We All Need To Wake Up III

The Presbyterian Meeting House

at Cane Ridge--sight of a key

Revival Meeting in the Second

Great Awakening

The Second Great Awakening is often said to have begun with a revival meeting at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky in 1801, but in fact, Cane Ridge was only one of a series of revivals that had been going on for over a decade and would continue into the 1840’s. 

The more traditional denominations—Catholics, Episcopalians (formerly known as Anglicans), and Congregationalists stayed aloof from the revivals and, for the most part, the revivals were on the American frontier—in what is today Kentucky, Southern Ohio, and Tennessee though there were also revivals in the rural areas of the South, in particular the Carolinas and Georgia and western Virginia.  Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians predominated in the revival movement and each of those denominations grew considerably as a result of the converts the revivals drew. 

The revival movement fragmented the Presbyterians as the more staunchly Calvinist—and in general the more theologically sophisticated Presbyterians—found many deserting their ranks for breakaway groups headed by Barton Stone and the father and son team of Thomas and Alexander Campbell.  These groups would eventually evolve into what is today known as the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ.  The Stone-Campbell movement is known as “restorationism” and was an attempt to transcend Christianity’s having fractured into denominations by going back to what was perceived as the New Testament model of Church.  I hope to do some entries on the Campbellite movement in the future, suffice it to say for now that what began as frontier revival has developed into some fairly sophisticated Christian denominations. 

Far more impact was felt in what happened to Baptists and Methodists as a result of these revivals.  As the movement spread like wildfire on the frontier, both denominations came to rely more and more heavily on lay preachers who were generally poorly educated and without any theological formation.  In the case of the Methodists this established a radical discontinuity with the original Methodist spirit of the Wesleys which was both theologically sophisticated (the Wesley brothers were Oxford men) and highly sacramental (they were also high-church—by 18^th century standards and favored frequent communion as well as traditional Christian spirituality).  Frontier Methodism, propagated by lay preachers, had little time for formal worship or sacraments, and was characterized by wildly emotional preaching and doctrinal imprecision.  Even worse were the Baptists who, though in their Rhode Island origins were theologically sophisticated, in the frontier became both biblical fundamentalist and doctrinally loosey-goosey with individual congregations ranging from strictly Calvinist predestinatarian with the gloomiest theologies of fallen human nature to wildly Arminian semi-pelagians.  Religious truth was reduced to whatever the individual thought that it was and religious experience was nothing more than raw subjectivity.  It ended up, of course, with Jesus telling President Bush to invade Iraq, but that is a story for another day.    

The end result of the Second Great awakening was the snapping of the cord that ties religious faith to human reason.  Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin all rolled over at once in their individual graves.  This sort of fundamentalism combined with religious subjectivity has come since World War II to infect American Catholicism as well.  The Katholik Krazies just feel that it isn’t Mass if you can understand it and it isn’t Jesus if you aren’t receiving on your knees with your eyes closed and your tongue stuck out.  The happy-clappy crowd, on the other extreme, just wants to hold hands and sing Kumbaya as some just-beyond-middle-aged two-bellied and three-chinned creature in capri pants hands them a piece of French bread or a glass goblet of wine.  (Lest I be accused of chauvinism, I have two bellies and three chins, though I never—ever—wear capri pants, not even at the beach.)  I think the first thing we need to do—even before we send Cardinal Burke packing to permanent retirement with the boys in blue at Gricigliano, or even have another synod—is restore the proper balance between religious faith and human intellect.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to emotions, but they are no basis for the commitments of Christian discipleship.  We Catholics were once known for our keen intellects, our spirit of inquiry, our willingness to refine our theology in the light of expanding human knowledge.  We cannot afford to be intellectually sloppy in this post-Christian world or else the credibility of Christ and his Gospel will be lost. The Second Great Awakening is over.  Move on.

We All Need To Wake Up II

John Wesley

Let me pick up on the theme of the Great Awakenings because I think that this is a topic on which a knowledge of history can help us understand the present situation—and, in this case, in particular some of the flaws in the American approach to religion—and options for the immediate future.

The bridge connecting the First and Second Great Awakenings is Methodism and the Wesleys.  I will be dealing with Methodism again and in more detail when I get to the 18^th century in my series on the history of the Church of England, but I will sketch it out in this posting so that we can see how it affects American Protestantism—and by extension, American Catholicism. 

