In reply to your question: a bit of both: - as an individual it has given me an identity that is relatively untied to nationality: I do not go to a particular church, club or associate with a particular group of people because they are English. - At the same time it has given me a common language with the people of the host (and other) countries I have lived in, variously in the USA, Germany, France and Belgium, and enabled me to be part of the Christian scene there.
What I do find is that I am spending a lot of time trying to map out for myself the Christian cultures of the countries I have lived in or been involved with. Right now I am grappling with the subtleties of the French religious culture given my new de facto association with a French Catholic group through translating their founder’s book). I think I pretty much understand the English scene, though it is changing, ditto the Belgian one. I will admit that I have not grasped the Russian Christian culture as far as I would like (other than its disastrous diaspora variant). In each case it is largely a matter of trying to locate the often multiple de facto consensus fidelium and work out how far they are in sync with the official hierarchy (and also in some countries, how they interact with political trends). In Belgium they are relatively in sync, in France there are large parts, particularly to the right, that are not. In Russia it is extraordinarily difficult: the de facto prohibition of country-wide religious associations prevents open Christian consensus groupings outside of the hierarchical structures, with the likelihood of political groupings acting as surrogates.
no subject
- as an individual it has given me an identity that is relatively untied to nationality: I do not go to a particular church, club or associate with a particular group of people because they are English.
- At the same time it has given me a common language with the people of the host (and other) countries I have lived in, variously in the USA, Germany, France and Belgium, and enabled me to be part of the Christian scene there.
What I do find is that I am spending a lot of time trying to map out for myself the Christian cultures of the countries I have lived in or been involved with. Right now I am grappling with the subtleties of the French religious culture given my new de facto association with a French Catholic group through translating their founder’s book). I think I pretty much understand the English scene, though it is changing, ditto the Belgian one. I will admit that I have not grasped the Russian Christian culture as far as I would like (other than its disastrous diaspora variant). In each case it is largely a matter of trying to locate the often multiple de facto consensus fidelium and work out how far they are in sync with the official hierarchy (and also in some countries, how they interact with political trends). In Belgium they are relatively in sync, in France there are large parts, particularly to the right, that are not. In Russia it is extraordinarily difficult: the de facto prohibition of country-wide religious associations prevents open Christian consensus groupings outside of the hierarchical structures, with the likelihood of political groupings acting as surrogates.