LiturgicalCredo.com’s Blog

 On a whim this evening, I went to Google News and searched the phrase ”religious faith.”

The third and fourth search results sparked a remarkable contrast.

The third result appeared as “Religion Poisons Everything.” The link went to a Slate.com article by Christopher Hitchens. The article is an excerpt from his new book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Of course I disagree with Hitchens about the existence of God, but I also know he will make substantial arguments for his case — indeed he did raise a sharp criticism of Christianity within an excerpt mostly addressing Islam (see the article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2165033?nav=tap3). Even so, Hitchens’ title made a surprising contrast with the fourth search result I got from the phrase “religious faith” at Google News this evening.

 The fourth result appeared as “Children Thrive When Parents Follow Religious Beliefs, Study Shows.” The article from LifeSiteNews.com read in part:

“The first to examine the impact of religion on the development of young children, the study was authored by John Bartkowski, a sociologist with Mississippi State University. Bartkowski’s team questioned the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 children, asking the adults to rate the children — most of them age six — on self-control, frequency of poor or unhappy behavior, and their ability to respect and work with peers. The results were compared to the parents’ rate of attendence at church services, how frequently they talked about faith with their child, and whether or not there was arguing over religion in the home.

“The children of parents who regularly attended church services and talked with their child about religion were rated by both parents and teachers as showing better behavior, self-control skills and social skills than children from non-religious families. Children whose parents both attended church regulary were rated as having the best behavior and being the most well-adjusted.” (Read the full article at http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/apr/07042506.html .)

How can anyone possibly reconcile the two articles? Even if there was only a sociological advantage to being religious, how could religion simultaneously poison everything?

-Colin Burch

I greatly enjoyed my time talking with Peter Augustine Lawler this morning. During a phone interview, I asked him about his book Homeless and at Home in America: Evidence for the Dignity of the Human Soul in Our Time and Place. The book is due for release June 10.

Among several interesting things he said, this comment was the most striking: the compromise between Protestant Christians and Lockean Deists, as witnessed in the Declaration of Independence, created an essentially Thomistic result.

The full interview will be available with the June/July edition of LiturgicalCredo.com, which should be posted before or by June 1.

-Colin Burch

From The New York Times this past Sunday: 

“FOR centuries and across cultures, music has maintained a close but fraught connection with religious beliefs and practices. Should liturgical music be performed outside the service? Should secular idioms be a part of the service? Which sound structures will bring listeners closer to God, and which rhythms and harmonies might risk tempting believers away from him? Does it matter whether sacred musical texts are comprehensible to performers or listeners? And a question that comes increasingly into play nowadays: What does it mean to perform, much less compose, in the musical traditions of a faith you do not follow?

“Chanticleer, the San Francisco-based choir, has commissioned a new Mass, ‘And on Earth, Peace,’ whose very conception raises these and other questions about music and religion. Joseph Jennings, the music director of Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella chorus, asked five composers each to set one of the five standard sections of the Roman Catholic Mass: Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, Gloria and Agnus Dei.

“Multicomposer Masses are nothing new; when polyphonic Masses began to supplant Gregorian chant settings in the Middle Ages, most of them combined sections by different composers. Even the use of secular songs and texts in Mass settings dates back hundreds of years.

“But with ‘And on Earth, Peace,’ Mr. Jennings has gone beyond merely using nonreligious elements: he has invited each composer to reinterpret the Catholic Mass according to his or her personal spiritual beliefs. The resulting work, with the five sections connected by plainchant and motets, retains a bit of Latin but also incorporates Jewish texts, Sufi lyrics, a solemn Gaelic song and a section of Greek Orthodox liturgy. …”

Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/arts/music/22toum.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin .

These excerpts from an article that appeared Saturday in The Daily Citizen of Searcy, Arkansas, would have fit just fine in LiturgicalCredo.com:

“Oddly, the contemporary mindset views repetition with suspicion. In the quest for experiences that are new, fresh and relevant, we jettisoned the tools our [fathers] believed were necessary for gaining wisdom, maturity and depth. Where our forerunners developed calendars, liturgies and creeds to reinforce the stories of old, we encourage our children to seek their own paths and value independency and innovation above all else.

“Just as vain repetition can lead to empty practice, unchecked innovation can lead to shallowness and unfettered independency to the loss of the community.”

Read the full article at http://www.thedailycitizen.com/articles/2007/04/22/news/features/features08.txt .

