Re: Religion and society

[Brian Flynn <bkflynn@email.unc.edu>]

On Tue, 2 May 1995 kuijt@umiacs.UMD.EDU wrote:

> First:
> The Society G&PD isn't bad, considering.  It is quite reasonable.

> Second:
....
[deletia]
....

> Third:
> I agree strongly with Brigantia: we spend too much time avoiding the
> major part of the middle ages that was the dominant religions.  The
> G&PD on religion is usually misinterpreted and misrepresented as saying
> "we do the Middle Ages with all the religion filtered out."  I find it
> very amusing that we in the SCA are more tolerant of people wearing
> new-age religious symbols than of people wearing crosses, when the one
> is totally modern and the other was ubiquitous in the real middle ages.

That, IMnsHO, is the root of our problem.  We suppress historical 
religion, while not doing the same for the new-age ones.  In effect, we 
are appearing more supportive of new-age religions.  On the surface, this 
seems good, until you consider that a vast majority of the people still 
practice those historical religions.  Most people understand that 
religion was a very big part of the middle ages - after talking to 
several people, they said that they would be suspicious of a recreation 
group that didn't include it.  (Ok, this _was_ non scienctific, but....)

My advice - lighten up.  Let's go by the spirit of gp&d6.  If I 
think you're pushing religion on me, I'll let you know.

Also mentioned by Sir Daffyd was the point about the regionality of 
things being appropriate for demos.  I just have to think that wearing a 
black cloak to a demo is pretty tenuously negative to most people, but 
that wearing a cross (at least in the south) would be a big plus - it's one 
thing I can think of which shows that we are just normal people.  By 
going out of our way to seem non-judgemental, we are by default judging.

Plus the fact that a black cloak would be hotter than blazes here in the 
demo season :)

Uther