Methodism began in the Church of England as part of the First Great Awakening.  Eighteenth century Anglicanism had devolved into a pretty tepid shadow of its once great self.  It lacked the intellectualism of an Anselm, the courage of a Becket, the industry of a Cranmer, the piety of a Laud, or the pastoral care of a Tillotson.  Indeed it was upper-crust, entitled, lazy, and blind to the social realities of the day.  One wag called the Church of England “The Tory Party at Prayer.” 

At Christ Church College in Oxford in 1729 two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, the sons of a Church of England priest, the Reverend Samuel Wesley and his deeply pious wife, Susannah, gathered a group of like-minded students and formed “The Holy Club”—a society in which the members studied together the scriptures, the classics of Christian literature (including the Fathers), and engaged in devotional practices such as fasting and frequent communion, as well as giving time for the service of the poor and the education of poor children.  Their zeal and devotion won them only the scorn of the more secular university members, faculty and students alike.  A number of members of the Holy Club went on to be ordained in the Church of England and several of them: the Wesleys, George Whitefield, and Benjamin Ingham became famous evangelists.  The Wesleys had brief ministries in the American Colonies, but Whitefield made over seven preaching tours of the Colonies and was probably the single most influential preacher of the First Great Awakening, at least in the Americas.

The pious practices of the Holy Club formed the backbone for a renewal in the Church of England, at least in parts of the Church of England, led by the Wesleys.  John was an outstanding preacher and Charles Wesely had an extraordinary gift for composing hymn lyrics that were both theologically sound and deeply moving.  Methodism, with its emphasis on personal piety, frequent communion, and spiritual discipline proved attractive to many who had grown weary to the spiritual tedium of mainline Anglicanism.   

John Wesley, on his journey to America, had an experience that would not only change his life, but which would fashion American religion from his day to ours.  On the ship from England to Georgia, Wesley encountered a group of German pietists known as the Moravian Brethren.  The Moravian Brethren, known officially as the Unitas Fratrum (The Unity of the Brothers) are a Protestant denomination that traces their origins back to the preaching of Jan Hus in 15^th century Bohemia and Moravia (today’s Czech Republic).  During a frightful storm in which the boat was being tossed about by high waves, while the English were terrified, the Moravian  Brethren very calmly prayed and sang hymns.  Wesley wanted for himself the deep religious sentiment that shaped the piety of these devout men and women. 

Even by the Wesleys’ time, there was still enough Calvinist residue in the Church of England to trouble those few pious souls who remained among the Tories at prayer and make them anxious for some assurance that they were among the elect.  John Wesley was desperate for the sort of religious experience that would assure him of his salvation.  Wesley describes what happened when he attended a Moravian prayer gathering on May 24, 1738.

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

This was the pivotal experience for the remainder of Wesley’s ministry and as Methodism was rooted profoundly in Wesely’s own piety, the desire for that “warm feeling” of God’s love and election became an irreducible part of the Methodist Gospel.  Now for Wesley and his immediate disciples—all university trained preachers—this subjectivism was balanced by a keen appreciation for both sound Scripture and the Tradition of the Church Fathers.  The problem would be when Methodism crossed to the Americas and, due to an insufficiency of theologically trained preachers, fell into the hands of lay preachers with stronger hearts than brains.  We will talk about that in the next posing on the Second Great Awakening, but suffice it say it has given an emphasis for Americans that religion is primarily about feelings and emotions. 

Wesley remained an Anglican for the rest of his life and the movement long remained within the Church of England.  Wesley also encouraged his English followers to remain in the Church of England and to receive the sacraments in the Established Church. However when the American Church needed ministers at the time of our Revolution and the Anglican Bishops would not ordain clergy for the rebellious colonies, Wesley ordained Thomas Coke as “superintendent” of the American Methodists and also ordained two ministers to work with him in the American missions.  Wesley’s brother Charles was appalled at John’s ordaining on his own authority and saw the threat it would eventually pose to the Methodists remaining in the Church of England. 

Eventually after John Wesley’s death the Methodists separated out of the Church of England and joined the various dissenter Churches such as the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians.  In America the break was almost immediate with Coke and his ministers working solely with Methodists and without reference to the Anglican/Episcopal structures in the colonies. Methodism quickly grew into the second largest American denomination, second only to the Baptists.  In the Second Great Awakening, the emotionalism that characterized Methodism was spread throughout American Protestantism and has eventually come to color American Catholicism as well.  

