At Play in the House of the Lord. Why worship matters

Christians exhibit a peculiar double-mindedness on the subject of worship. Nothing is as likely to stir passions in local congregations as a proposal to change the form of worship. Even modest modifications—the introduction of a hymn in a church that sings all praise songs, for example—can lead to bitter divisions. And yet at the same time, there is abundant evidence that the church regards worship as a matter of secondary importance. The typical survey of the history of Christianity can go on for several hundred pages with only a passing reference to the worship practices of earlier Christians. Many works in systematic theology probe the implications of a given doctrine for personal and social ethics while entirely neglecting its implications for worship. Many Christian artists, musicians, and architects save their best work for contexts outside the worshiping assembly. And worship courses often function as the plankton on the seminary curricular food chain.

These new works by Bernhard Lang, Frank Senn, Geoffrey Wainwright, and James White move in a decidedly different direction. As Lang notes, this is a topic “too intriguing, too puzzling, and too beautiful to be passed over in silence.”

1.The first contribution of these four books is their impressive survey of the dazzling variety of Christian worship practices. Many of Christianity’s most poignant and colorful moments have happened when believers have gathered for worship.

Imagine being served daily doses of Origen’s allegorizing exegesis in the schoollike daily worship services in third-century Caesarea. Origen, Lang teaches us, was a pioneer of exegetical preaching, working through the entire Old Testament every three years. (Wouldn’t Zwingli have been pleased?)

Imagine the terror of standing alongside the self-assured Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing, whose destructive axe undid centuries’ worth of painstaking artistic craftsmanship in a fortnight. At least, White reminds us, Dowsing appreciated the intrinsic power of artistic works to shape the piety of a community, in contrast to many today who view liturgical art as nothing more than innocuous decoration.

Imagine being overcome by the effervescent energy of Shaker prophetess Ann Lee, whose “whirling” followers made liturgical dance a community event. As Lang remarks, worship in North America can be as ecstatic as any the world has seen.

Imagine the joy and fervor of Roman Catholic worshipers in Zaire who, following the reforms of Vatican II, have developed a vernacular, indigenous Missal for the Dioceses of Zairethat unites the solemn recitation of the ancient Eucharistic prayer with exuberant congregational dance and vivid African poetic images. The result, Wainwright observes, is a “splendidly Nicene affirmation … in African terms.”

No other religion in recorded history features such a dazzling variety of ritual practices: everything from elaborate Byzantine vigils to exuberant Methodist frontier camp meetings; from the Dionysian ecstasy of the Toronto Laughter to the Apollonian reserve of a Presbyterian sermon. Everything from the trancelike seizures of Maria Woodworth-Etter to the precise rhetorical patterns of the Book of Common Prayer; from the brilliance of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to the kitsch of burlap banners. Everything from the serene beauty of a Palestrina motet to the rugged earthiness of an Appalachian gospel quartet; from the sophisticated majesty of Chartres to the folk art that adorns a thatched-roof sanctuary; from the enforced silence of Quaker corporate mysticism to the sustained exuberance of an African American ring shout sermon.

These four books feature a common desire to look at this landscape with a wide-angle lens. After a whirlwind tour that crosses continents and centuries, the thoughtful reader will come away with a deepened sense of the variety and complexity of Christian worship.

This acknowledgment of diversity is a sign of the maturing of the academic discipline of liturgical studies. These works demonstrate that the academic study of Christian worship need not be limited to critical editions of medieval missals. The discipline of liturgical studies is large enough to encompass sociologists who compare patterns of liturgical leadership in Africa and Southeast Asia, intellectual historians who study the philosophical underpinnings of the rise of baroque architecture or music, social historians working on the cultural and economic dimensions of Methodist quarterly meetings or Pentecostal revivals, and theologians working on the liturgical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity.

This broad view also provides a sturdy basis from which to examine the complexities of the present period of liturgical change. With the possible exception of the first centuries after Christ, never before has the church been reforming its liturgy in so many directions at once. Some churches have rediscovered historic patterns of worship; many others have intentionally developed styles labeled “contemporary” or “alternative.” While some churches are busy buying brand-new hymnals, others are discarding theirs, not to be replaced.

