Tags: seminar, Christianity, PhD
Date: 18 February 2009 21:26:15
I spent lunchtime at a certain Bible College in Glasgow, known to at least a couple of wibloggers, to attend a seminar being given by a lecturer/PhD student who happened to be talking about something which has also come up in my research. His research is in a completely different cultural context to mine, but I thought that maybe his insights might spark something for me.
It was interesting, but the main thing that it illuminated was just how much I'm not an evangelical any more. I really struggled with some of the questions at the end of the seminar (I had more of an issue with them than with most of what the speaker said actually), but as I had been invited there by a friend who works at the college and I didn't want to embarrass her, plus although I had about 5 questions they were all rather half-baked and not coherent enough to ask without either rambling or ranting, I kept quiet.
I'm feeling quite surprised by how much I felt like I didn't belong. Not at all in the slightest through being made unwelcome - quite the opposite, people were lovely and friendly and happy to have me there - but just because it felt like such a different way of looking at the world. Not so long ago, relatively, I'd have found it somewhere I felt totally at home. I hope the change in my worldview and priorities, my way of looking at the world, isn't just a result of increased cynicism, but that there's something of substance there too.