When Danny Took Sandy To Mass

Ponte Sant'Angelo Methodist 

Church--just up the Street from

Saint Peter's--cookies and tea for
all, including Catholics.    

I have tickets next week to see a revival of Grease.  I love a ‘50’s flashback.  Strange, I didn’t love the ‘50’s when I lived through them, but they seem such fun now. 

I remember Church in the 50’s.  I made my first communion in 1956.  I never missed a Sunday or Holy Day Mass in the 50’s.  Not in my family did we miss mass.  You would come to Church in a hush.  Once you crossed the portal there was no more talking.  Jesus was there and respect demanded total silence.  You didn’t greet friend or neighbor—not even a nod or a wink.  You went to your pew and you genuflected towards the Tabernacle—in the center of the main altar, of course.  You knelt for a minute or two and then you could sit. 

When Father came out from the sacristy door to begin Mass you stood and then you knelt during the “prayers at the foot of the altar.”  In fact you remained kneeling until after he read the collect and then you could sit.  If it was a sung Mass and there was a Gloria, you could sit a little earlier when he went to the sedilla (the bench) and sat with the servers, but when he returned to the altar you knelt again for the prayer.  Of course all the prayers were said silently, or truth be told, in an inaudible mumble.  Most Masses were “low Masses” when you would hear nary a word.    A sung Mass, or High Mass (as we called it) the organist would sing or perhaps the choir if it was a Sunday Noon, and then you would hear a few sung prayers (in Latin: I said “hear,” not understand) and perhaps some versicles and responsories now and then such as the occasional “Dominus Vobiscum.”  You stood while he read the Gospel and if it were a Sunday, he would usually then turn towards you (in those days the priest stood at the altar with his back towards you: it wasn’t important to him if you were there or not as long as he was there; Lay people were peripheral, at best, to the Mass) and read the gospel a second time, this time in a “thee” and “thou” bespattered English.  Then there was the Creed and when you saw Father go down on one knee, you went down on one knee even if you were in the middle of the third decade of the rosary or your fourth novena booklet (you needed something to keep busy while Father said Mass, though ideally you had a missal and read along.  Most people didn’t bother with missals, private devotions were good enough and the occasional daydream broke the tedium.)  Soon you were back on your knees through the Secret, Preface, Sanctus, Canon, Lord’s Prayer, and Agnus Dei—a long time stretch.  Never at any time was your attention diverted from either the altar or from the prayerbook or rosary in your hand.  Silence reigned supreme.  If the gentleman two rows back decided to have his myocardial infarction, he had better do it silently—and the little old lady from County Monaghan would sternly hush the ambulance attendants as they carted away his lifeless body.  There was no need to talk, especially him being dead.  Up to communion in no apparent order, kneel at the rail, close your eyes and stick out your tongue.  There were no “amens” in those days: you think we were Holy Rollers or something saying “amen.”   Back on your knees until after the final blessing when you stood for the Last Gospel.  Then Father disappeared into the sacristy not to be seen again until tomorrow’s Mass.  Only Protestant ministers stood at the door shaking hands.  You then left not saying a word until you were out in the sunshine—or snow, or rain or whatever.  And then you could hear the “Did you see the hat she had on herself?  And she at her age!  She has no idea she looks the fool” as the cats began their scratching at one another. 
Speaking of cats—and in this case, their curiosity—when I was about 12, I snuck off down the street to the Methodist Church.  Was I in for a shock—and an embarrassment!  Somebody came up and shook my hand and said “Welcome to Woodside Methodist.  You’re a visitor—what is your name?  And as if that weren’t bad enough, once the service began the Minister introduced me and two other visitors.  O God, what if one of our Protestant neighbors told my parents I was in their “Church” that morning.   Fortunately we didn’t speak much with our Protestant neighbors in those days so I don’t think my parents ever found out.  And it probably wouldn’t have bothered them all that much anyway.  They were more open minded than Monsignor or Sister Serena and Company at school.  But I hadn’t figured that out yet.  And these Methodists listened to every word from the Pastor—it was all aloud and in English.  You could listen if you wanted to.  And the sermon wasn’t some fairy tale about angels talking with the Blessed Mother about what sinners we were and how we should all be dropped into the fiery pit and the Blessed Mother assuring them not to worry, she had it under control.  The sermon actually said something about looking after our neighbor.  And they had something called “the right hand of fellowship” which was a handshake.  And before and after the service they talked to one another and caught up on how each other was doing.  Granted the Church wasn’t as pretty as ours, but the music was good and there were nice flowers on the altar.  And everyone was very nice.  I had no desire to go back.  I couldn’t see the point in going back.  After all they didn’t have Jesus sitting there in the Tabernacle, but I appreciated the friendliness even though I didn’t stay for coffee and cookies afterwards.  I liked cookies, but wasn’t old enough to drink coffee and was afraid of people asking too many questions.  These Methodists were a chatty group.
Nowdays you go to the Catholic Church and it is more like the Methodists back then.  People talk to one another.  They shake hands, or hug, or kiss.  You can’t possibly say a rosary or read a novena unless you have balls of wax in your ears.  I mean everything is in English, how can you help but understand?  To be sure, there are periods of silent reflection.  There certainly times of attentive listening to the Word of God.  There are times we focus on God—in the prayers, in the scripture readings, in the hymns.  And there are times we focus on our neighbor—the sign of peace is the most notable.  And there are times that the Word of God focuses us on our neighbor—mostly the homily or the prayers of the faithful when we consider the needs of the Church, the world, and our neighbor.  Granted we are much more busy nowadays with singing and saying the communal prayers, but you know I think it is much healthier.  There is a good balance and inter-connectedness between God and neighbor and that reminds us that Christ gave us “Two” Greatest Commandments, not just one.  And indeed it is good to have the reminder that unless we love our neighbor we do not love God because whoever says that he love the God whom he cannot see and yet fails to love the neighbor whom he can see is a liar.  As for the 1950’s—I’m looking forward to Grease but I have no desire to return to the Mass as it was on those bleak befuddled days.  While I am Catholic through and through, and would never give up on the Catholic Church, if the Latin Mass made the comeback for which the New Liturgical Movement and other fring groups are calling, I probably would find myself Sunday after Sunday in the Methodist Church, if only for the cookies and tea. Well, no only the cookies and tea but for authentic Christian worship. 

