The other day had an interesting wee ponder on the parallels of movements. (Not the bowel kind.)
I joined the modern cloth nappy movement not at beginning but in the early days. The equivalent in the Christian movement of just before the big growth phase in Acts thing. It is interesting five years on as the modern cloth nappy idea has grown and what has changed.
Five years ago when I mentioned we were going to use cloth nappies I got a lot of rude comments and put downs and "you'll never do it" comments. Now they are even in supermarkets. Here is the interesting thing to become mainstream they have to take on some of the mainstream characteristics. To meet price requirements of chain shops or supermarkets, modern cloth nappies have to be made in China. At the beginning they were not Made in China. Now we see divergences in the nappy businesses some refuse to go for cheap labour and maintain manufacture in a country, such as NZ because it something they feel is important. It was at the start. The people who first started using modern cloth nappies were those not afraid to be different, not afraid to be ridiculed by friends. There was a very strong environmental bent that usually meant those who used modern cloth nappies also did other environment conscious things and didn't usually choose the mainstream way of doing things. They mostly usually went unnoticed by the main stream crowd and media.
I look at Christianity, which is a much much older movement and I see the same things. Starting with a small, unremarkable group who found someone and something. When they started off, they all held similar beliefs and the most important thing was just sharing the word - what they had found out. It was the same with the modern cloth nappies. People used to say I converted someone today and everyone would get excited. Just like those early chapters in Acts with comments of how many were being added to their number. Then as it grew and grew other things came in, people have their bias and tangents happen. All still for the cause but in different ways.
Some say the worst thing to happen to Christianity was when the emperor became a Christian and declared it the religion of the Roman empire because suddenly it was no longer in the background - it had become mainstream and to be acceptable to mainstream things were subtly altered and added to.
You wonder what the early founders would think today of the Christian movement. Some would probably be pleased with how big it has grown and others would probably be disappointed with how things have changed. "It's not like it was in the old days." "Do you remember...?" So it is with modern cloth nappies - interesting.
