During my week of study leave in January, I collected a variety of responsive and unison readings, for use in post-Christian and Unitarian Universalist worship services. More than 80 of these readings are now up on my Web site: Link.
Category Archives: Liberal religion
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 8
Eighth in, and conclusion to, a series. Bibliography included at the end of this post. An appendix to the series will follow. Back to the first post in this series.
(F) Conclusion
In the end, the hard work needed to overcome the challenges and threats to common worship liberal worship is well worth the effort. Post-Christian common worship is ultimately a countercultural act; it holds out hope for change for the better in a world that is in dire need of change; it helps to strengthen us as individuals, and the wider democracy, in the face of “the impersonal forces of a mass society with its technological devices for producing stereotyped opinion.” (Adams 1998, p. 172) At the same time, post-Christian common worship without the self-discipline of a private devotional life, or participation in small group devotions, is probably impossible (or at least improbable).
What is crucial for post-Christian common worship, if it is to survive and thrive? I believe that we must remain attentive to the reforming tendencies of the post-Christian attitude. The tendency of many post-Christian congregations is to reform only so far, and then to stop:– to adopt the flaming chalice as a liturgical element, for instance, but not to take the next logical step of figuring out what it means to include a flaming chalice in worship, and then the next logical step of saying those reasons during worship.
Or, more to the point: if we are going to engage in the counter-cultural act of doing post-Christian common worship, we need to start talking about what it means to be a post-Christian, and what it means to do post-Christian worship. Drifting along and letting the wind blow us hither and yon should not be an option — someone had better grab the tiller, and someone else had better watch the mainsheet, and the jib, before we drift onto some rocks of inattentiveness and founder.
Which is the whole purpose of this series of posts. I’ve grabbed the tiller, and if you don’t like the direction I’m steering, now’s the time to say so. If you see rocks in the direction I’m steering, sing out now! It would also be nice if someone selse would take a turn at the tiller. So start talking….
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 7
Seventh in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series.
(E) Some challenges for post-Christian worship, continued
(E.2) Current Threats to post-Christian worship
Continuing with an examination of challenges for post-Christian worship, I’ll look at current threats to common worship include the esoteric impulse and the danger of invisible oppression (or not seeing who isn’t there), and the idolatry of worship as entertainment.
~~(E.2.1) The danger of the esoteric impulse:
A major threat to post-Christian common worship at the moment is what I call the esoteric impulse. The esoteric impulse leads post-Christian congregations to set up invisible barriers to newcomers. Within my own religious community, Unitarian Universalism, the esoteric impulse leads our post-Christian congregations to not have signs on the outsides of their church buildings, to use unexplained acronyms, to shun newcomers, and to make sure that worship services are not comfortable places for outsiders. Generally, all institutionalized religion requires some sort of initiation ceremony.
Why does this happen? Broadly speaking, post-Christian congregations seem to have a tendency to make official initiation too easy: all you have to do is sign up as a member, maybe after attending two or three short clases. But at some level we post-Christians still want to maintain some firm boundary between our congregations and the rest of the world, and as a result, although it’s officially easy to become a member, there may be invisible barriers that make our religion hard to understand and hard to enter, so that very few people want to join us. I believe this explains why most post-Christian congregations remain small (under 150 average weekly attendance) and ineffectual.
This is for you, Craig
Two winters ago, Craig and I were both serving at the Unitarian Universalist church in Geneva, Illinois. We liked to stand out in front of the church and greet people as they came in. Since both of us have a bit of a competitive streak in us, we kept on standing outside to greet people nearly every week right up through the end of December, no matter how cold it was (rain was a different matter — we stood inside when it rained). And we managed to brave the cold at least once a month through the entire winter.
So last week I got a challenging email message from Craig. He’s now at a church in Wisconsin, and he said that he had been standing out in front that church on Sunday morning greeting people. As I said, we’re both a little competitive. Of course I had been outside that morning — I nearly always stand out in front of the church here in New Bedford to greet people before worship. But now, clearly, the gauntlet has been thrown down. So Craig, I’m making this public:
Sunday, February 4, 2007. Stood outdoors to greet people for 15 minutes, from 10:40 to 10:55 a.m. Weather at 10:53 as reported by the National Weather service Web site: clear, winds 17 mph (gusts to 25 mph), temerature 24 Fahrenheit.
How about you, Craig? Any other ministers or religious educators out there want to take the challenge?
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 6
Sixth in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series.
(E) Some challenges for post-Christian worship
At this point, I’d like to face up to several challenges faced by post-Christian congregations trying to shape meaningful common worship. I see two groups of challenges: first, the challenges of liturgical changes; second, several challenges to the commonality of common worship. The liturgical innovations that challenge common worship are the challenge of new liturgical elements, the redefinition of the sermon, and the challenge of false intimacy. Current threats to common worship include the esoteric impulse and the danger of invisible oppression (or not seeing who isn’t there), and the idolatry of worship as entertainment.
(E.1) Liturgical innovations
~~(E.1.1) The challenge of new liturgical elements:
Let me begin by examining a new liturgical element that has crept into my own religious community, Unitarian Universalism. The lighting of a “flaming chalice,” typically a candle or alcohol lamp in a footed vase, is a liturgical innovation that has become widespread in Unitarian Universalist congregations over the past two decades. It is my belief that lighting a chalice at the beginning of a worship service dates back to Kenneth Patton’s Charles Street Meeting House in the 1950s, where a lamp (in the shape of an ancient Greek lamp), similar in shape to today’s chalices, was lit at the beginning of each worship service, and extinguished at the end. Now, nearly every Unitarian Universalist congregation uses a flaming chalice in its liturgy. The challenge is this:– what does this new post-Christian symbol mean?
