Saturday, June 07, 2003

CAMPAIGN TO REMOVE SHAPE AND TEXT

On Page 212 of the Blue Book for the 2003 General Convention in the report of the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music (link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) we read:

“Resulting from the diocesan and congregational surveys and from the Standing Commission’s discussion with communities representing a variety of cultures in our church, the following recommendations are made…Launch a diversified campaign inviting the whole church to move beyond worship that is primarily shaped and bound by text into worship that is intentionally open to the renewing power of God transforming the world.”

Then there are further recommendations for the fulfilment of this basic one.

In order to understand how revolutionary this proposal is we need to recall.

(a) that the whole of the Anglican tradition of worship since 1549 has been based on The Book of Common Prayer and its texts. By having an excellent text, worshippers have been taught and encouraged to rise with and via the text in the Spirit and through Jesus Christ to the Father in worship in spirit and in truth.

(b) Worship that is without text and shape is possible but extremely difficult for mortals to engage in successfully, but it has never been part of the Anglican Way of Reformed Catholic Faith and Practice.

In order to see the determination of the revolutionaries and innovators we need to notice that they desire “to launch a diversified campaign” – that is a kind of spiritual warfare to overturn enemy structures. However, “campaign” is softened by the use of “invite”!

But whatever words are chosen, here is a total revolution proposed. Anglicans are being called to give up the guidance of a prepared text (be it the classic text of the BCP 1928 or the revised texts of the 1979 prayer book) in order to be open to the immanent God who is supposedly present in the reforming of this world. In contrast, the God to whom the classic texts point is the God of glory and majesty who while being with us in this world as we witness for Him also calls us out of its ethos and sin to look for and wait for a world that is “above” and “supernatural” and is “the kingdom of heaven.”

We have had campaigns in the recent pas in the ECUSA to reject the shape and texts of the classic Prayer Book (1662 & 1928 editions) to be replaced with the new shape (cf. Dix, Shape of the Liturgy) and with varied modern ingredients to put into the new shape – even as we have had campaigns to incorporate feminist, inclusive, lesbigay, multicultural, multigenerational & other concerns. Since the innovatory 1979 prayer book we have had a host of further services approved by Gen Conv. to incorporate these concerns, and now it seems we enter a new and uncharted era.

Now we are to trust in God’s power (to be differentiated from the Zeitgeist?) to worship God (the Holy Trinity of biblical revelation? Or a vague Unitarianism?) without reliance on texts and presumably without reliance on the doctrinal content of the Anglican Formularies.

We know from observing pentecostalist, charismatic and free church congregations that claims to be open to the Spirit and to God’s concerns often mean no more than being led by the emotions and feelings and/or by the convictions of leaders or mentors or dominant personalities. Texts are used by the better congregations!

The Standing Commission is calling in essence for a campaign for the abolition of the historic Anglican Way and for the ECUSA resources (land, buildings, money, institutions etc) to be devoted to a vague kind of experiental Unitarianism or Pantheism or Panentheism that sees the Christian hope primarily in this worldly terms.

Be sure to pray the classic LITANY.

[Be sure also this Pentecost season to hear the classic C of E Homily for this Festival -- hear it read on the Biddulph website www.christchurch-biddulph.fsnet.co.uk]

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)

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