Religion & Law

I did not intend to stop blogging while teaching in Rome, but the combination of teaching a partially new course, finishing my book edits, and (most significantly) keeping three children from getting run over by speeding scooters meant that something had to give, and that something was blogging.  Now I'm at our annual Bible conference at Lake Okoboji in Iowa, so I have a little more free time.  To avoid pulling any muscles, I'll ease back into this blogging thing by grasping some low-hanging fruit: namely, the burning-up-the-internet-phenomenon of the "dancing wedding party" video.  In case you haven't seen it (and if you haven't seen it, you're only of only 17 people who haven't), here it is.

I got a kick out of it the first time I saw it, but then when I read interviews with various clergy members either applauding the creativity or lamenting the loss of ritual and solemnity, I saw the bigger picture.  In the end, I agree with David Goodman's take in Slate.  Here's his conclusion: 

And so, though I am a writer and half-Jewish, I will be saying traditional vows in an Episcopal church, the very same in which my fiancée?s parents were married. We don?t buy into the idea of the wedding day as the truest expression of our love. It?s more of a rite of passage, and we don?t think rites work when you whip them up on your own, or buy them off the YouTube rack.