A Higher Orthodoxy

OK. Let me try to carry this a bit more to problem. We in the West are facing many issues philosphcally and related theological issues. If you read our American history, we were a people that we clearly marked by religious commitments. That is obvious by the state churches (PA–Quaker, NC–Anglican, SC–Anglican, RI–Baptist, MA–Puritan/ Congregational, etc. As a Christian people, our values were tied to our roots and as true conservatives we have spent generations conserving the best of the past, rooted in our historic denominations and identity in those traditions.

That was mainstay in our land until the 1960’s when the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Heidegger, Marcel, and especially Nietzsche began to be proliferated and their influence felt all over the place academically. The trend of the day, was that God was dead and hence, religion was no longer necessary to explain the universe. We loss our sense of corporate identity as a people and began to be focused on individual experience, values, etc. With the rampant rise of individualism and the preeminence of the self over society, my truth and my preception over objectve norms, this began to have terrible effects for religion, whose authrity structure is God, the Church, the family, myself. Our era has seen a revesal of all of that. Typically, you hear people say, “I don’t believe in God so he doesn’t exist.” Out goes logic. I can believe in purpple ponies that poop green and fly, but that desn’t mean that they are real.  Religion, like music styles, have become personal preference and people hop churches faster than they choose a burger.

With the rise of individualism and the preference for the self (which is Gen. 3 all over again), the past is judged by the present, history by the now, traditions and vaues by present experience, etc. “Things have changed” they say. yes–but why? This shift is called “post-modernity” because the era in which people used to believe in objective truth (and believed it no matter what) is over. The Reformation produced the modern era and Christendom flourished with the rampant production of public schools, hospitals, higher education, seminaries, the rise of nation-states and the rise of the American experiment.

The worship war is more than preference; it is more than personal taste. There are philosophical commitments and theological commitments to the post-modern trend that are reflected in the worship style and lyrics. Sure. I’m not so naive to think wth a wide brush I can swoop all of them into heresy. Nope. However, to embrace the trend is to fight within the camp. Van Til said the current problem, if we embrace the prevailing philosophy, you know, “meeting peope where they’re at” is like a man driving down a road to a cliff and you pass him going the other way to heaven. The prevailing trend (and why we are failing) is that we turn around and try to talk to the guy who believes we are wrong about everything and he is right about everything–he really does not believe in the cliff and if we keep arguing based upon his way of thinking, we will lose. The Church is losing the culture war because we have embraced the culture. Plenty of the “Emergent” postmodern crowd love it; away with the past and in for the now. What is in is massive suicide rates and loss of identity among Christians, rise in divorce, etc. It seems like the experience of crack wins over the experience of God. The louder and more creative the music and the more piercings, the more tatoos, the more blah, blah, blah.

God has always worked through the simple ordinary confrontation of the Scripture and the sacraments. But that is too traditional; it’s not where we as a culture are at. Some have noticed that the high end worship music has replaced regular use of the sacraments. Jesus said, if you eat his flesh and drink his blood you share and abide in him. But people don’t know what communion is about; the don’t know what happens in baptism; they are usually never confronted with their sins. Our current culture looks at historic Christianity with shock and alarm. Thomas Reeves in his book the Empty Church argues tha those whotake the cultural approach to religion will always lose with their marketplace competitors. “They” will always do it better. If people want a feel good service they can always go to the Moose Lodge or the latest concert and “feel” good.

I guess at the end I would have to join the crowd that wrote the book, why I left the contemporary worship movement.  Surely, I am NOT saying that anyone that enjoys the modern/ post-modern music is not a Christian.  Hello?  My ITunes folder will tell otherwise.  However, in my venture through the waters, I understand the Gospel to as simple as “Jesus loves me,” but more than that intellectually.  No one in our culture wants more than the former.  If a Christian service is more than a sound byte they get bored . . . Christianity is more han a relationship; the Bible is more complex than “What if Cartoons got saved.”  But it takes time and commitment to dig into those complexities and be changed by them; no one it seems wants to change, because “Me and Jesus got an understanding;  he’s my bud and we like to hang out.”

In the long run, I’m talking about the postmodern worldview is what I and other traditionalists reject.  Of course, when I argue for the use of hymns, I’m being as snobbish as anyone else.  As a reformed Christian, I believe the reformation recovered or conserved the authentic Gospel, so I dont embrace “hymns” in general but those hymns that reflect the power and energy of the reformation, e.g. the Biblical worldview, and exalt God’s majesty and diminish the power and efforts of man.  Part of this is why I became reformed and eventually a Presbyterian. 

In all of this discussion and that is what it is . . . regardless of whose feelings get hurt (mine included), we do have to remember as noted to david T, that God often rejects our worship as idolatrous–  traditional or contemporary.  I pray in whatever context we find ourselves, that our worship is acceptable to God.  I have issues with the contemporary trend and others less traditional, have there issues as well.  Be convinced by Scripture alone.  I could recommend books, but who would read them?  Maybe a power point show . . .

