I’ve made the case many times on this blog that several Baptist/evangelical/congregational churches are becoming more liturgical: printed prayers, responses, confession, creeds, lectionary, robes, candles, and hymns. Evangelical and Baptist churches are following the Liturgical Calendar and worshiping in several non-traditional worship styles. Notably Taize and Iona. Robert Webber wrote in 1985 that Evangelicals were beginning an attraction to the liturgical church.
What are we to make of this? Are these Evangelicals trying to be something they are not? A gimmick? Two articles are worthy of your attention on this trend to answer these questions.
The first is by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (fellow Eastern University grad) who writes in Christianity Today:
As an evangelical, I grew up knowing that the turning point in life is a conversion experience—a radical encounter with the living Christ that turns us away from sin and selfishness, toward the life we were made for. When I got to know the Benedictines, I learned they too were adamant about conversion. According to the Rule, when a brother or sister joins the community, they promise three things: stability, obedience, and conversatio morum—the monastic rhythm of prayer and work that is, itself, a way of conversion. Benedictines believed in a conversion experience that happened not once but upon every return to their common prayer. Reminded of Christ’s sustaining power, they drew from liturgical prayer the strength to endure. This, I began to see, was the sort of everyday conversion our community needed.
The second article is a blog post by Thom Turner, an adjunct professor of English at Nyack College and the Senior Editor Literary Arts of GENERATE Magazine. Thom writes:
Speaking to a professor at Liberty University, Frederica Mathewes-Green was surprised to find out that the professor and some of the young people at Liberty were going to a Celtic liturgical service at a local Baptist church (link; relevant conversation starts at the 28:50 mark). The professor related that the baby-boomers wanted the contemporary worship—with guitars and drums—while the young people of the church were willing to go to the 7:30am service on Sunday morning for a traditional Celtic service. Even more, these young Baptists were asking for intercession and litany.
Recently, in the 50th issue of RELEVANT, many of the faith trends the magazine summarized in coverage of their publishing history dealt with a return to liturgy, ancient-future worship and spiritual disciplines. There has been a huge surge in liturgical interest among young people like myself that Christian media has really picked up on.
These two articles pick up something that everyone wants: a spiritual experience. Many Evangelicals are done with two extremes:
- 3 hymns and 45 minute sermon
- 30 minutes of contemporary praise songs and a 45 minute sermon
People need and want more. They need connection. They want an experience that lasts. They need God. They need direction. Liturgy provides connection, experience, and direction to God.
So is this just a gimmick? Right? No. The tables are being turned — even flipped. Thom Turner gives a great explanation of what is happening:
I do agree that this liturgical, ancient-future worship movement is a turning over of traditional tables. But, this turning over of tables is not a spilling over of a century’s worth of low-church Protestantism as the table is flipped over. Instead, this movement is a return to the center. It’s a journey back home. It’s a realization that almost 2,000 years of vibrant Christian worship had been totally eclipsed and stuck in closets or the histories found in dusty theological books.
This movement of my generation is a turning over of traditional tables: but we’re not flipping them over and sticking it to our parent’s and grandparent’s generation. We’re righting the tables. We’re dusting them off and putting the chairs back under it.
Liturgy isn’t cool. It holds no cultural currency or hipster value. Liturgy isn’t valuable. It’s old enough to be in the public domain, which means you can’t make any money off of it. Liturgy isn’t special. It’s not something that is canonical or God breathed.
4 Comments
Thank you for the excellent review of the “liturgical” situation we find ourselves in. It’s an honor to be juxtaposed with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove! Your summation of liturgy’s focus—connection, experience, and direction to God—is spot on. I think many people are learning that part of going to church is connection, experience and direction to God and with others. There is little connection or experience with the person sitting next to you in a typical evangelical service. Liturgy provides a connection as you read together, pray together, break bread together and confess together.
Thom, your post was well written and speaks to many of us “evangelicals” who desire to bring a greater authentic connection to worship!
[…] So there it is. A call for leaders of the 21st Century to develop liturgy that helps the church to recall her story without abandoning it completely for its archaic language and seeming irrelevance to the contemporary church. And if you’re wondering about evangelicals going back to liturgy, I found this great blog. […]
Thank you so much for this post. I just finished a class in my M.Div program on designing and leading congregational worship and as we finished, questions about how evangelicals and ethnic congregations fit into the high/low liturgy have come up. There’s something special about praying together in unison, reciting creeds and partaking in communion as a worshipping community that reminds us of the bigger story and community that we are a part of. Here are more of my reflections about our call to contextualize the liturgy we use so that we can bridge old/new. http://wanderingnotlost.com/2011/06/more-labels.