week 58: Major restructuring of Worship chapter on a snowy weekend

These bikes weren't going to go anywhere over the weekend. Neither was I and I used to snow as an excuse to go out as little as possible. The result is some progress with the worship chapter.  It has also meant I have torn the guts out of it and installed new ones. Actually my supervisor is used to this. My writing method seems to be to write a detailed theory sensitive description. Then to sit down and think what theory is relevant here. I then discard large portions of the chapter and re-write it so that it makes theoretical rather than descriptive sense.  I still have quite a bit of theory to put in however. I am going to have to look at a three fold relationship between what I saw, what Reformed theology says is going on and how it is interpreted sociologically

I am also realising that there is an interesting model difference between the way non-conformists lay are constructed and the way higher traditions do. I think you could imagine the lay were sports journalists. In high traditions they are the devoted fan, who goes to every match and knows all the statistics backwards. In non-conformist tradition they are the amateur player who understands the game played from the inside even if they are not that good. Now if you are a person interviewing such people about their understanding of the game they are likely to answer in very different ways. The fan may well give you very precise details about who won what when and by how much. The amateur player might well talk about how it feels to be on the field, how specific plays work on the field and what sort of training is involved. They are both talking about the game they love but they are talking very differently.