Whether a church is urban or rural, large or small, endowed with many musical and financial resources or few, whether it is Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Roman Catholic, independent, or just about anything else, it is probably dealing with the pressure of change. Some of these changes are so significant that major national media, including ABCNews, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, and Newsweek, have devoted significant energies to analyzing them.1 Some churches are approaching such changes eagerly and expectantly; others are embroiled in “worship wars.”2

2. Negotiating these currents of change requires the kind of discernment and perception that can only be sharpened by careful consideration of how generations of past Christians have rendered faithful worship in countless cultural settings. Fortunately, in the hands of these skilled interpreters, liturgical history becomes not only instructive but also engaging. The lessons they teach are crucial for understanding the meaning and significance of Christian worship. Consider two of them.

First, they teach us that liturgy is a universal phenomenon. Despite the protest of Puritan divine John Cotton (“ceremonies wee use none”), even the most stubbornly iconoclastic, antiliturgical community soon falls into a regular rhythm in times and modes of corporate prayer. Even the most spontaneous service often follows a predictable, if not prescribed, structure. Saint Peter’s Basilica has its liturgy, but so does Willow Creek Community Church—and so did Azusa Street. See any Christian assembly through the eyes of a cultural anthropologist and you will notice deep patterns of actions and community relationships that are routine, even if not explicitly prescribed. An underlying assumption of all four of these books might be stated this way: Every community develops deep patterns for corporate worship. The question every community needs to ask is whether its patterns of prayer make luminous the full gospel of Christ and enable a broad range of people to respond with heart, soul, and voice.

Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship
by Bernhard Lang
Yale Univ. Press
527 pp.; $40

Second, they teach us that it is remarkably hard for Christian worshipers to live without a language that is, in some sense, sacramental. Worshipers in nearly every Christian tradition experience some of what happens in worship as divine encounter. Differences in Christian worship arise not so much from whether or not God is understood to be present, but rather in what sense.

Those who mock supposedly simplistic theories of sacramental realism at the Lord’s Supper wind up preserving sacramental language for preaching or for music. Speaking only somewhat simplistically: the Roman Catholics reserve their sacramental language for the Eucharist, Presbyterians reserve theirs for preaching, and the charismatics save theirs for music. In a recent pastors’ conference, one evangelical pastor solicited applications for a music director/worship leader position by calling for someone who could “make God present through music.” No medieval sacramental theologian could have said it more strongly. Dare we call this “musical transubstantiation”?

Only the Enlightenment stands as a counterexample to this thesis. All four of these books disparage the Enlightenment, suggesting that it robbed the church of the sense that God acts in and through the public assembly of Christian people for worship. As White notes, Enlightenment Christians viewed the sacraments as mere “infrequent pious memory exercises.” For Enlightenment Christians, a worship service was successful if you left it with one good new thought.

In contrast, postmodern liturgical reform is assiduously focused on the experience of God’s presence. Might this be the unifying theme in such seemingly heterogeneous forms of worship as the richly symbolic Orthodox liturgies, the demonstrative physicality of Pentecostal worship, the shock tactics of high-tech multimedia presentations, and the mantralike refrains of Taize?

3.Three of these works come from familiar sources. Geoffrey Wainwright is a British Methodist by birth who has taught theology on four continents and is currently professor of theology at Duke University Divinity School. He writes as a seasoned theologian and ecumenist, self-described as an “evangelical, orthodox, and catholic” Christian. Worship with One Accord is a collection of essays that reflects Wainwright’s explorations since the publication of his magisterial systematic theology, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life. These essays investigate such diverse topics as Irish penitential rites, liturgical reforms in Australia, the work of French patristic and liturgical scholar Jean Danielou, Trinitarian liturgical theology, Wesleyan sacramental theology, liturgical inculturation, and the relationship between worship and ethics. Wainwright’s overarching argument is that liturgical renewal is a necessary ingredient in the quest for Christian unity. His goal is to promote what Rome’s Edward Cardinal Cassidy calls “the cause of reunion in historic Christianity.”