The Devil Enters the Church Through the Choir

Pastor Schaefer and son, Tim. And just what

would Jesus do?

The Reverend Frank Schaefer was suspended this past Tuesday from his duties as a Methodist minister for thirty days for performing the same-sex marriage of his son, Tim, in 2007. 
Pastor Schaefer was not always an advocate of same-sex marriage.  Schaefer was born and raised in Germany and came to the United States about twenty-five years ago.  He studied for the ministry here in the United States and originally was far more conservative in his views, particularly on homosexuality, than he is today.  Part of that change was learning that his son Tim, then 17, was gay and was contemplating suicide because of his sexual orientation.  Tim’s experience made his father re-think his ideas about same-sex love.  When Tim asked his father to preside at his 2007 wedding, Schaefer agreed—not, he said, to flaunt Methodist discipline but out of love for his son.
I am not disagreeing with the action of the local jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church—certainly any Catholic priest who performed a same-sex wedding would be held to an even stricter punishment and I think justly so.  When we deal with matters of faith, it is not a matter of I think or I believe, but what is the faith we hold in common. Faith—at least in our Christian Tradition—is not a personal opinion but a personal commitment to common belief.  Moreover, not being a Methodist I am not going to give an opinion on Methodist Church polity on this matter.  But what I find sad is that the real issue is not the gay wedding.  Pastor Schaefer is in hot water because he has tried to shake his parish out of their very un-Methodist complacency.  Like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, Pastor Schaefer has been burning with zeal to bring the Gospel into the lives of those who have been pushed to the margins of the established Church or who have found the staid churchiness of the establishment to be too pallid for their spiritual hungers and are waiting for a preacher who can make the Word of God to be something alive and vibrant.  Pastor Schaefer has tried to evangelize—to bring the Gospel—and some of his congregation prefer religion to Gospel.  That is to say they want that old time religion in which they grew up rather than a living faith in a Lord who came to shake things up in his world—and in ours.  That happens in Catholic churches too—a lot. Pastor Schaefer added a contemporary worship service to the Church schedule and this angered a traditionalist faction within the congregation. Especially angered was the choir director, Deb Boger. The popularity of the 11:00 am contemporary service pushed her out of the spotlight.  Anyone who thinks that the focus of worship is “All Glory to God” has never dealt with a Church musician, especially a home-grown volunteer for whom being an organist or soloist or—height of heights—director is the opportunity to be someone important, a big fish in a really small pond.  Like the saying goes, “the devil enters the Church through the choir.”  And somebody in that choir held the door wide open for him.    
Pastor Schaefer never challenged the United Methodist Church on its position about same-sex marriage from the pulpit, but he did try to make the Church a more welcoming place for all and frequently spoke of “inclusiveness” in the Church.  Given that three of his four children are gay, Church members could read between the lines and some did not like the implications.  Like the people who challenged the Apostles that “your master welcomes sinners and eats with them” they weren’t quite in agreement with “healthy people do not need the physician, the sick do…for I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” The righteous always feel a little left out when Jesus sits down—or they should if they knew their New Testament.  Not everyone at Zion Methodist wanted a pastor who was going to welcome sinners into their Church. Pastor Schaefer was shaking things up just a bit too much for them.  He had said in one of his sermons: 

