheran of German-Norwegian (Illinois-N. Dakota) stock,
>who, whenever she saw a Jello salad would gesture boldly and exclaim "Behold!
>The food of my people!"  This joke got started because of the ubiquitous jello
>salads at Lutheran "covered dish" (i.e., potluck) suppers in that part of the
>country.  So, perhaps one can be a little bit culturally Lutheran, if not
>ethnically so.
>
>Several people  I know and I refer to ourselves as "culturally Catholic".
>(Others refer to themselves as "recovering Catholics", of course.)  The idea
>behind cultural Catholicism is kind of like ethnic Judaism--we were brought up
>with ritual, righteous guilt, mysteries, and such that we're not
>altogether sure
>that we want to get rid of.  Be an atheist?  That's fine.  But give up
>icons and
>incense and Latin?  Well, that's a bit harder.  They're so cool...
Cultural Lutherans can't give up Bach and Buxtehude, or the wondrously
inspired singing of small-town church choirs....  But the preaching and the
guilt?  Ah, that's another matter.  In fact, I was tempted to write
earlier, in response to the puzzlement over Mormon and Orthodox Jewish
early marriages, that Lutherans (and probably Mormons) were always
lectured, citing Paul, "It is better to marry than to burn."  Not much
subtlety there.