The question arises: if Christianity came into being with a clearly defined form of liturgical worship with origins in Judaism, and if all forms of Christianity were liturgical up until the Protestant Reformation, why is there so little liturgical worship and music in Protestantism?		Requires Flash 4. Music: "Gloria - Missa Puer Natus", A Choral Pilgrimage, Linn, 2000 Artist: The Sixteen Learn more here.
The fact is that the Reformers made a clearly conscious decision in the area of liturgics and liturgical music, as they did in theology and doctrine. Liturgical music did not come into being as a musical form for aesthetic purposes. It developed within the Judeo-Christian tradition as both a core part of the worship experience, and as a means of enhancing or beautifying that experience. The experience uniformly centered around a universal event: the Eucharist. That is to say, while the Orthodox liturgy or Roman mass contains other elements (such as corporate prayer, scripture reading, and homily or sermon, most of which can be traced back to the structure of the Jewish synagogue service), the focus and movement of the service is toward the consecration of the elements to become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. This sacramental orientation is fundamental to the liturgical nature of traditional Christian worship. One of the principal notions of the Protestant Reformation was the attempt to refute sacramentality. With that came a necessary reduction or loss of the liturgical sensibility. Within a short time after the beginning of the Reformation, many Protestant denominations rejected liturgical worship along with sacramentality and adopted a different ethos and approach to worship. Most Protestants know little about the dynamics of the Reformation, especially regarding liturgical worship and the connection of doctrine and practice. They may acknowledge a feeling of awe and mystery when they enter a great cathedral, and may be greatly moved by glorious liturgical music. But they recognize that these are foreign to their Protestant practices. In his book, The Shape of the Liturgy, Gregory Dix, himself a Protestant, makes a very clear contrast between Protestantism and Puritanism which can help clarify this. He points out that the Lord never condemned the elaborate ceremonial worship of the Jerusalem Temple, and that not only did the Apostolic Christians worship there, but second century Christians still found it natural to think of Eucharistic worship in terms of the ceremonious worship of the Temple. In Western society and culture we are generally unaware of these historical realities, and so Dix's description may help: "The truth is that the English puritan's crusade against all forms of sensuous beauty in worship has had more effect than we realize upon our notion of the worship of the primitive church. It disconcerts us to find that that church did not share the puritan theory of worship so far as corporate worship was concerned. No small part of our liturgical difficulties in the Church of England come from confusing two things: Protestantism a purely doctrinal movement of the sixteenth century, confined to Western Christianity and closely related to certain doctrinal aspects of fifteenth century Western Catholicism, from which it derived directly by way both of development and reaction; and Puritanism which is a general theory about worship, not specifically protestant nor indeed confined to Christians of any kind. It is the working theory upon which all Mohammedan worship is based. It was put as well as by anybody by the Roman poet Persius or the pagan philosopher Seneca in the first century, and they are only elaborating a theses from Greek philosophical authors going back to the seventh century B.C. Briefly, the puritan theory is that worship is a purely mental activity, to be exercised by a strictly psychological 'attention' to a subjective emotional or spiritual experience. For the puritan this is the essence of worship, and all external things which might impair this strictly mental attention have no rightful place in it. At the most they are to be admitted grudgingly and with suspicion, and only in so far as practice shows that they stimulate the 'felt' religious experience or emotion. Its principal defect is its tendency to 'verbalism', to suppose that words alone can express or stimulate the act of worship. Over against this puritan theory of worship stands another the 'ceremonious' conception of worship, whose foundation principle is that worship as such is not a purely intellectual and affective exercise, but one in which the whole man body as well as soul, his aesthetic and volitional as well as his intellectual powers must take full part. It regards worship as an 'act' just as much as an 'experience'. The accidental alliance of protestant doctrine with the puritan theory of worship in the sixteenth century may have been natural, and was as close in England as anywhere. But it was not inevitable. The early Cistercians were profoundly puritan, but they were never protestant. The thorough Protestantism of the Swedish Lutherans, with their vestments and lights and crucifixes, has never been puritan. "The puritan conception of worship may be right or wrong in itself But from the point of view of history we have to grasp the fact that there was little in antiquity to suggest to the church that it was even desirable for Christians." [1] Protestantism has very limited liturgical traditions and a small body of liturgical music for a reason. The early Protestant reformers, having rejected historic Christian sacramentality, struggled mightily with the liturgical rite, and changed it substantially to match their new "reformed" doctrine and theology. Within forty years of the Reformation, many Protestant sects had created entirely new and different liturgies which were in harmony with the newly defined theology and doctrine. The real focal point of the sixteenth century Reformation controversies was not early Christian liturgical worship or even the New Testament it was the medieval Western rite of 1500, which was the only liturgical rite that the Reformers had ever used. The liturgical, theological and doctrinal debates of the Reformation took place within this limited context. The result on the part of the Protestants was to re-create worship by significantly modifying, or even re-creating, the liturgy. This effort was very challenging, and the new liturgies were very different than what had gone before. Most of the "old liturgical music," therefore, was replaced by new compositions that met the current need. Luther, for example, composed hundreds of new hymns. Naturally, if there is no litany in the service, the Kyrie is replaced by something else, etc. Dix points out that it was in fact the very struggle to change the liturgics of Protestantism that caused many of the new sects to move toward Puritanism by moving worship to the level of an intellectual experience with little or no ceremonial form. The Protestant churches, which initially kept liturgical forms and music that were consistent with Roman liturgics, gradually saw many of the forms change over time as theology and doctrine itself changed in Western Europe. Many of the motivations of the Reformers were well intended. The medieval Roman rite had reached a point where the role of the people had been reduced or lost. The celebration of the Eucharist had been reduced to something to watch rather something in which to participate. Decisions made at the time of the Reformation about sacramentality and worship substantially changed the Protestant approach and practice of liturgics.