The truth is that God, while being our comfort, always seems to push us to grow more, to do better, and to change the world. Neither of these things can be achieved by sitting on our butt in the comfort of the spiritual lazy-boy chair.  

That message is more than some people want to hear. 

Deb Boger found herself more and more at odds with the Pastor.  She was not the only one, of course, but this was her church and her choir and she didn’t like where things were going.  Pastor Schaefer found that he could not work with a choir director who was leading an incipient rebellion.  He was the Pastor and as such the person responsible for preaching the Gospel.  To be fair, no Pastor can afford to be undermined by a member of his staff.  You ultimately have to work together or you have to part and go separate ways.  It is not usually the pastor who goes. 
Now the real failure was the Bishop.  Methodists—like Catholics—are an episcopal Church.  That is to say, they are governed by bishops.  And in the Methodist Church, like the Catholic Church, the Bishop has the power to remove a pastor from a congregation for cause.  In this case, however, the Bishop told Pastor Schaefer and the choir director to “work things out.”  That was like seeing a trash-can on fire and just closing the door and walking away, hoping that the Church wouldn’t burn down.    
Faced with no other way “to rid (themselves) of this meddlesome priest” the Boger faction played the wedding-card. Deb Boger’s son, Jon, travelled up to Massachusetts and obtained a copy of the marriage license that showed that six years ago Pastor Schaefer had presided over the marriage ceremony of his son, Tim, to another man.  Now the wedding wasn’t at Zion Methodist.  It wasn’t in Pennsylvania.  It wasn’t in a church.  It didn’t happen last week.  It didn’t happen last month.  It didn’t happen last year.  The wedding was a small family affair.  Pastor Schaefer didn’t flaunt this in his congregation’s face.  He performed a wedding for his son—he didn’t lead a rebellion against the Church. He has not made Zion Methodist a wedding chapel for same-sex couples.  He hasn’t made a career out of same-sex marriages. He disobeyed but it can’t be said he defied.  Should he have done it?  I don’t know.  I can’t say.  I don’t have a gay child.  Was it disobedience?  Yes.  Should it have led to jeopardizing his ministry?  Should it have led to driving a wedge in a congregation?  I don’t know.  I have no idea how Jesus would handle this.  He never said a single thing about same-sex marriage—or even about same-sex love.  I would think from my reading of the Gospel he would be disheartened by the anger and the spiritual violence that has pitted congregant against congregant, both invoking his name and his authority to justify their position.  But who am I to judge?  I am sure of this, though, from reading Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians: You don't tear the Body of Christ apart.  The Church--the Church of Christ--has to deal with its discipline issues but it does so in a way that reconciles and not divides.  Paul would be disgusted with the sort of spectacle that this situation was turned into and I don't think Jesus is too happy either.  At the end of the day we have to be able to break the one bread of his body and drink the one cup of his blood together as brothers and sisters and that is a lesson somebody at Zion seems to have forgotten.  "I would rather be right that president" is fine, but "I would rather be right than Christian" leaves you neither right nor Christian.  Shame on those who brought this disgrace on the Church! 
As I said in the beginning of this post, I am sure that a Catholic priest who presided over a same-sex marriage would be disciplined even more severely, and given our theology of the Sacrament of Matrimony—which is considerably more complex than the understanding of marriage in most Protestant traditions—I think such punishment would be justified.  At the same time, the strategy of undermining a priest or deacon by bringing frivolous accusations against him is not unknown in Catholic circles.  Some years back an organization calling itself “Roman Catholic Faithful” led by a southern Illinois lawyer, Stephen Brady, advertised seeking personal information on various Catholic bishops that could be used to discredit them and leave no choice but that they be removed from office.  Mr. Brady ultimately lapsed into the anti-Vatican II schism and closed down his operation. But there are others in the Church who travel from parish to parish, recording what they see to be illicit practices or heretical homilies and forwarding their observations to the Holy See.  A pastor refuses to include an Extraordinary Form Mass (the pre-conciliar Tridentine Rite) in the parish schedule, and they write to Rome.  A church renovation takes out the sanctuary railing and they demonstrate.  A gay man is permitted to give the eulogy at his partner’s funeral, and they want the bishop to remove the priest.  A Protestant congregation is permitted to use the parish hall while their church is being renovated, and they call the nunciature.  It is this same mean-spirited Phariseeism that went after Pastor Schaefer—not for doing the wedding of his gay son but for offering a vision of a Church where all are welcome to the Table where the Lord sits with sinners.  And you know—I don’t think Jesus had a choir director at that supper.  Maybe for a reason.       

