In my faith journey, I've been fortunate to observe a wide diversity of expressions of worship and truth. Formal preaching as well as sermons laced with vernacular and anecdotes. High worship and contemporary. Intellectually dense and simple-minded. I think this is good, as I think all are acceptable and honorable manifestations of our interaction with the divine.
I do think it is not surprising, since we are fallen humans, that not so righteous thoughts creep into our faith expressions. This includes more sophisticated people of faith looking down on less sophisticated people of faith, exalting their ways as holier and considering less refined ways to be less than.
It is interesting to me that the English versions of the Bible over the years have represented a far more earthy and accessible language use. We think of the King James as stilted and lofty with its "thee's" and "thou's," but that was actually the common people's cadence, with the translation being as faithful as possible to both the original Hebrew and Greek as well as how normal folks spoke in everyday life.
And of course Jesus Himself was very counter-cultural from the perspective of the respected religious leaders of the day, choosing to pal around with fishermen and women of questionable reputation rather than society's elite. Which of course is not to say that one can't be both upper-class and secularly influential as well as a person of faith. But it is also to say that one definitely needn't be upper-class and secularly influential in order to be important in the taxonomy of the Kingdom of God.
I went to an Ivy League school and have had white-collar jobs all my adult life. But my faith is meant to be accessible to all, if we who are esteemed more highly in our society don't get in the way with our arrogance and haughtiness.
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