"Why Traditionalism Matters" or "Paved With Good Intentions"

By Larry Beane

The above video shows a bizarre reception of Holy Communion by the girlfriend of a politician, made possible by liturgical anti-traditionalism.

One of the reforms resulting from the Roman Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was that the rubrics regarding the reception of Holy Communion would change. Instead of kneeling as the priest placed the host on the tongue as had been done for centuries, people would now stand up and receive it in their own hands, in a sense, "communing themselves." This was hailed as a liturgical triumph by those who held tradition in contempt back in the turbulent sixties.

I'm sure that this liturgical change - like all the rest of them - had "good intentions" and seemed like a great idea at the time. Of course, the practice of giving people communion on the tongue had been around for centuries, and was a way of safeguarding the integrity of the sacrament - protecting the Lord's body from abuse - whether accidental or intentional - or even in the name of anti-Christian hatred. There was a very good reason for the tradition to have developed by the Church over many centuries of practice.

And like other Roman Catholic liturgical changes of the radical 1960s, these answers-in-search-of-problems made their way into Vatican-aping churches of the Augsburg Confession.

And so, as a result of the new "more friendly" touchy-feely method of lay-self-communion, it is once again easy to desecrate the Holy Sacrament.

This is the problem with leaving the safe and trodden paths of tradition for untried roads that seem better. Obviously, traditions that deny or obscure the Gospel or contradict Scripture have to go (which includes the pre-1960s denial of the cup to the laity - that was a good change and a restoration of a better and older tradition). But all other things being equal, if communing people orally is a way to diminish and discourage the Lord from being desecrated, what possible argument could anyone make for doing away with it? If after 40 years, it has proven a failure, why is there reticence to go back to tradition?

The way to best safeguard the holy elements is to distribute them in the traditional manner practiced by western Christians for centuries - having the host placed on the tongue and having the blood served orally from a common chalice. And while it is true that a person can smuggle out a consecrated host even when it is placed in the mouth, and while it is true that the blood of Christ can be spilled from a chalice - it is simply more likely that such bizarre behavior as this video above (a repeat of a similar alleged event involving the non-Roman Catholic prime minister of Canada who presented himself for communion and may have pocketed the host (the video is not conclusive and politicians are not particularly known for their candor...) will happen by ignorance or by ignominy.

I honestly don't know what is gained by giving the hosts into the hand. For the life of me, especially in this day and age of rampant disrespect and grandstanding against Christians, what in the world is wrong with placing the Lord's most holy body on the tongue as we have been doing for centuries?

Another possible title for this little reflection: "If it ain't broke..."

Out of the Barn

The Trinity issue of Gottesdienst was sent out about a week ago, and since it goes to most people via bulk mail, it should be in the mailboxes of most subscribers within a week or two.

If you've been thinking of subcribing, now's the time. Put your name down here and we'll send you this superb issue.

RNS Report on Clergy Surplus

An interesting article referenced by Fr. Alms over at incarnatus est.

+HRC

A Church Growth Book Worth Reading

The Churching of America 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy

by R. Finke and R. Stark

Rutgers University Press

The American Evangelical church growth movement seeks to turn the church into a marketing firm for Jesus and the pastor into a visionary CEO who is held accountable for how much revenue, er, conversions he gets for Jesus. Many Lutherans have bought into this vision hook, line, and sinker - and many, many Lutherans are smaller scale stock holders.

So the American Evangelicals - that is, the Willow Creek Association, Saddleback, Billy Graham, etc. - are keen on bringing a bit of American marketing into the church. But what would happen to their theories and methods if they were examined on their own merits? What would a hardcore, free-market economic analysis of American religion show?

Finke and Stark subject the data of American church membership to just this sort of rigorous statistical analysis from the colonial period down to today.

I find their analysis intriguing and ultimately persuasive. The story runs like this. In a free market for religion the high tension "sect" always does better than the accommodating "church." For Finke and Stark, a sect is a group that is as odds with society at large. They are different. They hold to very specific doctrines very tenaciously. They are demanding on their adherents.

"to the degree that denominations rejected traditional doctrines and ceased to make serious demands on their followers, they ceased to prosper." p. 1

A church, on the other hand, is staid. They are comfortable. They line up, more or less, with the world. They get along. They don't believe anything outlandish and are part and parcel of the culture.

The leading sects of today are the Pentecostal groups. They are ferocious about doctrine: just try talking one of them out of the need to speak in tongues. Today's accommodating churches are the United Methodist Church (a very successful sect of the 19th century), the Episcopal Church USA, the ELCA, etc. I dare you to go read the proceedings from any recent UCC or ELCA convention - you'll find pages of resolutions on boycotting China and giving justice to lesbian barbershop owners but precious little of traditional doctrinal fare. They are part of the culture at large. And they are hemorrhaging members.

But you knew that today's mainline denominations were losing members at a breakneck pace. Finke's and Stark's most significant finding is that it has always been this way. The accommodating churches are always fading. The doctrine crazy sects are always growing. It has been this way since the yoke of a State Church was first thrown off.

