Revitalizing liturgical worship: Loren Mead on fads and worship

“When the new way is considered the only way, there is no continuity, fads become the new Gospel and in Paul’s words, the church is ‘blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine’.” — Loren Mead, in The Once and Future Church

The historical continuity and connections have meant the most the me, regardless of changes in the liturgy over time. The changes within various liturgies are no where near as radical as the changes in approaches to worship. As Mead suggests, emotional highs have taken the place of both the solemnity and the education within the liturgical worship services.

One should ask why emotional highs are important to God, why emotional highs are important to individual spiritual growth, and why (for many churches) worship has become inextricably tangled with emotional highs.

Why is my rock concert experience worth duplicating in church? Why is my Super Bowl experience worth duplicating in church? Our emotions ebb and flow but God remains constant.

Revitalizing liturgical worship: C.S. Lewis on ritual

Following Iain‘s announcement that he’ll invest in conversations about the 11 a.m. service at Trinity, here is some good food for thought from C.S. Lewis:

“A parallel, from a different sphere, would be turkey and plum pudding on Christmas day; no one is surprised at the menu, but every one realizes it is not ordinary fare. Another parallel would be the language of a liturgy. Regular church-goers are not surprised by the service — indeed, they know a good deal of it by rote; but it is a language apart. Epic diction, Christmas fare, and the liturgy, are all examples of ritual — that is, of something set deliberately apart from daily usage, but wholly familiar within its own sphere…. Those who dislike ritual in general — ritual in any and every department of life — may be asked most earnestly to reconsider the question. It is a pattern imposed on the mere flux of our feelings by reason and will, which renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable, which hands over to the power of wise custom the task (to which the individual and his moods are so inadequate) of being festive or sober, gay or reverent, when we choose to be, and not at the bidding of chance.” — C.S. Lewis, from A Preface to Paradise Lost

The aggregate of thoughts, feelings, and years

I can stand up for hope, faith, love
But while I’m getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady  — U2

With this blog during the past five years, I’ve tried to make the case that Protestant evangelicalism and its close cousins are intellectually problematic exercises in futility.

The available Reformed and fundamentalist views of God, humans, and the Bible never really work out, intellectually or experientially, without constant guess work and endless, tiny adjustments in the particulars of belief.

Unfortunately for me, this line of argument has been just as futile as evangelicalism.

Even when others have understood specific, concrete stories from my own life, they could not understand what brought me to the point of exasperation.

What can’t be explained is the aggregate of thousands of hours in conversations with friends, ministers, and psychologists.

What can’t be explained is the aggregate of thousands of hours of observations and, later, evaluation of those observations, the mulling over and over of words spoken and actions observed.

In other words, I don’t have arguments for or against evangelicalism. I have a life that offers deep and broad reasons why evangelicalism as a way of life does not work and couldn’t possibly.

When I found a church with candles and liturgy, I thought at least I could continue to believe in God and worship what T.S. Eliot called “the still point of the turning world,” which I took to be the Incarnation. That was the best I could do.

These days I see people going back in the same direction I came from, tempting the darker forces of religion to control congregations. But there is no way to bottle or package my experiences and my perspectives and present them concretely as a cautionary tale. Others are trying to bottle and package their experiences and their perspectives, and they carry more certainty than I do, maybe with fewer years, but with more zeal.

For them, “there’s one size for everyone.”

For me, “this particular size works for no one.”

Which is the more limited point of view?

G.K. Chesterton once contrasted the pagan circle with the Christian cross. The circle is closed, he said, with no expansion possible. The cross, however, extends infinitely in four directions, essentially in all directions.

I am sure my opposites would consider my point of view to be the circle, and their point of view to be the cross. Of course, I see it the other way around. The only thing I can say in response is that the liturgy and the candles — and, certainly, the bread and wine — enabled me to imagine the cross extending infinitely into past and future, while its crux remains firmly at “the still point of the turning world.”

The strange thing about the way sovereignty is assumed among Reformed, fundamentalist, and evangelical circles is this: there’s nothing to imagine. Only precision of abstract doctrine, none of the genuine mystery of the Baptized God and His universe as sensed and intuited by poets, novelists, and artists. Perhaps there’s nothing to imagine because the ministers feel certain they have grasped the mind of God.