Feel the Feeling: American Religion

John Wesley

I mentioned in my most recent posting that religion for many in American society  has deteriorated into little more than sentiment and that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that.  I am hardly rigid about dogma and I think that our moral theology has been paralyzed by the magisterium’s total inadequacy of meeting the intellectual challenges produced by the explosion of knowledge in the reproductive, behavioral, and social sciences, but the last thing I want is the confusion of warm fuzzies for genuine faith or an emotional narcolepsy for sound spirituality.  We Catholics have a fine Tradition and while I don’t want to see it embalmed by the wing-nuts, neither do I want to see it cast off by those of silly and shallow intellectual ability.  It is a living Tradition and it must be nourished and encouraged to grow and develop but it also must be embraced and allowed to sink its roots into the community of the Catholic faithful.  Americans have a long tradition of our own, however, of confusing feelings for grace and opinion for Truth.
In 1735 Anglican priest (and later founder of Methodism), John Wesley sailed from England as a missionary to the American colony of Georgia.  On ship he encountered Moravian Brethren, a German pietist sect with its roots in Jan Hus’ fifteenth century reform movement. Wesley was deeply desirous of the emotional conviction of the Moravians but, being thoroughly English, was not by nature an emotive person.  In fact, Wesley was anything but emotive.   He was Oxford through and through, having been a student at Christchurch, and elected a fellow of Lincoln College.  As a student there he had been one of the first members of the “Holy Club”—a group of students who met regularly to discuss their spiritual life and who devised a regular schedule of prayer and devotion by which they shaped their Christian lives.  Methodism began as a pietist movement within the Anglican Church and spread to American Anglicans as a result of the preaching of the “First Great Awakening.”   
Wesley did not stay long in America.  An unhappy love affair which Wesley handled badly compromised his ability to serve in priestly ministry and he returned to England.  He never lost interest however in the American mission and after the American Revolution was very concerned that the Anglican Church was unable to consecrate bishops or ordain priests for the new nation as the canons of the Anglican Church at the time required of all ordinands an oath to the King.   Wesley, though not a bishop himself, ordained several men as ministers for those Anglican/Methodists.  He also ordained Thomas Coke, an Anglican priest, as “Superintendent” of the American Methodists.  Coke began using the title “Bishop” several years later.  Almost from the beginning, Methodism had encouraged lay preachers, but Wesley’s ordaining men to the ministry was a far more radical step.  This ordination of clergy by a priest (Wesley) rather than by a bishop forced a break between Wesley’s followers (Methodists) and Anglicans and in 1784 the American Methodists constituted themselves as the Methodist Church in America.   
English Methodists have preserved their ties to the Universities and while the preaching was often “evangelical” it was not theologically naïve.  In America the story was different.   The preachers sent by Wesley were University trained intellectuals who were men of deep personal piety.  But Methodism spread like wildfire in the new American nation—particularly on the frontier.  The movement known as the Second Great Awakening revitalized American religion and especially pushed the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian traditions.  While there were a handful of Methodist ministers who had been University trained in England, Methodism grew far faster than the ordained clergy could care for and lay preachers shaped the movement far more than ordained clergy.  These lay preachers most often had no formal theological training and preached not from sound doctrinal foundations but simply passed on the emotional style which had led to their own conversions.  Theology became irrelevant; feelings were the only sign of grace.  Methodist theologians Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon relate the following incident in their book when Willimon was preaching in a Presbyterian Church:  

