Denying My Roots, it's Easier that way
I’m in the Twin Cities (or, for locals, just “the cities”) this weekend for a friend’s ordination. I’m still reflecting, though, on last week’s Celtic Christianity conference in Decatur. One curious thing struck me; I just can’t seem to shake.
My mother is Scottish. My Dad’s relatives, back a few generations, are Scotch-Irish. I’m a dual citizen (though the US doesn’t really recognize such things) in the US and UK. I’m a Christian, and my ancestry, most definitely, is Celtic. But I’ve never really claimed that heritage. Never thought about its implications. In fact, when I see a Celtic knot, or hear of Celtic spirituality, or see a pretty Celtic cross, my first reaction is generally to sluff it off as hokey, or ungrounded, or just too fro-froey. On the one hand, this cements my Scottishness — I’ll explain why in a second — but it also denies my celtic heritage.
John Bell is fond of saying that the previous Church of Scotland hymnal had something like 50 German tunes, 40 English tunes, 30 Welsh tunes, 20 Irish tunes, and 8 Scottish tunes. There’s something deep in the Scottish psyche that embraces self-deprecation, selling one’s self short, and denial of the good in one’s life — call it broken Calvinism if you like, but it’s true.
I hadn’t realized it, but maybe I’ve picked up on more of that sort of mindset than I thought. I mean, I was African-American or Korean-American or whatever, with one parent from another country, it’d be pretty strange for me to have a negative first reaction to the Christian heritage of my parent’s home. I know this is all even more confused with my white male privilege and the effects of not needing to claim another identity because mine is powerful enough on its face, but still, is it not strange that I identify more with John Calvin than the Celtic Christians who preceded him? That I know more about the tunes of Martin Luther’s day than the songs of my mother’s homeland? What, in that Celtic Christian heritage, am I denying because it’s easier, or more comfortable to claim my powerful white male Americaness, and what might feed my soul and help me live a more faithful life with all God’s creation?
image by Simaron
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profound and insightful. thanks adam.
p.s. did j.p. newell offer his defense of pelagius during the conference?
Thanks, Michael. Yes, there was definitely some Pelagianism going on up in there. I wasn’t convinced, but it’s healthy to challenge our assumptions and I do think we can sometime deify doctrines. I’m really looking forward to a half semester course on Tillich and Sin and Salvation to explore such questions further.
John Bell is being very selective, Adam. Don’t believe all that he says.
The Scots usually sung common meter psalms to a handful of tunes that everybody knew. They could sing all 150 psalms to those common tunes and in doing so learned more of the scriptures.
More Philip Newell than John Bell, Stushie. Their points, though, is that others have been very selective. And they’re right. The CoS psalter is a gift to the entire church, but they are not folk tunes, or tunes common to Scotland’s history, but shipped in from other parts of Europe. Great tunes, by and large, but not what Scots had been singing for the hundreds of years prior to the Reformation. In this, and similar matters, I think folks these days are just finishing the work of the Reformation. These ideas are nothing new, just what we’ve said we believed for years and actually putting them into practice.
Interesting post. I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers.” The book speaks alot to what you are experiencing (or did experience). He digs deep into the need to dig deep into our own heritage in order to understand more of who we are and why we do what we do the way we do it.
Kind of serendipitous in terms of heritage, but not so much in terms of the subject and your reaction to it.