I am leaving my “secular” job and now entering into the Triduum of Easter. Tonight, Maundy Thursday services begin the three days of Jesus’ Passion leading to Easter Sunday.
I have been thinking a lot lately of the appeal of High Church liturgy (whether Anglo-Catholic or simply High Church) for many people, particularly younger people, coming out of American-Evangelical/Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. There are an increasing number of young people from these backgrounds migrating to St. Paul’s and our “non-fussy Rite I Anglo-Catholic” church. I really only have to look as far as myself to see this phenomena in action. (Okay, okay, so I’m young in spirit if not so young in fact – age is an attitude of the mind and dependent on perspective – right!?)
I thought the other day, at the Renewal of Vows for the Diocese of Long Island, as Prof. Jim Farwell (my former liturgy professor) was talking about the Triduum liturgies, that it seems that a connection between Pentecostalism (or at least “experiential” forms of Evangelical Christianity) and Anglo-Catholicism is that both are truly experiential. In different ways, of course, by they still share this common aspect.
I don’t know. There is something out there right outside my reach to explain these ambiguous thoughts going through my mind. I’ve been thinking, too, of doing some surveys and asking non-cradle Episcopalians (and particularly the non-High Church) what attracts them to this kind of liturgy/service. A book, perhaps.
So, off to Maundy Thursday and the continuing and deepening discovery of the slow yet persistent work the Seasons of the Church and their liturgies, the Word, and the Sacraments have on the formation of one’s Christian self.
Daily Archives: April 13, 2006
“God and the Founders”
Here are a couple paragraphs from the excerpt appearing in last week’s edition of Newsweek from Jon Meacham’s new book “American Gospel.” Jon Meacham is the managing editor of Newsweek, an Episcopalian, and I’ve heard him speak on a number of television and radio programs. He is good, despite my disagreement with a few of his theological perspectives.
He is commenting on the current issues of faith in public life, the culture wars, and the animosity that seems to inflict much of our current and common life.
“Understanding the past may help us move forward. When the subject is faith in the public square, secularists reflexively point to the Jeffersonian ‘wall of separation between church and state’ as though the conversation should end there; many conservative Christians defend their forays into the political arena by citing the Founders, as through Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin were cheerful Christian soldiers. Yet to claim that religion has only recently become a political force in the United States is uniformed and unhistorical; in practice, the ‘wall’ of separation is not a very tall one. Equally wrongheaded is the tendency of conservative believers to portray the Founding Fathers as apostles in knee britches.
“The great good news about America – the American Gospel, if you will – is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it. Driven by a sense of providence and an acute appreciation of the fallibility of humankind, the Founders made a nation in which faith should not be singled out for special help or particular harm. The balance between the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with its evocation of divine origins and destiny, and the practicalities of the Constitution, with its checks on extremis, remains the most brilliant American successes.”
(Newsweek, April 10, 2006, Vol. CXLVII, No. 15, p.54)
The new “Ten Commandments”
An interesting perspective on the new ABC mini-series “The Ten Commandments” from Jewsweek.