“Dr. Willimon, could you recommend a book that explains what Presbyterians believe?” he asked. “Why would I have such a book?” Will asked. “That’s the trouble with you Presbyterians you’re always reading some book, you ought to be like us Methodists and feel a warm tingle down you back.”

Bishop Willimon was obviously being sarcastic about the triumph of feeling over theology among Methodism when he related the incident, but the problem is not limited to Methodism.  When I read some of the neo-trad blogs about why women should wear veils in church or even about a preference for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Mass, it comes down to what makes a person feel “religious.”  “Liberals” are often no better—every Mass has to be a “heavy, deep, and real” experience.  We need to move beyond the subjective—not to exclude the affective dimension but not to be limited by it—and develop liturgies, doctrinal formulations, and ecclesial structures that are rooted in our authentic Tradition but which can move beyond old forms to find new ways that resonate with contemporary society while preserving the essential features that have guided us from the times of the apostles.   

Worship: It Is More Blessed to Receive Than to Give

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams presides

over Lessons and Carols in his Cathedral Church

Christmas Eve we drove into town to go to the Cathedral for 4 pm mass.  It wasn’t my idea.  Usually a priest relative says mass here at home for the family but this year an about-to-be-inlaw suggested we join her and her family for the mass where she was to be a Eucharistic Minister at a special “Children’s Liturgy.”  I hate to be a Grinch but children’s liturgies are one of those things that I think are good ideas and bad—or at least painful to sit through—in practice.  And at Christmas it is just—well chaotic.  I will say that the young girl who appeared to have some developmental issues read the Old Testament Lesson and Epistle as well as any adult (including any priest) if not better.  But as huge as the Cathedral is, there were several hundred people standing for lack of seats.  The Lectionary and the Eucharistic Prayer for Children is just a bit too dummied down (at least for me) and on Christmas Eve the kids’ energy level is off the charts.  The Rector too, while he tried to do a good job, was obviously conscious of the time and the whole liturgy had a feeling of being rushed even though it was an hour and twenty minutes.  I am sure a lot of people—especially parents and grandparents of the kids who crowded around the manger for the homily—loved it and fortunately there was (despite what I had been told there would be) no Santa Claus coming in after communion to doff his hat and leave a gift at the manger.  Nevertheless, I left mass feeling I had been through an ordeal rather than celebrated the great mystery of the Incarnation.  That was me; others, I am sure, loved it.  And I have no doubt that God who delights in children more than religious fussiness (if Jesus in the Gospels, especially  Matthew, is to believed) was well pleased.  Nevertheless, I needed something more. 
        After some obligatory (but short) visits to various relatives I made it back to the country town where I spend the holidays and decided to stop in at the local Methodist Church for their Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols service that began at 9 pm.  This is a small hamlet of about fifty houses, with two Protestant Churches.  The Catholic Church was closed two years ago and now is an “outreach center” with food, clothes, and limited medical services for economically stretched families.   I tend to forget how many people in our society, especially in rural America, are still suffering from the economic crash brought on by the twenty-eight years of unsound and immoral fiscal policies (aka “trickle down economics”) that are creating a vacuum where the middle class used to be.  I give credit to the Catholic Diocese here that instead of selling the Church property they maintain it as an outreach station.  There is an ancient tradition for this in the diaconal churches of Rome.  I will have to do a blog entry on that one day.   
     In any event, I settled into a pew in the Methodist Church—a tiny white clapboard building that could hold a hundred people at the most.  There might have been forty people for the service, including the seven member choir (four women, three men), the pastor, and the music director.  It was a lovely simple service.  The music director is a first-rate organist (a little less successful with the piano) and has a phenomenal tenor voice.  He opened the service with a solo of Handel’s “Who can abide the day of his coming?” from the Messiah.  The choir did their best for seven people of somewhat advanced years.  We sang a good variety of carols.  The lessons were the traditional ones for Lessons and Carols and they relayed the story of salvation from Adam to John’s proclamation that “The Word became flesh.”