"By the latter half of the twentieth century, sociologists and historians scrambled to explain the sudden rise of the conservative faiths and the rapid decline of the more liberal "mainline" denominations. We will show that this trend was well underway two centuries earlier. The trend of growing upstart sects and declining mainline denominations has been in place since at least 1776." p3

The Methodists are the most notorious case of a growing, doctrinal, demanding sect becoming a shrinking, institutional, undoctrinal, accommodating church. The Southern Baptist Convention is the textbook case for how a doctrinal sect does not have to give up its strengths when it becomes large, bureaucratic, and well-educated (the hallmarks of a church). The key is to remain doctrinal and "high tension" - that is, to be at odds with the world.

What of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States? Finke and Stark point out that the Missouri Synod was the fastest growing sect from 1916 to 1926. During that time period the Missouri Synod also had the highest number of adherents who rejected ecumenism (89.5% in a 1932 survey) and the greatest perceived differences between themselves and others (as measured by reluctance to marry a member of another church, receive communion elsewhere, etc.). In fact, the Missouri Synod's "perceived differences" factor was three times the nearest competitor (which, it so happens, were all other Lutheran groups combined).

So much for the hard numbers from disinterested sociologists. What to make of this theologically? That, of course, depends on your theology. A free-will Baptist will see in this book new insights and techniques to apply to gaining more converts. But a Lutheran who believes in election will see something else.

I explore this analysis based on the doctrine of election further in the paper I'll be presenting, Lord willing, at the Gottesdienst West conference in June - but here let me just say this. If we cease to look at our countrymen as potential converts whom God has called us to convince into the faith and start looking at God's own elect as the folks we are called to serve who happen to be scattered among the nations...well, things fall into place. Not everybody is a believer, nor is everyone ever going to be one. Narrow is the gate and all that. So I'm not called to minister unto a huge population of "the lost." I'm called by God through the Church to minister to his elect, who happen to be scattered among the nations and will be called through the Word. And what do his elect like? What does God expect me to give them? Oddly enough - just those things that Finke and Stark identify as the marks of a strong, vibrant, and growing religious group: doctrine and a marked difference from the world around us.

Could it be that the sin we are committing is not some imagined lack of preaching the Gospel accessibly and relevantly to the lost, but rather driving God's elect into the arms of Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism because we've turned down the intensity of our Lutheranism in a vain attempt to appeal to the world?

+HRC

Liturgy as Beacon for God's Elect Conference

One Day Gottesdienst Conference

Liturgy as the Beacon for God's Elect

Friday, June 18^th, 2010

Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Ravenna, NE

To register, email Fr. Micah Gaunt: blcpastor AT charterinternet.com

Just a few short weeks until the one-day conference and liturgical workshop in Ravenna, NE. The morning session will be a paper and discussion, the afternoon will be a detailed look at and how-to session on the ceremonies of a traditional Lutheran Divine Service.

It is a proverbial truth that the seminaries (including field work assignments and vicarage) do not, on the whole, do a good job of preparing pastors to conduct the Divine Service. That is, they spend very little time on the actual rubrics either eschewing them as “mere chancel prancing” or taking it for granted that seminarists will pick it up on vicarage. This leads to a common complaint (and not only among the newly ordained): I want to conduct a reverent, traditional Lutheran Divine Service, but I don't know even know where to look. . .

Participants in the conference will receive a print out of the Common Service with the traditional rubrics noted in the margins (an ersatz altar book with rubrics) as well as a sneak peek at Daily Divine Service Book: A Lutheran Daily Missal (publication by early 2011, we hope!).

The morning's paper will ask what the doctrine of election has to do with worship and mission – and deconstruct the functional Arminianism that seems to be dominant in today's North American Lutheranism. Here's a teaser trailer and the full schedule:

We are the living among the dying. We are those who know the cure to the world's ailment of sin. So it is up to us spread the message of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, what judgment will come upon us if we refuse! Just think of how many will go down to hell this day. I wonder how many of them could have been saved if we had just done a little more. How many would be entering the pearly gates if each of our members had just told one more person about Jesus? How many could we save if we were willing to give up our sacred cows and make Sunday worship speak to the outsider a little more rather than just to the insider? How many people have needlessly been turned off of the Gospel because of stodgy Lutheran hymns and cushionless pews? If the lost shall be saved, then we must repent, rethink, and reform what worship in our midst has been. We must open the doors, both physically and metaphorically, so that the seeking unbeliever will be drawn in and hear the Gospel and perhaps be saved.

Sound familiar? You've heard one version or another of that speech from Synod and district officials from time immemorial. No doubt you've heard that speech and felt a twinge of guilt: am I doing enough for the lost? On the other hand, if you've bothered to come here on a Friday in June, when sensible pastors are fishing, you have probably also not quite been comfortable with that speech. Is the liturgy really an impediment to missions? Will a praise band really save more people? Something just seems off with this line of reasoning. On the one hand, doesn't God tell us to go forth and preach the Gospel to all nations? “Woe to me if I do not preach” and all that. And surely we've got to be intelligible so that others can understand us. “All things to all men that I might save some” - right?

Today I'm going to try to untangle those questions, clear up the modern Lutheran confusion about worship and missions, and try to built an authentically Lutheran theology and practice of worship and mission based on the central doctrine of the Scriptures: salvation by grace alone, also known as the doctrine of election.

8:30 Matins

9:00 registration, coffee and rolls.

9:15 First Presentation: The Liturgy as Beacon for God's Elect

10:30 Break & discussion

11:30 Lunch

12:15 Walk through the rubrics

1:30 Break

2:00 Divine Service

3:00 Beer

+HRC