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Showing posts from August, 2012

A Tasty Hymn Sandwich

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When Methodists receive non-alcoholic communion wine, they do not share a big cup but each receive their portion in small glasses that look like the ones commonly used in American bars to serve up hard liquor. This comparison does not fit well with Methodism's temperance tradition but is illustrated in an episode of Antiques Roadshow in which a Methodist communion set was wrongly identified by an expert as a gentleman's drinking set. I was never that comfortable when participating in a Methodist communion service for all sorts of reasons. Whilst I always considered it purely symbolic and open to multiple interpretations (such can be the value of ritual), part of me could not escape the dramatic sense of it being a form of ritualistic cannibalism no matter how hard I tried. The imagery of the death of Christ is powerful but there is a danger that in the image of the empty cross or the sharing of the body and blood of Christ in bread and wine, we legitimise violence and re