 

http://liturgica.com/html/litPLit.jsp?hostname=null

QUOTE:

In truth, there is no such thing as “Protestant liturgics.”  Instead, there are several different categories under this heading:  (1) Evangelical/Lutheran liturgics; (2) Anglican/Episcopal liturgics; (3) Reformed liturgics; and (4) Anabaptist/Free Church liturgics.

http://liturgica.com/html/litPLit2.jsp?hostname=null

 

WORTH THE READ!

http://liturgica.com/html/litPLitEvangelical.jsp?hostname=null

ON DAVID NEFF'S BLOG:

David's day job is as editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today Media Group (CT, Christian History & Biography, Books & Culture, and related publishing ventures). In my spare time I'm helping Northern Seminary create a Robert E. Webber Center for an Ancient Evangelical Future. Fitting, I guess, since I'm one of the pilgrims Bob featured in his book "Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail."

QUOTE:

Lark News Satirizes "Orthodox Lite" Worship

The new edition of Lark News takes a shot at--what?--blended worship? Lark is The Onion of evangelical Protestantism--a humor and satire site devoted to evangelical foibles. Its latest effort talks about evangelical churches offering "Orthodox lite" services, complete with "candles, non-specific iconography ... other religious-looking items ... generic vestments and ... a more somber manner."

The piece was supposed to be funny, but I find the phenomenon it was satirizing to be sad. So if you read it and chuckle, that's fine. But since satire is supposed to have a point, let me comment on what I take to be the barb in the Lark's "news item."

According to the fictional EV Free pastor featured in the item,

"It’s the same sermon, same worship songs in many cases, just done in a more liturgical style," Fitzgerald says. "I don’t mind changing the packaging for people. It freshens it up for them and for me."

There's the rub. As long it's about "packaging," adding liturgical elements to a service is pretty empty.

"I like the reverence and the mood," says one girl, 16. "It feels more spiritual."

"I like the candles," her friend chimes in.

"Packaging" or "feel" or "mood" are all about marketing. But liturgical worship is about other things:

• It is about doing what the people of God have done for nearly two millennia: Word and Sacrament. (Candles and incense really are optional.) The round of Scripture reading and sacramental practices shape us and mold us--keep us from being squeezed into the world's mold (Rom. 12:2).
• It is about worshiping as embodied souls. Physical acts (kneeling, singing, bowing, lifting our hands) and the use of physical substances (bread, wine, oil, water, incense, salt) remind us that we are not just here to learn, but to participate. The life of a Jesus follower is about believing and doing. And worship needs to order both our thoughts and actions.
• It is about objectivity (the opposite of "feel" and "mood"). Ritual actions are designed to help us praise God whether or not we "feel like it." And they are about opening us to God's action in our lives, about placing ourselves at his disposal, rather than creating a subjective, emotional response.
• It is about setting aside our own "creativity" and opening ourselves to God's re-creating grace. This is the "sabbath" nature of worship. We've been doing all week. With long to-do lists in hand, we've been responsible for making things happen in our homes and our workplaces. On the Sabbath, we don't need to engage in a lot of innovation. Worship doesn't depend on us. The saints are already casting their crowns before the throne and crying alleluia. The pressure on us to be original, creative, and subjective is off. All we have to do is join the chorus.
• It is about making sure that we proclaim God's story. Non-liturgical worship can easily become oriented to felt needs or therapeutic self-help discourse: How to be a good parent. How to manage your finances Christianly. How to deal with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. All good topics, but they are not of the substance of worship. Liturgical worship ensures that we read the full range of the scriptural story and walk through the cycle of Jesus' story every year. And within that context, we will be shaped as parents and financial stewards.
  
• Okay, okay, it is about mood and atmosphere, but only to the extent that it signals a break from a world that tells us stories other than God's story. In the world's stories, you are an individual who is a consumer (your worth is in what you own) or an achiever (your worth is in what you or your family accomplish) or a cool person (your worth is in your ability to keep up with trends in music, clothing, coffee, electronics, and so forth). But when you come to worship, the narration of all those stories is put on "pause," and you listen once more the God's story and how you are part of a called-out and redeemed community destined to play a role in the restoration of creation.

I could go on. But my point is made. The Call for an Ancient Evangelical Future says we should have "public worship that sings, preaches and enacts God's story" and and we must "recover the historic substance of worship of Word and Table and to attend to the Christian year, which marks time according to God's saving acts." This is about liturgical worship as substance, not as surface. The things we do in liturgy "shape our lives and signify the meaning of the world."

Now, I'm all for blending historic liturgical elements into worship services that also feature contemporary song and drama and elements from the non-liturgical traditions. But we must do the blending with an eye to telling God's story comprehensively to people who are daily squeezed into the world's mold, and who need instead a vision of God's way and God's future.

So, was the Lark News item funny? Well, I did laugh at the very end, when "the Bartel family of suburban Cleveland, Ohio, tried the local Orthodox church for a month, but 'couldn’t make the cultural shift long-term' ... When they walked back into an evangelical service, 'the drums and guitars sounded pretty good for once.' "

Liturgy takes work and commitment and even "cultural shift." But it doesn't exclude drums and guitars.

* * *

Lark News updates its satirical news items the first of every month. In addition to humor, you can find religious artifacts for the cynical, including tee-shirts that say "Homeschooled & Wild," "Heard You Got into That Christian College. Bummer," and "Jesus Loves You! Then again he loves everybody."

Posted by Ancient Future Evangelical at 4:40 AM  

Labels: Worship

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 9/24/2007 9:05:10 AM (GMT-5)