James F. White is a Methodist elder who teaches liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. Christian Worshipis a collection of essays chosen from among his 120 or so published essays from the past 35 years. As with his earlier volumes—Protestant Worship, Roman Catholic Worship, A Brief History of Christian Worship, and Introduction to Christian Worship—White is at his best when summarizing complex movements and figures into memorable, popular accounts that are accurate as well as accessible. Add to this White’s gift, rarely evidenced in liturgical historiography, for remaining hospitable when writing about movements and traditions other than his own and it is no wonder that his works are ubiquitous on syllabi in seminary worship courses.

White’s work also reflects a lifelong interest and expertise in liturgical art and architecture. After reading White, the observant reader becomes something of an amateur architectural connoisseur, noting such delicious historical ironies in Anytown, USA, as the presence of a Georgian Roman Catholic church alongside a Baptist church in Gothic style.

Frank Senn is a Notre Dame graduate and Lutheran pastor from Evanston, Illinois. His Christian Liturgyis a chronological liturgical history of encyclopedic dimensions. With its introductory chapters on ritual theory, its comprehensive view of liturgical history from Acts 2 to Vatican II, Senn’s work might be thought of as a one-volume summary of a Notre Dame Ph.D. in liturgical studies.

Senn clearly sees the world through Lutheran spectacles (five of six chapters on the Reformation period deal primarily with Lutheran churches), and in contrast to White’s neutrality, Senn inserts more critical commentary and prescriptive directives in his narrative. He promotes robust symbolic movement, gesture, and action, as well as the traditional structure or ordoof Western liturgy. Correspondingly, he critiques North American revivalism in all its forms from Whitefield to Finney to Willow Creek. The result is always thought-provoking, though the book does feature occasional oddities, such as placing an analysis of Gothic architecture in a chapter with the loaded title “Medieval Liturgical Deteriorization.”

Taken together, these three volumes represent what has come to be called the Liturgical Movement among Protestants.3Senn, White, and Wainwright are all active participants in ongoing conversations about liturgical reform among Protestants that have issued from these ecumenical conversations.

The volcanic energy that led up to the enormous changes in Roman Catholic worship promulgated at Vatican II also sent aftershocks throughout the Protestant world. As White observes, Vatican II not only led to Protestantlike reforms in the Roman Catholic church but also provided a catholic agenda for Protestant liturgical renewal. As Wainwright describes it, this movement is “a common return to a shared tradition” (note again his emphasis on ecumenicity).

Symbols of this movement abound: the historical and ecumenical influence on the new worship books of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches, the ecumenical acceptance of the Revised Common Lectionary (and the subsequent boom in the publication of lectionary-based sermon helps and worship resources), the genesis and growth of the North American Academy of Liturgy, and the growth of academic programs in the study of worship at the University of Notre Dame, Drew University, and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.4

The achievements of the Liturgical movement are impressive: mainline preachers concerned about Scripture, Catholics concerned about preaching, Protestants concerned about sacraments, and evangelicals concerned about the early church. The movement has also generated some rich historical ironies. Consider the growth of the number of Mennonites, Brethren, and Nazarenes meeting in lectionary study groups, lighting Advent candles, or holding Ash Wednesday services. And consider the recent spate of works by Roman Catholic liturgists and theologians that argue for baptism by immersion.5So strong is this liturgical convergence in some congregations that the only observable difference, White quips, is that “Catholics use real wine, while Protestants use real bread.”

In sum, these three works represent the maturing fruit of the Liturgical Movement among Protestants.

4. These works are joined by a bold and vast work by the German scholar Bernhard Lang. Not a household name in North American circles, Lang brings to the conversation new interpretive categories and a wealth of rarely discussed historical examples.

Sacred Games is a phenomenological study of the “ritual idiom of Christianity.” Lang organizes the book as a series of “six interpretive essays” based on a “typology of ritual acts” that identifies six paradigmatic, widely observable actions, six “sacred games”: praise, prayer, sermon, sacrifice, sacrament, and spiritual ecstasy. Unlike the typical chronological approach to liturgical history, Lang’s book is topically organized, with a dizzying array of historical vignettes illustrating each of his six categories. This structure frees Lang from the need to write a comprehensive chronological history (like Senn’s). Lang complements this structure with a cool, dispassionate style that is neither impressed nor depressed by the peaks and valleys of liturgical history.