The imaginations that drove Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien and Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor were Roman Catholic. The imagination that drove T.S. Eliot was Anglo-Catholic. The imagination that drove Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was Russian Orthodox. The biggest imagination that was close to evangelicalism was C.S. Lewis, who was Anglican. Are there any evangelical,  fundamentalist, or Reformed authors or poets of their caliber in the last 100 years? Perhaps in parts of Europe, but certainly not in the United States or the United Kingdom. I doubt the Reformed, evangelical, or fundamental crowds would claim John Updike or Garrison Keillor — they’re too liberal.

Elsewhere, others have said that our wills fail because the images in our subconscious minds undercut us. The imagination, as most deeply engrained in our minds, as most symbolically woven together with our beliefs, runs on stores of images. Those images must have a basic goodness to them if our wills are to accomplish what our rational minds say we want to achieve.

The Christian imagination ought to be broad and deep and it should buoy our wills toward good ends. The mindset that focuses on doctrinal precision and steps and methods and curricula and numerical growth in congregations only engages the rational mind. This is a failing mindset. As Chesterton said, “The mad man is not the man who has lost his reason. The mad man is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Rowan Williams has a Twitter feed

Update: The Twitter account might be a hoax. Stay tuned…

The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the 77-million member global Anglican Communion, has 60 followers on Twitter. Of all the Twitter-savvy Anglicans in Internet-driven Anglo countries, the Archbishop has sixty followers. That might be the best summation of where we’re at.

The Episcopal Book Club, circa 1980: Harry Blamires and Malcolm Muggeridge

Here’s some historical trivia for ya: In 1980, one of the selections of The Episcopal Book Club was Where Do We Stand? An Examination of the Christian’s Position in the Modern World by Harry Blamires.

Blamires, a former student and later friend of C.S. Lewis, is an Anglican theologian, novelist, and literary critic. He’s 93 years old.

The foreword to Where Do We Stand? was written by Malcolm Muggeridge, Britain’s reigning acerbic wit for decades — and an adult convert to Roman Catholic Christianity. He died in 1990.

In that forward, Muggeridge wrote, “As an experienced and discerning teacher, Mr. Blamires understands with particular clarity how barren and desolate is a mind self-restricted to mental data; how meager is the range of a pilgrim confined to Time, with no concept or sight of Eternity; how paltry is a vision that ends on the horizon. He sees and explains — helped thereto by the fortunate chance of having been a pupil and later a friend of C.S. Lewis — that the very vocabulary of our time is a devil’s jargon, leading us to suppose that out of our earthly will can come heavenly dispositions, that here on earth our total destiny is worked out, that the clocks ticking on turn Now into Always.”

What a great selection for The Episcopal Book Club, way back 30 years ago.

The contrast between what Mann says and what Episcopal leaders have been saying

According to this Saturday article in the Charleston Post & Courier regarding the rift in The Episcopal Church:

Those on the other side of the issue say disagreements boil down to the manner in which Scripture is interpreted, and that none of the church’s core beliefs have been subverted.

“The creeds remain intact,” Barbara Mann wrote last month. Mann has held various national positions in The Episcopal Church and currently is director of the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina. “Belief in the Holy Trinity is not in question; belief in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as Savior, including his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection, are not being questioned. Nor is the calling of Episcopalians as disciples to live out their baptismal covenant being endangered,” Mann wrote.

Really? I’m not sure Mann has been paying attention to what leaders in The Episcopal Church have been saying in recent years. In fact, I’m not sure this recent national Episcopal Church ad campaign was informed, either. I thought the following examples were well-known by now:

“Since 1979, I have quietly restored the natural flow of worship by omitting the creed; none of the members of my congregations have missed it. I would encourage others to let go of the creed and feel the freedom.” — The Rev. John Beverley Butcher, Pescadero, California, reader letter in Episcopal Life, June 2008, pg. 23

“‘I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to God except through me.’ The first thing I want you to explore with me is this: I simply refuse to hold the doctrine that there is no access to God except through Jesus. I personally reject the claim that Christianity has the truth and all other religions are in error… I think it is a mistaken view to say Christianity is superior to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism and that Christ is the only way to God and salvation.” — The Rev. Dr. George F. Regas, Rector Emeritus, All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, California, April 24, 2005, guest sermon at Washington National Cathedral

“The story of Jesus‘ bodily resurrection is, at best, conjectural; that the resurrection accounts in the four Gospels are contradictory and confusing… the significance of Easter is not that Jesus returned to actual life but that even death itself could not end the power of his presence in the lives of the faithful.” — The Rt. Rev. John Chane, Bishop of Washington, D.C., Easter sermon in 2002

Read even more examples of how many core Christian beliefs are no longer held by Episcopal Church leaders. The contrast between what Mann and The Episcopal Church’s ad campaign have been saying and what Episcopal leaders have been saying is drastic.

