I picked up Evangelical Is Not Enough for the intriguing, if also somewhat off-putting, title and my interest in the subject – I
have a category dedicated to books about the Church this year. So far, I have learned about the Reformation from a Catholic perspective, Eastern Orthodoxy from a Reformed perspective, and listened to a broad overview of Church history written by a Scottish Presbyterian. I’m also in the middle of Eusebius’ Church History, and I am already planning to carry this category into next year’s reading. 🙂
As I said in my Goodreads review of Thomas Howard’s excellent book, Hallowed Be This House, I may not agree with him on everything, but I think he is on to something. I have several friends and extended family who have left Evangelical/Reformed churches to join a more liturgical tradition, in particular the Catholic church, as Howard himself did. I have heard some attribute this movement to persuasive “evangelism” on the part of Catholic friends or teachers, and while that may be partly true for some, from what I know or can infer of others it was undertaken seriously with much thought and prayer and sometimes real hardship. That is something that needs to be considered by Protestants dialoguing with Catholic and Orthodox acquaintances. We need to not only express our theological disagreements and concerns (respectfully and kindly, I might add), but be willing to listen to their side and prayerfully consider whether we need to make any changes. And we should go back further than the Reformation and seek to understand how and why the liturgy evolved as it did. Perhaps, as my Catholic friends would say, we have thrown out too much in our zeal to purify what was indeed corrupt.
Howard, of course, is coming from the other side, being Anglican when he wrote this book and later becoming Catholic and seeking to persuade those in the Evangelical churches he had been brought up in of the wisdom embedded in the liturgical practices he had come to love. He is respectful and appreciative of his Evangelical heritage, and I identified with many of the examples he gave in the opening chapter. He then goes on to make a case for liturgical practices in personal and communal worship and how they can bring life to our walk with God (as opposed to deadening it, which is often the accusation). Here are some of my favorite passages as well as some thoughts:
If worship is to be rigorously detached from all sentiment, and even from sentimentalism, then we will all have to conclude that it is inaccessible. Who of us can achieve a pristine state of spirit beyond the reach of “lesser” elements like good feelings, familiarity, solidarity, beauty, and warmth? Perhaps the seraphim can behold the white light of the Divine Glory directly. Ancient tradition says so. But we are not seraphim. That glory comes to us mortals through a dome of many-colored class, which must include our emotions as well as virtues like charity and purity of heart.
In a beautiful reflection on the antiphonal character of the liturgy (something I have appreciated in the Orthodox services I have attended), he says:
In the act of worship we on earth begin to learn the script of heaven. The phraseology has very little to do with how we may be feeling at the moment. It does not spring from us spontaneously. We must learn to say it. It is unnatural for us, the way learning a polite greeting is unnatural for a child. […]
Antiphony deepens the shallow pool of our personal resources and sets us free from the prison of our own meager capacity to respond adequately in a given situation. Rather than mumbling fitfully, we learn to say the formula, “How do you do?” or “The Lord be with you,” and having learned it, we have stepped from solipsism into community. We have begun to take our appointed places among other selves.
Speaking of prayer:
But it is for us to realize that there is great help available for us in our prayers. Spontaneity is impossible sooner or later; there only remains for us to choose which set of phrases we will make our own. The prayers of the Church lead us into regions that, left to our own resources, we might never have imagined.
When variety asserts itself, steadfastness flies.
Evangelical piety often appears to hold up before the faithful a vision of spirituality that would be available only to angels in its ceaseless fervor. Just as we must walk whereas the angels fly, so we must pray, putting one foot in front of the other, where they may soar. If, perchance, we are vouchsafed moments of exaltation, God be praised, but that is not the pattern. That is not the quotidian. That is not the school of prayer.
The other week I asked my Catholic friend to pray for my sister who was traveling to see us. She responded that she and her family had already been praying for her, probably in their regular time of family prayer. And that’s not the first time she’s said something like that – it’s convicting but also comforting. 🙂
If we had stopped to read the Prayer of Absolution, we would have discovered that this is precisely what is counted upon in this prayer. It is God who forgives sins. The minister’s is the voice we hear reminding us of this and declaring it to us. It lifts the whole transaction away from the broil of our own guilty consciences, so hard to pacify, and places it in the context of the Church, which is the Body of Christ and hence shares Christ’s priestly ministry. It is here that we receive audible assurance of what we know to be true, namely, that our sins are indeed forgiven. In our private prayers we find ourselves raking back through things in uncertainty. Here the declaration is loud and clear and without doubt.
(My Presbyterian church has the Assurance of Pardon as part of the service, which serves the same purpose but involves the reading of an appropriate passage of Scripture concerning God’s forgiveness.)
Howard’s reflections on the Te Deum, an ancient and beautiful hymn of praise, reminded me of my experience of singing For All the Saints with a choir as a teenager. It expanded my vision of the church to include a vast host of believers who had gone before me and has been one of my favorite hymns ever since. I know that a return to history and tradition is one of the main draws for Christians leaving Evangelical and Reformed churches to become Catholic or Orthodox, and this concern to be rooted in history is only reinforced by books on Church history like the one I have been reading to my boys that has only one full chapter about something that happened during the thousand years between 300s AD and Jan Hus. We and our children need a much bigger vision of the Church. I am grateful that our church’s psalter hymnal includes hymns by Ambrose, Aquinas, and many other pre-Reformation Christians.
And on the liturgy and ceremony in general:
The ceremonies of the liturgy answer to all of this. For in the liturgy we step into redemption, in faith, and bespeak the perfect uniting of the outer and the inner that will be unfurled in the new heavens and the new earth. We renounce the divided world where body wars against heart and where gesture struggles with thought. By enacting what is true, we learn what is true. By bowing with our heads as well as our hearts, we testify to the restored seamlessness of outer and inner. By bowing with the knee we teach our reluctant hearts to bow. By making the sign of the cross with our hands we signal to heaven, earth, hell, and to our own innermost beings that we are indeed under this sign – that we are crucified with Christ. No longer do we refuse the outer gesture in the name of the inner faith. Buddhism, Platonism, and Manichaeanism many do so, but Christian faith cries out to be shaped.
I could share more, but this is long enough to give you a taste of the book. Much to ponder!