The article echoes some of the points I was making in my article “Liturgy v. The Next Thing,” at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/ALaymansDefenseofLiturgy.html . You can also find a link to the article at LiturgicalCredo.com’s homepage: http://www.liturgicalcredo.com .

-Colin Burch 

Taking for granted the Augustinian view of human nature, why does God allow the human project to continue? Is it because one or two among the thousands born today might worship Him? From a human perspective, doesn’t that seem to be a bad ratio? Wouldn’t the overall result of today’s births make the continuation of the human race seem like a bad idea?

-Colin Burch

Proposition:

To some extent, those who believe that the doctrinal and theological controversies should have been, and ought to be, avoided for the sake of ’simple faith’ are guilty of a Utopian presupposition. A fallen and messy world, in which we see God through a glass darkly, affords us no optimism that simplifying our faith will make life in this world any better. To turn the matter to the positive side, if we try to grasp the inexhaustible meanings of the Incarnation, grace, the sacraments, and the Creation that God called ‘good,’ don’t we risk complexity for the sake of understanding? Is it undesirable to have a complex expression of a faith that is both historical and eternal?

What do you think? Say it!

-Colin Burch

A reprint is already scheduled:

http://www.theindiancatholic.com/newsread.asp?nid=7147 

Some conceptualizations of the Incarnation and Sacraments have revived me as I’ve read and heard how people expand and interpret their meanings. I don’t think these expanded or indirect meanings stray from the original meaning — God incarnate, God enfleshed as Jesus. Instead these indirect meanings grow from the basic meaning.

I found an example of these conceptualizations yesterday in a brochure for a Sunday evening service called Merging, held at my church, Trinity Episcopal in Myrtle Beach, S.C.  The brochure defined Merging like this: 

“Merging is the place where boundaries are broken and worlds collide. Old and young, ancient and modern, flesh and spirit, heavevn and earth, God and man. In this place of contradiction, faith meets reality and radical transformation occurs in the deep places of the human heart.”

I think that definition provides an example of what happens when we contemplate the Incarnation and when we participate in the sacraments with understanding.

Also:

I attended the Merging service and loved it. I realize it reflected trends of blending ancient and contemporary worship that have been developed in other places.

The service was held in the small chapel, which was lit with dozens of candles. A table of small icons, candles and carvings sat underneath a screen on which Rite I liturgy, song lyrics, icons and paintings were projected at various points in the service. Music came from our voices and a single acoustic guitar, and following a good habit in nearly all services at Trinity, the musician was at the back of the chapel, thus keeping the congregation’s focus on the alter.

The brochure included this quote from David Crowder: “When our depravity meets His divinity it is a beautiful collision.”

-Colin Burch

“There’s an expression in Yiddish, which is ‘der gelernte naar’ – a ‘learned fool.’ You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot. It’s not a question so much of what you know, but how you know it. How you know it … whether you know something because you have proof, because you’ve experienced it and tested it and it’s not so easy, necessarily, and it’s not because you’ve been pushed to believe it because of social pressure. And when I say the more I learn, I don’t mean the more degrees I got. I mean the more I really learn about how the world works. And about human nature. That’s what I mean. And I have a particular dislike of human pride. And if you think that you can engineer outcomes, that’s a manifestation of pride. Among other things, it’s impractical. It just doesn’t work. The world doesn’t work that way. So what you want to do is pull back and let nature take its course, as benevolently as possible and interfere as little as possible in other people’s lives and the way things work, instead of trying to be people into roles that you want to put them into.” — Mark Helprin, from an interview with Doublethink magazine, 2006

Today I got an email reply from Peter Augustine Lawler, an outstanding thinker who has been influenced by Walker Percy.

Lawler has agreed to be interviewed about his new book, Homeless and at Home in America: Evidence for the Dignity of the Human Soul in Our Time and Place. The book is scheduled for release June 10.

The interview will appear in the June/July edition of LiturgicalCredo.com.

Lawler is Dana Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia. He has also authored Postmodernism Rightly Understood and two other books, and has co-edited a popular textbook. Read his biography at http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/government/lawlerbio.asp .

Meanwhile, earlier this week, the official blog of the National Book Critics Circle linked to our interview with Lesley Chamberlain:

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/04/wednesday-april-11-roundup.html 

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, check it out.

-Colin Burch