      It was a pleasant regrouping of spiritual energy after the more frenetic mass.  But, while I have often attended Protestant services, it struck me last evening how different the Catholic and Protestant approach to worship is.  For us Catholics—and I think the Orthodox as well as (though perhaps to a lesser extent) liturgical Protestants (“High-Church” Episcopalians and Lutherans)—liturgy is about “doing” something for God.  I seem to recall that the word “Liturgy” comes from the Greek, leitourgia “The people’s action” implying the exercise of a civic duty towards the gods.  For more “Low-Church” or evangelical Protestants, worship is more about receiving from God than doing—being nourished or fed as they often say.  I am not going to say that one approach is better than the other.  In fact I think we need a balance that integrates our responsibility to offer God worship with God’s anxious care to provide us with his sustenance.  Too often at Mass I think we are into the doing.  Sing this hymn. Recite that prayer.  Stand.  Kneel.  Bow.  Up and Back for Communion. I think Mass too often becomes one-thing-after-another ritual. 
     Sometimes, though, Evangelical style worship can be all feeling and no substance.  A friend of mine who is an Evangelical told me about a Memorial Day Weekend service at his Bible Church in Denver CO.  He said:
“It was so moving.  First they sang The Navy Hymn and everyone who served in the Nave stood up while the choir sang.  Then they sang The Army Hymn (God of our Fathers Whose Almighty Hand) and everyone who served in the Army stood. Next came The Air Force Hymn and all those who had been in the Air Force stood. Then they sang The Marine Hymn, and all who had served in the Marines stood.  And finally, as they raised a forty-foot American flag over the pulpit we all sang America the Beautiful. I was so moved.”    As a Catholic I was somewhat appalled at such a service—not that I am not patriotic but because Jesus was never mentioned.  This was all style and no substance—total emotion and zero Gospel. That is not what we need either.  When I hear Joel Osteen or some other TV preachers I think it is little more than positivism for bible readers and I think our faith is meant to be much more than that.  The Gospel excites me, makes me critique myself and the world around me, calls forth a response from me.  It touches my heart not with an emotional feather but with an energy that calls me to respond.   
      I think we can have worship that both touches the heart and proclaims the Gospel.  I am fortunate that I am able to participate in the prayer life of a local monastic community, joining them most days for both morning and evening prayer.  The calm slow recitation of the psalms, the lesson with the reflective silence afterward, the ability to pray so much of the office from memory or with attentive listening gives a good balance to the higher pitched and more active demands of participation in the Eucharist.  I think that a healthy prayer life needs both sacramental and non-sacramental worship—in addition to solitude and silence for meditation.  Too many Catholics are unaware of prayer beyond the mass and, perhaps, (and especially for us older types) the devotional prayers such as the rosary or the Stations of the Cross.  It is too soon to evaluate the effects of the current revision of the Mass but perhaps what we need it not so much to revise our Eucharistic liturgy as to look at the entire spectrum of prayer, communal and private, and see how we can revitalize spiritual life for the average Catholic.  
      This brings me back to Lessons and Carols.  The service was designed by Edward White Benson, Anglican Bishop of Truro in England in 1880.  Benson went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury before his death in 1896.  (His youngest son ended up a Catholic Priest.)  Benson looked at the mediocrity of Church life in his day and realized that some creativity was needed in the Church of England to nourish the waning religiosity of the ordinary people.  He modeled Lessons and Carols rather loosely on a Catholic Matins service, substituting carols and hymns for the psalms.  It has gone on to become a Christmas tradition in many parts of the world, a service cherished not only by Anglicans but by Protestants and Catholics alike.  Perhaps today we need some more creativity to make spiritual life come alive for contemporary Christians.  I don’t think the new translation of the Mass does that, in fact I don’t think the Mass, as wonderful as it is,  is enough but needs to be the jewel set into the crown of a life of prayer.  The stiffness of current liturgical practice in the Catholic Church falls short of meeting the spiritual needs of many.  We may need the protein of sacramental ritual but we also need the spiritual carbs of more scripture oriented worship. After all, our faith tells us that it is not so much what we do for God but what God offers us.  We live not by bread (and wine) alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.