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 5
Fifth in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series.
(D) Post-Christian preaching?
The centrality the act of preaching, of the sermon, characterizes nearly all post-Christian common worship. Of course, I acknowledge that not all post-Christian congregations will include sermons in their worship services; in particular, post-Christian congregations within the Quaker tradition of the unprogrammed meeting will not have sermons per se. However, a key characteristic of the post-Christian congregation is that is has been shaped by the Christian notion of the importance of the Word and the service of the Word; and the post-Christian congregation is trying to figure out what the significance of the “word” means when is when there is no longer consensus on the divinity of that “word.”
(Parentehtically, I also acknowledge that many post-Christians will find continued importance and relevance in the Service of the Table, i.e. communion or eucharist. However, as someone who has been deeply influenced by Quaker thinking, I won’t participate in or officiate at standard communion rituals, so I feel utterly unqualified to speak about the possibility of post-Christian service of the table.)
As an exoteric, easily accessible ritual, it is easy to argue that preaching deserves to remain at the center of post-Christian worship. We might well ask, then: What differentiates post-Christian preaching from other preaching in liberal Christian traditions, where preaching is also the central act of worship? In order to answer this question, I will look specifically at Unitarian Universalist traditions, although most of what I have to say will also apply to other post-Christian groups.
We Unitarian Universalists often characterize ourselves by our insistence on the use of reason in religion. But we mean reason in a very specific way; not, for example, the kind of reason that results in technological progress. I would suggest that preaching in our tradition aims to lead us to meditative thought as a means to redemption; in distinction to Christian traditions where thinking alone is inadequate.
Let me be more specific about what I mean by meditative thought. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1999), in his essay “Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine,” tells how in nineteenth century theology “the concept of gnosis meant the false doctrine that man [sic] can bring about his salvation from mortality and fallenness by means of his own striving for knowledge and elevation to divine truths.” (p. 79) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1838/1961) intended this kind of meditative thinking and speaking when, at the end of “The Divinity School Address,” he spoke of the virtues of preaching, exhorting his listeners to a certain kind of preaching:
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 4
Fourth in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series.
(C) Private devotions and small group worship in a post-Christian congregation, continued
(C.2) Small groups
Small group worship occupies a middle ground between private devotions and common worship. At its best, small group worship offers a continuing opportunity for renewal and reform. James Luther Adams (1976, p. 85) talks about this aspect of small groups when he describes the ecclesiola in ecclesia as a possibility for ongoing reform of voluntary associations:
In the modern period the ecclesiola has been the small group of firm dedication that sometimes promotes the disciplines of the inner life, sometimes bends its energies to sensitize the church afflicted with ecclesiastical somnolence, sometimes cooperates with members of the latent church in the world to bring about reform in government or school or industry, or even to call for radical structural transformation.
Small group worship can take on this positive, reforming aspect in post-Christian congregations. Feminist worship groups in the second wave of feminism (1960’s and 1970’s) may serve as an example of small groups helping to sensitize larger congregations to the possibility of ecclesiastical somnolence. Many such feminist worship groups worked on developing new worship language and new forms of worship that allowed men and women to be true equals (the wide-spread “Water Communion” in Unitarian Universalist congregations in fact originated with a small feminist worship group). Certain Neo-Pagan groups within a larger Unitarian Universalist congregation have operated in this way, challenging liturgical and theological assumptions of the congregation, particularly in the areas of feminism and environmentalism, while remaining fully connected with it. Outside Unitarian Universalism, we might consider the revolutionary role assigned to small groups (base communities) by practitioners of liberation theology.
Odds and ends on books and blogs
I’m usually not a big fan of Internet quizzes, but I couldn’t resist “Which science fiction writer are you?” I knew I was going to be Ursula K. LeGuin, and that’s who the quiz said I was. Except of course that I’m not, because I don’t have her talent and skill.
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New blog by a religious professional called Open the Doors: The Ministry of Welcome, written by the thoughtful and insightful Chance Hunter. Chance has just become the Welcome Ministry Coordinator at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m looking forward to hearing about his thoughts and experiences in congregational hospitality and growth in a program/corporate size congregation.
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I miss going to the Seminary Coop Bookstore in Chicago, which remains for my money the best academic bookstore in the United States — at least for the topics I’m interested in: religion, ecology, philosophy, cultural criticism. Today I discovered to my delight that their Web site now allows you to browse The Front Table, the books they currently stock on the famous front table of their 59th St. store — there’s always one or two books on that front table that I decide to buy.
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Will Shetterly, the Unitarian Universalist and science fiction writer who writes the blog “It’s All One Thing,” has recently stopped eating meat as part of his Three Steps To Save the World. Since that first post, he’s done a number of other posts on vegetarianism and veganism (link, link, and most recently link). He’s convinced me — this week I went back to being a vegetarian. I still eat eggs and butter, and I’m willing to eat small amounts of locally-raised organic meat, but today’s meat and fishing industries are way too polluting and non-sustainable.
Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 3
Third in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series.
(C) Private devotions and small group worship in a post-Christian congregation
(C.1) Private devotions
Private devotions, the act of an individual worshipper, appear to be as necessary as common worship. James Luther Adams (1976, p. 64) notes that individuals are not “wholly comprehended in the community or the state of the family or the other associations. Individuals possess an integrity and freedom of their own”; thus implying the possibility and even the necessity of a private devotional life. At the same time, Adams (1998, p. 122 ff.) is equally clear that an inner life of devotion is not enough. What, then, is the relationship between private devotions and common worship?
Liberal Quaker philosopher and theologian Douglas Steere (1992), speaking from a liberal Christian theology, beautifully describes the tensions between private devotions and what he calls corporate worship: