Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Tradition!
Justin Taylor Links to a "USnooze" report on religion returning to tradition.
On the faith level, tradition keeps it alive and carries it from generation to generation. Songs and liturgy can be remembered when words cannot. If you are a life long Christian, ask yourself why it is you can still sing the Gloria Patri from memory, or recite the Lord's Prayer.
As Christian's we decry the constant shifts in society, but it is the lack of the traditional and liturgical in our greater society that makes such possible. Remember what it is we seek to pass on to future generations, not our institutions, but our faith. What was the Apostle's or Nicene Creed written for? To provide an encapsulated statement of that we wish to preserve. Liturgical recitation of same preserves them forever.
But in the personally evangelical age, there is another reason for all this that will resonate even more. The liturgical become part of us and eventually transforms us. I have personally been pulled back from leaving the faith by liturgy, specifically the liturgy of confession.
I have mentioned before here the dark time in my life when I swore Christianity was not real, and yet the Holy Spirit dragged me to church weekly. What I have not told is the role liturgy played in my restoration. Each week the Assurance of Pardon in the service was exactly the same:
Was that the Holy Spirit? Of course, but He was operating through the mechanism of liturgy.
These things are not empty and trite, they are full of meaning, signifigance and import. If "seekers" do not find such, it is because we have failed to demonstrate it and teach them. Now they are left to "discover" these things on their own.
Shame on us.
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But this shift extends beyond the Roman Catholic Church. In Richardson, Texas, the congregation of Trinity Fellowship Church participates in something that would have been considered almost heretical in most evangelical Protestant churches five or 10 years ago: a weekly Communion service. An independent, nondenominational church of some 600 members, Trinity Fellowship is not the only evangelical congregation that is offering a weekly Eucharist, saying the Nicene or Apostles' creeds, reading the early Church Fathers, or doing other things that seem downright Roman Catholic or at least high Episcopalian. Daniel Wallace, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, which trains pastors for interdenominational or nondenominational churches, says there is a growing appetite for something more than "worship that is a glorified Bible class in some ways."This is a trend to be fostered, loved, cajoled, and in every possible way encouraged. I say this not because I am an old "stick-in-the-mud," but because the traditional and the liturgical serve very, very important roles in our faith and our personal transformation.
Something curious is happening in the wide world of faith, something that defies easy explanation or quantification. More substantial than a trend but less organized than a movement, it has to do more with how people practice their religion than with what they believe, though people caught up in this change often find that their beliefs are influenced, if not subtly altered, by the changes in their practice.
On the faith level, tradition keeps it alive and carries it from generation to generation. Songs and liturgy can be remembered when words cannot. If you are a life long Christian, ask yourself why it is you can still sing the Gloria Patri from memory, or recite the Lord's Prayer.
As Christian's we decry the constant shifts in society, but it is the lack of the traditional and liturgical in our greater society that makes such possible. Remember what it is we seek to pass on to future generations, not our institutions, but our faith. What was the Apostle's or Nicene Creed written for? To provide an encapsulated statement of that we wish to preserve. Liturgical recitation of same preserves them forever.
But in the personally evangelical age, there is another reason for all this that will resonate even more. The liturgical become part of us and eventually transforms us. I have personally been pulled back from leaving the faith by liturgy, specifically the liturgy of confession.
I have mentioned before here the dark time in my life when I swore Christianity was not real, and yet the Holy Spirit dragged me to church weekly. What I have not told is the role liturgy played in my restoration. Each week the Assurance of Pardon in the service was exactly the same:
God proves His amazing love for us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.Those words have burned into my soul and each week they worked on me - they began to come to me unbidden during the week. The became nearly omnipresent in my life, eventually they demanded reaction from me.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Was that the Holy Spirit? Of course, but He was operating through the mechanism of liturgy.
These things are not empty and trite, they are full of meaning, signifigance and import. If "seekers" do not find such, it is because we have failed to demonstrate it and teach them. Now they are left to "discover" these things on their own.
Shame on us.
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