“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead — your next stop, the Twilight Zone.” —Rod Serling
Well not the Twilight Zone exactly, but close.
I’ve been attending a well-known arty-liberal church in Manhattan called St Marks in the Bowery. It has an excellent priest, a rising star of international liberal Anglicanism, called Winnie Varghese. It nearly always has amazing visiting musicians, often gospel-singers, which helps. But the main attraction is that it feels inclusive, participatory. The pews have gone, and the seats are arranged in an oval. There is no organ – both it and the pews were casualties of a fire some years ago – a godly fire in my view. I consider organ music too loud, too powerful – it alienates, cows. Instead, the liturgy is accompanied by a piano.
For the most part, let’s be honest, there is nothing very remarkable about the service: readings and hymns, the choir doing a turn, prayers, the slightly awkward business (if you’re a proper Englishman like me) of shaking people’s hands at “the Peace”, listening to a sermon, saying the creed together.
But then things change gear. The climax of an Anglican service is communion, or eucharist, but normally it doesn’t feel like much of a climax; one stays in one’s pew as the vicar gets busy at the altar, and then one lines up to receive the bread and wine. Here it is different: we all come forward and stand in a circle round the altar. The liturgy is mostly said by the priest, but we join in with a few setpiece prayers together, one or two of which are sung with gusto, and it’s at this point I get a strange sensation: we are not dutifully going through the motions, but performing a ritual that feels alive. It is a bit like participating in a play in a theatre-in-the-round. There is a sense of dramatic excitement. We pass the bread and wine round in a circle, announcing “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven”, and “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation”. There is a palpable sense, that I have never really had in English churches, that this ritual is powerful. At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, there’s a sort of primal force to it, not unrelated to a primitive rain-dance. We are doing something strange, other, mysterious: group sign-making of the most basic kind.
The fellow who wrote these precious and adolescent words indicates in his article that he is thinking of leaving the..ahem..too conservative C of E for the Episcopal Church. That about sums it up, don’t it?
One final note. Just like there is no “I” in team, there is no “M” or “E” in liturgy. If there is, you are doing it wrong.
July 5, 2011 at 3:35 am
My heart bleeds Eastern liturgy, but there should be different approaches for different groups. The Neocatechumenal Way, for instance, conducts liturgy in a cozy, intimate environment, the aesthetic of which may be more conducive to worship for the individual who wrote this article. What is more important is orthodoxy. Give me a LifeTeen Mass with people who hold to the true Faith passed down once and for all any day over a Latin Mass celebrated by Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (although, to be fair, God did grant the good father's wish to die on Easter Sunday, so I look forward to discovering whether his rather bizarre theories were actually true once I make it to heaven, God-willing).
July 5, 2011 at 10:18 am
What the guy was yearning for was the Mass, a ritual that actually works and isn't just play acting. He actually voiced that yearning well – just a bit misdirected.
July 5, 2011 at 4:10 pm
I get the point of exercizing a "true charity via harsh fraternal correction strategy," but this seemed a snarky over-kill, "Liturgy for Dummies"????, and wholly unnecessary.
If he's floundering in his native waters (bad pun alert), maybe he'll eventually swim towards the Tiber, or thus we can pray.
July 5, 2011 at 4:18 pm
I hate kneelers and organ music. I wish kneelers and organ music had never been invented. I would rather stand in a circle and clap my hands really loudly. It's fun. Liturgy is boring when it's not fun. I think I'm qualified to be a liturgist.
July 5, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Geoffrey Miller: "What is more important is orthodoxy."
… a term which is Greek for "right belief" and "right worship." The literal translation is somewhere between the two, and includes the two. Clever how that works out, huh?
July 7, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Believing an Anglican confects the Eucharist is on par with believing that Carlos Castenada really did turn into a crow.
July 8, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Not Spartacus:
In some cases, it actually happens. Some Anglo-Catholic priests took the precaution at their ordination, of receiving what would objectively be valid Catholic orders, from an Old Catholic or other renegade bishop validly consecrated. The "Missale Anglicanum" actually contains the Roman Canon in Latin and English, and upon reception into the Catholic Church their re-ordination is deemed "conditional." This is not always the case, but it does happen.