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SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGIOUS FLUIDITY

After attending a seder at my house on Passover, a friend sent me Judith Warner's "This I Believe". On her New York Times blog, Warner described being thrilled at the prospect of "celebrating Passover with our motley Jewish-Catholic-Episcopalian crew, commemorating events we don’t believe in, confirming an identity that doesn’t quite fit, united in the love of one another."

Warner captures exactly what I hold so dear about seders at my house, where our crew this year included Americans, Israelis, Indians, Jews, Christians, non-believers, first-timers, old timers and many in between. She also mentions a piece in Gourmet by Bruce Feiler ("Who Invited this Guy"), a man who debunks the Bible for a living, in which he asks such taboo questions as "Did the Israelites really cross the Red Sea?" and "Did the Israelites build the pyramids?" At our table we considered Feiler's insights within a larger, lively discussion featuring Bible trivia, poems, excerpts of Shalom Auslander's "Foreskin's Lament" and debates on historical tradition.

As our melting pot boils, there are greater opportunities for such amorphous, inclusive grasping at spiritual meaning. "It sets up the potential for big arguments,” John Green of the Pew Institute told the New York Times, addressing a study which found religion in America progressively more fluid, “but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways.”

At a seder that functions more like an intellectual dinner party, such differences can generate stimulating dialogue and personal introspection. But in a world galvanised by religion, questions of faith and tradition aren't always answered cordially, and answers can carry more weight. Even at my own seder, my Christian friends were privy to harsh anti-Christian commentary by some other guests, which added unexpected tension to what had seemed like an enlightened discussion.

But of course these tensions exist, burned into us by years of family-based ritual and tradition. It is simply easier to overlook them when sitting at a beautiful table, full of warm, fuzzy holiday feelings and quasi-secular smugness. (The mandated four cups of wine at the seder don't hurt.)

I attended a Catholic Easter Mass on Sunday to see, as my host put it, "what the other team was doing". It felt strangely familiar. Light streamed through the stained-glass windows, my legs were itchy and cold (a seemingly Pavlovian response to attending a religious service) and the ceremony concentrated on rebirth, springtime and peace. Then there was the promise of a festive meal at home. The similarities were comforting, as if attending Judeo-Christian worship involved a passport to warm greetings, smart dresses and lofty architecture.

But there was also something insidious about how easy it was to dissociate the pleasures of tradition from the consequences of faith. It can be hard to know what we are embracing when we partake of the rituals and experiences that were initiated to be divisive.

"Mass is nice unless someone is forcing you to go," explained another friend. She is right, I think, in a larger sense. The privilege of crafting your own religious experience, for better or worse, is a sacred one.

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture Credit: Robert Course-Baker (via Flickr)