Taylor Marshall’s short history lesson: Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Church of England

I admit I’ve been interested in Taylor Marshall. His journey seems unlikely — or does it?

He started out thoroughly Protestant. He received a masters degree in systematic theology from Westminster Theological Seminary (a rigorously Reformed institution) and later earned a Certificate of Anglican Studies from Nashotah Theological House. He served as an Episcopal priest before converting to Roman Catholicism in 2006. He is the author of The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity. He is currently a Doctoral Student and Instructor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas.

The following is an excerpt from this article published today at Catholic Online.

Those who remember their high school history might recall that Pope Gregory the Great sent missionaries to England in the late sixth century to establish the Catholic Church in England. In A.D. 598, Pope Gregory the Great designated the township of Canterbury as the nation’s principal see. There were hiccups along the way (Norman conquest), but England remained under the pastoral oversight of the Pope until 1534 when King Henry VIII declared himself caput ecclesiae anglicanae “Head of the English Church.” Henry VIII never shook his devotion to the old rites. He demanded priestly celibacy, Latin Masses, and prayers for the dead. He did however have an appetite for the wealth of the monasteries. When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left his son Edward VI as king. As a Protestant, Edward approved a Protestantized English ritual which became known as the Book of Common Prayer in 1549.

The liturgies found in the Book of Common Prayer and subsequent editions reveal a careful blend of medieval Catholic piety mixed with subtle Protestantism. Henry’s daughter Queen Elizabeth fully realized this compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism—perhaps the cleverest grab for political power in history. As England colonized the world, she spread her national Anglican church. In America, she became the Episcopal Church. The new worldwide conglomerate of national churches became known as the Anglican Communion. Since those days, the Anglican Communion has been divided into roughly three camps: High Church (more Catholic), Low Church (more Protestant), and Broad Church (liberals who bless the political and cultural mores of society—something going all the way back to Henry’s desire for a second marriage, and then a third marriage, and then a fourth…you know the story).

In the last twenty years, the Broad Churchmen emerged as victors in the Anglican Communion …

Guess how many Church of England clergy could go to Rome; guess which U.S. parish could, too

The Right Rev. John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, has said about 1,000 Church of England clergy will seek to join the Roman Catholic Church. — The Associated Press, Oct. 25, 2009

That relates to “an announcement [made last week] by the Vatican, saying that Pope Benedict XVI had authorized an Apostolic Constitution. The constitution would allow Anglicans to move to the Catholic church, but keep their own liturgy and married priests,” The Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Rosemont (Penn.) Journal reported,

When the Vatican announced last week that it would welcome groups of traditionalist Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church, leaders of one Episcopal parish celebrated as if a ship had arrived to rescue them from a drifting ice floe.

”We’d been praying for this daily for two years,” said Bishop David L. Moyer, who leads the Church of the Good Shepherd, a parish in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia that is battling to keep its historic property. ”When I heard the news I was speechless, then the joy came and the tears.”

This parish could be one of the first in the United States to convert en masse after the Vatican completes plans for a new structure to allow Anglicans to become Catholic while retaining many of their spiritual traditions, like the Book of Common Prayer and married priests.

Tom Wright dissects statement by Archbishop of Canterbury on the Episcopal Church

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham in the U.K., offers this thorough dissection and explanation of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ assessment of The Episcopal Church U.S.A. following its recent convention. Wright said, “One commentator has suggested that [Williams] employs a characteristically British habit of inviting the reader to draw the really important conclusions and giving them the space to do so. This piece is an attempt to take up that challenge and invitation.”

AP: Church of England offers two-for-one combo

From the Associated Press:

LONDON – The Church of England is offering couples a two-for-one service — marriage for them and baptisms for their children.

The church is recognizing the changing reality of British families, it said Thursday. Statistics show that 44 percent of children in Britain are born to unmarried women, and the church’s own research found that one in five couples seeking a church wedding already had children either together or from a previous relationship.

New guidelines sent to the Church of England’s 16,000 parish churches encourage services that combine a wedding with a christening or a service of thanksgiving for the birth of a child.

Some clergy welcomed the latest move, but others argued it undermined Anglican teaching about the sanctity of marriage.

John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham, told The Times newspaper that the move was an unfortunate attempt to be trendy.

“It is a pity they have not put in a funeral for grandma as well,” he said.

Read the full article here.