On Cultural Relevance

The Feast of the Reign of Christ

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Sunday Next before Advent

STIR Up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

On this last Sunday of the Christian Calendar, also known as the Feast of Christ the King and the Reign of Christ under the more recent revised Calendar, there is a reflection on some of the previous topics discussed this year.

A number of different topics have been discussed related particularly the subject of worship: what it means, how we pursue it on a Sunday, the way things like prayer and liturgy contribute--or indeed detract--from worship of God. Related to many of these is a question of doctrine, which was discussed primarily in the discussion of the Anglican maxim of lex orandi, lex credendi. What we pray reflects and informs what we believe as doctrines of faith, and therefore what we believe informs the ways in which we pray as much as what we pray.

In the West, the Church, whether it be Anglican or any other tradition, is in decline. Of great concern to many Christians is the way in which this overall trend can be reversed. Cynically, this leads to a view that places a great importance on filling pews and not on the transforming grace God offers us. In these situations, it is easy to see how doctrine can be sacrificed. Decline in Church attendance is ascribed to Christianity no longer being relevant to modern Western culture.

In this view, scientific advances of Western society, changing morality and social mores and generally a broader resistance to (real or perceived) antiquated, superstitious and discriminatory religious views, must be addressed by substantive revision of doctrines in order to return Christianity to the cultural mainstream, and thus again be relevant.

How much further from the truth could we be? JB Phillips, in his book Your God is Too Small, once noted that, “we can never have too big a conception of God, and the more scientific knowledge (in whatever field) advances, the greater becomes our idea of His vast and complicated wisdom.”

To quote the Anglican formularies, the ordinal describes the purpose of the priesthood as those called:

to be Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord's family; to seek for Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

As the Ven. Fr. Michal McKinnon paraphrases it, “the charge of the Church is to seek the lost who are in the midst of the world that they may be saved, not by us, but through us by Christ.” How much does this contrast with broad churchmen who argue that the Church ought to conform to society in order to bring people in?

The danger here is in false doctrine. We risk an approach which sees the application of the cultural context in which Holy Scripture was written and our own cultural context being applied to its interpretation in which which seeks to shape God in the image and likeness of God, rather than allowing it to be used as a tool to bring God's transforming grace to man in a way that allows us to become closer to the true image and likeness of God we were meant to be.

Does the Church maintain its relevance by changing the Church internally in order to meet people where they are, or does the Church meet people where they are by literally going out into the world to meet them and bring them into the Church?

It is St Paul in his epistle to the Romans who exhorts us to, “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect,” (Rm 12. 2).

As St Teresa of Avila reminds us, the Church is Christ’s agent on earth:

Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

Being relevant requires many things, but it never requires us to change Church doctrines to conform to modern sensibilities. It requires the Church to truly teach the Gospel, wholly and completely, and then to practice it. It requires the Church to step outside of the walls of its physical buildings, to meet people where they are and respond to their needs in the way that Jesus not only preached the Father’s will, but worked it.

On Churchmanship

The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

O GOD, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When speaking of Anglicanism, there is broad diversity in style of worship, and even shockingly to some outsiders, of doctrine and theology. Often times, the understanding of Anglicanism is rooted in Churchmanship, a broad summation of that style of worship which itself is usually, but not always, a reflection of the doctrine and theological perspective of the Anglican in question.

There is an oversimplification here, but it can be traced back to the reality that originally there did tend to be a strong association between High and Low Churchmanship and the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic understandings of Anglicanism.

Prior to the 19th century, the practice of Anglicanism had become what today would be viewed as very Low Church. Altars were bare, priests wore very plain vestments. This reflected the Puritan influences from the 17th century wherein there was a stress on the personal relationship between parishioner and God. Ritual was viewed as something that separated the individual from God. At the same time that Anglicanism’s Catholicity was being highlighted by the Oxford Movement in the early 19th century, the ritualist movement appeared in response, giving liturgical expression to the theologies being developed that emphasized more corporate worship.

Straddling between the two extremes of High and Low Churchmanship were a myriad of groupings. Central Churchmanship involved a conservative and sometimes evangelical theology, but a much higher level of ritual than in standard Low Churchmanship. Latitudinarianism gave birth to Broad Churchmanship which today, sadly, encompasses many Anglicans.

Latitudinarianism was a pejorative term used to describe a movement that arose in the 17th century that stressed the idea of the Church of England as a civic expression of spirituality. The Church had a necessary role in the expression of spirituality, the cultivation of morality and so on, thus subscription to the Church of England itself was essential, however the doctrines, liturgy and practices were far less important as there could be, for the Latitudinarians, other sources. This was the source of the name: adherents argued that greater latitude be given to the practice of the Church in order to promote unity at a time following the English civil wars through to the Glorious Revolution of Parliament in 1688—an extremely unstable and turbulent time in English history.

There was often an association between Latitudinarianism and heterodoxy, as one might suppose given there often times rejection of orthodox doctrines and the supremacy of Scripture, and over the centuries the term Broad has tended to supplant Latitudinarianism to describe this form of Churchmanship. Unlike Low or High Churchmanship, Broad Churchmanship does not subscribe to a particular style of worship, but is generally associated at the very least with Liberal theology and often modernism.

In modern Broad Churchmanship, this has tended towards a revival of the view of the Church as merely the ‘nation at prayer’ and thus the doctrines of the Church can be informed by the philosophical values of the nation. In a more technical sense, modern philosophy, scientific understanding and hermeneutics are applies to the understanding of Scripture, which again holds less authoritative value, rather than the opposite which would generally be expected in more conservative theologies.

Because of this theological underpinning, which can see even a rejection of the statements of the Creeds, it is not difficult to see how both low and high practices can be incorporated. While there is a tendency towards High Church liturgical practices, due to the inherent beauty in the liturgy itself, Broad Churchmanship can also find expression in lower liturgical practices.

Discounting the heterodoxy of Broad Churchmanship, and recognizing that while less institutionally prone it can occur anywhere, each form of Churchmanship holds merit. The fact that each does hold merit does not mean, however, that one is not superior to another.

The question then becomes one of examining the purposes and suppositions of each form of Churchmanship, and the purposes of Holy Communion (and other gatherings) where the liturgy becomes an expression of that Churchmanship and thus that theology.

Worship is about ascribing worth to something or someone. According to JI Packer:

Worship is looking Godward and celebrating the worth—that is the praiseworthiness—of what we see. The Bible calls this activity glorifying God, or giving glory to God. “Glory” means, first, divinity on display, (the glory God shows us) and then, the response we make to God for this honour.

So when Christians gather on Sundays and in context Anglicans in particular, we do so first and foremost to ascribe worth to God by glorifying him. Anglican Churchmanship then is the response to the question of, “how do we glorify God and show his immeasurable worth?”

The Psalmists tell us all creation worships the Lord. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Ps 19. 1) If all creation worships God, how can it in and of itself become a barrier to worshipping Him? We are called to worship God with all that we are (Mk 12. 30), and through the use of ritual we are able to reflect that. Forms of worship that engage the full senses and which worship God not merely in raised voices, but with smells and sights and even our very posture, recognizing that all creation worships God with us.

It is also worth noting that Church, the House of Prayer of the Lord, is a place for corporate worship. We come before God not simply as individuals, but as adopted sons and daughters in His family, members of a community of faith and the communion of saints.

The theology expressed in High Churchmanship is one that emphasizes a high view of God and his created world, and offers it all back to Him in due worship.