{"id":765,"date":"2007-02-06T21:00:25","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T02:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=765"},"modified":"2007-05-02T21:28:43","modified_gmt":"2007-05-03T02:28:43","slug":"possibilities-for-post-christian-worship-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=765","title":{"rendered":"Possibilities for Post-Christian Worship, pt. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seventh in a series. Bibliography will be included with the final post. Back to the first post in this series<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(E) Some challenges for post-Christian worship, continued<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(E.2) Current Threats to post-Christian worship<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there), and the idolatry of worship as entertainment.<\/p>\n

~~(E.2.1) The danger of the esoteric impulse:<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I believe the best solution to our esoteric tendencies is to affirm our exoteric ideals. We want common worship to be open and accessible to all; as post-Christians, we are in some sense explicitly distancing ourselves from creedal Christian traditions which too often serve to shut certain classes of people out. <\/p>\n

This also means we must face up to the danger of invisible oppression, or not seeing who isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there. The most obvious example is the predominantly white, Anglo post-Christian congregation in a diverse city. Such a hypothetical congregation needs to look around and see who isn’t present — and then to figure out what esoteric impulses are keeping out people of color.<\/p>\n

~~(E.2.2) The danger of worship as entertainment:<\/em><\/p>\n

The final threat to post-Christian common worship is the idolatry of worship as entertainment. Here, the congregation becomes an audience; all they are required to do is to listen (or perhaps watch). No further engagement aside from simple attendance, just sitting there, is necessary. Worship as entertainment is very safe for all concerned because it involves no real risk; everything is kept at a distance; just as at the end of a performance you can applaud perhaps to show your appreciation but more importantly to disengage and distance yourself from the results of that performance.<\/p>\n

Rather than disengagement at the end of a worship service, there should be a deepened engagement. I have already outlined some possibilities for such deepened engagement, particularly through encouraging each worshipper to have their own personal devotional life, and in encouraging small groups. However, the worship leaders must take primary responsibility for promoting a deepened engagement during common worship. At the very least, worship leaders have to slip between the Scylla of entertainment and slick professionalism on one side, and the Charybdis of incompetence and folksiness on the other side. We need not be devoured by the monster of entertainment, nor sucked under by the whirlpool of boredom. Instead, post-Christian common worship should be genuine, competently-led, and deeply moving.<\/p>\n

Next: Conclusion<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engaging-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}