Well another Holy Week has come and gone. First, I want to reflect on church culture.

     There are plenty of opinions running around about the use of the Christian calendar. I hate to even bring it up because, for the broad church catholic, it is part of her ethos. In other words, this is what MOST Christianshave been doing and how the have been worshipping for centuries.  For low church Presbyterians, Baptists, non-denominational types, most Pentecostal and Charismatic types, Anabaptist and related ilk, the church’s historic traditions, have been tossed out.  As noted elsewhere though, when you toss out a tradition, you replace it with usually something worse.

     That has been an observation about the contemporary music/ culture issue. It is transient and theologically/ Biblically shallow. Ahh, but the reader will say, so WERE those hymns you love so much . . . true, they WERE contemporary at some point. But they were produced in an era of staunch Christendom; much of the fluff that comes out of studios today is exactly that–gravy. Hymnody and psalmnody were produced in a time of real theological enrichment and reflection it is like the meat and potatoes and so dense, it not only makes you think but like a good steak sometimes it is difficult to swallow; today’s nonsense is here today gone tomorrow, like an 80’s one hit wonder.

     Second, I want to reflect on our church’s liturgy.  It has been good in our adoption of and use of the Christian year.  It has brought a contintuity and connection with the rest of the local community, as well as the historic Christian church.  In a time of cultural theological shabbiness, it has brought to us a sense of wealth of theological richness and identity.  In our slow but steady re-birth as a church, we have moved from independence to connectionalism via our joining the Evangelical Presbyterian Church; our return to an historic and theologically rich hymnal (the 1955 Presbyterian hymnbook); and our use of the lectionary in conjunction with the Christian calendar– we have found  a unique identity in the community as a conservative Presbyterian and Reformed church and yet, with a traditional Scottish liturgy.  This return to historic forms and norms has given us a connection to area churches in many mainline denominations, i.e. the PCUSA, ECUSA, ELCA and the UMC (even the local CBF Baptist church).  Equally though, as a socially and theologically evangelical church belonging to a conservative, evangelical denomination, we are connected to the ARP and PCA churches, as well as many Southern baptist churches, pentecostal churches, etc.  This trend is very much where our own denomination is on so many things, the EPC.  They tend to be right down the middle on so many issues.

     Thirdly, I want to reflect on my own journey.  The Christian calendar, the daily lectionary/ office has given me a cyclical rythm of being Christian.  It makes me self-c0ncious of sacred time and space.  Yes, I know God ones it all and all things are in a broad sense sacred.  However, there is a personal connection with the historic church and other Christians and ministers that my own oservance of the calendar, the daily lectionary/ office provides.  In using regular prayer schedules it forces me to deal with Jesus and recognize His Lordshipover my time; to have to get to know Him through regular prayer time and scheduled Scriptural readings that are not part of a trendy devotional, but part of the historic church’s cyclical reading.

     It also provides  as noted above a cyclical rythm of beingChristian that is historic.  In other words, I have found a way to connect to the fading Christian memory and the past that is theologically rich that provides a rythm for spiritual formation in my own life.  Part of the result of this phenomenon for our church and me personally is the preservation of authentic Christian culture and unfortunatley an increasing distance with the trends of the ever-increasingly secualrized and pagan culture.  My own existence as an historic catholic Christian in the reformed tradition makes me and others in this tradition an anomaly to our transient and rootless and philosophically and theologically shallow culture and equally to those to those Christians and denominations that have adopted the spirit of the age.  It has been “neat” and afirming to find out both as a church and personally, “Oh this is how the church has been worshipping for, Oh a thousand years or so-and where have I been??”  Amen . . .

This is my first parish ever. I have learned a lot in the brief year that I have been the minister. I have learned a lot

 about caring for people. I’ve also learned that mercy always triumphs over justice. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the mystery of Providence gets deeper every day. The ways in which the Amighty (NB–that would be the Father-Son-Holy Spirit of orthodox Christendom, not the woman in the Shack) orchestrates and had orchestrated the events of my life and others that He has connected me with.

I have also learned and observed just how far our churches and Christians in America have strayed from orthodox Christianity and I am amazed that this does not seem to be a problem in the eyes of the post-moderns. Christendm becomes increasingly unfamiliar to the culture as the culture becomes more and more pagan (and I mean that in the historic use of the term, so I’m not being an ass on purpose) and gnostic.

We that can wrap ourselves around the historic church catholic (e.g. the ecumenical creeds and a common baptism) look more and more like oddballs and dinosaurs; sobeit. I would rather be connected to the church of the ages than the spirit of the age. Transience and rootlessness is all there is. Hence, when orthodoxy is abandoned it is not that people stop believing in God, but they believe in the god of their imaginations; the god of convenience and the god of culture. It is a spiritual war and this is but one peel of the onion.