The virtues of the analysis are many. For one, Lang laudably treats biblical descriptions of liturgical events as part of Christian liturgical history, refusing to drive a wedge between the work of biblical and patristic scholars. For another, Lang works with an exemplary awareness of the whole sweep of the history of Christianity. He surveys a history that spans from ancient Greek and Hebrew culture down to our own day (where else could you find well-documented analysis of both Augustine and the Assemblies of God in the same volume?). Sacred Games is a synthetic work of breathtaking scope. It succeeds in demonstrating how large and complex the study of liturgy is.

These strengths are diluted by some uneven treatments of historical data. Lang perpetuates the odd tendency of some Jesus Seminar scholars to speculate about the ritual life of Jesus. (Why would a scholar who approaches the history of Origen or Luther or Plato or Finney with a conservative minimalist treatment of historical data become so speculative when treating the history of Jesus?) Lang suggests, for example, that the Lord’s Prayer would make more sense if attributed to John the Baptist. He softens such claims with caveats about their speculative nature, but hardly answers why such speculation might be necessary in the first place.

Christian Worship in
North America:
A Retrospective, 1955-1995
by James F. White
Liturgical Press
336 pp.; $29.95, paper

Worship with One Accord:
Where Liturgy and
Ecumenism Embrace
by Geoffrey Wainwright
Oxford Univ. Press
276 pp.; $39.95

Christian Liturgy:
Catholic and Evangelical
by Frank C. Senn
Fortress Press
747 pp.; $39.95

Alongside Lang’s historical, comparative analysis runs a deeply theological concern. In the all-too-brief conclusion of the work, he surmises that “two fundamental attitudes govern behavior in Christian worship.” According to one view, God appears as the distant, majestic Father who must be approached with solemnity, ceremony, and awe. According to the other, God appears as a benign, understanding, friendly spirit with whom people can establish a close relationship.

Like a game—or a good novel—worship enfolds us for a time into a way of seeing the world. It is the one hour in the week when an entire community acknowledges a world where God rules, where evil is named, where hope abounds, where the Spirit is on the move.
Like a game, worship can only be learned by doing. A long afternoon of reading the baseball rulebook will not help you execute a well-placed bunt. So too, hours of catechetical instruction can not fully prepare you for the joy and mystery of participation at the Lord’s Table.
Finally, like a good game, worship is joyful business. As Romano Guardini has observed, worship at its best features “a sublime mingling of profound earnestness and divine joyfulness.”

Here then are four books that depict worship as playful but not trifling.

John D. Witvlietdirects the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College.

1. See, for example, Gustav Niebuhr and Paul Goldberger, “Megachurches,” a four-part series in the New York Times, April 16, 18, 20, and 29, 1995; Charles Truehart, “Welcome to the Next Church,” Atlantic Monthly (August 1996), pp. 37-57; and Mary Rourke, “Redefining Religion in America,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1998.

2. This was the title of a theme issue of Dialog, Vol. 33 (Summer 1994).

3.For a description of this as a distinct movement, see John Fenwick and Bryan Spinks, Worship in Transition: The Liturgical Movement in the Twentieth Century (Continuum, 1995), and Kathleen Hughes, How Firm a Foundation: Voices of the Early Liturgical Movement (Liturgy Training Publications, 1990).

4. See Book of Common Worship (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993) and The United Methodist Book of Worship (United Methodist Publishing House, 1992), For more on the graduate program at Notre Dame, see James F. White, “Thirty Years of the Doctoral Program in Liturgical Studies at the University of Notre Dame, 1965-1995,” in Nathan Mitchell and John F. Baldovin, eds., Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B. (Liturgical Press, 1996).

5.See, for example, Regina Kuehn, A Place for Baptism (Liturgy Training Publications, 1992), and S. Anita Stauffer, Re-examining Baptismal Fonts:
Baptismal Space for the Contemporary Church (Liturgical Press, 1991).