We had a special speaker today in church, a guy who is now a professor at a Christian college but had long been affiliated with our church. His sermon, on the occasion of our church’s 80th anniversary, focused on carrying on the church’s solid legacy, and by and large was good. He made some offhand comments about “seeker sensitive” and “emerging” churches, however, that disturbed me.
Among those comments was a criticism of what he called a “smorgasbord” of spiritual practices. He was referring to the interest in the Emergent movement concerning ancient spiritual practices, such as contemplative prayer. Where’s the beef with a spiritual smorgasbord?
I think this preacher is most comfortable with a “traditional”-style evangelicalism. But “traditional” evangelicalism, to the extent there really is any such thing, itself is a spiritual smorgasbord. From where do we get our “liturgy” of an opening prayer, a few hymns and/or praise songs, an offering, and a 20-minute sermon? We’ve adopted these things, of course, piecemeal from earlier Reformed, Anabaptist, and other traditions — which adopted bits of their forms of worship from still earlier traditions.
And from where do we get our most emphasized spiritual discipline, that of personal “devotions” (individual prayer and Bible study)? Again, from earlier traditions, including some of the same monastic traditions that included the contemplative practices the Emergent folks are trying to recover.
Even more significantly, from where do we get our theology? We pick and choose, starting with the early Catholic formulations of things like the Biblical Canon and the Trinity, through Luther and Calvin, the Anabaptists, a sprinkling of Barth, and then on in various directions. In fact, it’s ironic to hear the “spiritual smorgasbord” complaint from an Evangelical preacher, since it’s one of the main complaints Catholics have about Evangelicals — we take bits of doctrine and practice the Catholics developed, drop other (big) bits, and then add all sorts of other stuff.
But a smorgasbord isn’t a bad thing. In my view, a smorgasbord evidences some maturity of taste. A person who enjoyes smorgasbord is able to appreciate a variety of foods. And, even within that variety, there can be harmony — flavors, textures and colors that complement each other and syngeristically add up to a greater whole. The same, I think, can be true of our spiritual lives. Of course, we must excerise discernment to ensure that a given practice is consistent with scripture and the historic Christian faith. Within that broad framework of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, however, the faith takes forms as diverse as the individual members of the Church and the varied times, cultures and places in which it has been practiced. And that, I believe, reflects God’s own creativity and love.
9 replies on “Spiritual Smorgasbord — Good, Bad, or Indifferent?”
Great post Dave! Often times I think that Protestants somehow think history looks like this: Jesus –> Augustine (or pick your own early church father) –> Reformers (again, pick the one you like best) –> modern Christianity. In doing so, they overlook a tremendous amount of material from solid believers throughout time. Would we agree with everything that each of these believers held to? Certainly not. But perhaps we would squirm more than we think if the focus were shifted onto us and they were to critique our theology and lives….
Hopefully, we “get” things from God.
Take your example of the Trinity; we do not “get” this from any human authority — we do not accept it as a Roman Catholic does as a necessary obedience to the positive law of ecclesiarchs. We believe in the Trinity because it is witnessed in God’s Word and because we have learned to know the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, Three in One.
The fact that we agree in parts with voices from the present and past is not evidence of genealogical derivativeness but of the spiritual discerning of practices and beliefs that Christians are called to make.
The importance of individual prayer and Bible study are better witnessed in the Bible than they were in medieval abbeys. Monasticism pulled prayer and bible study out of the world where it belongs. We do not “get” Bible study and prayer from the medievals but from the many admonitions to these things in Scripture.
Pensans — thanks for that little corrective — I realized that was a weakness in this post after it went up. Yes, I agree that utlimately all true doctrine and all beneficial spiritual practices derive from God’s Word and from the Spirit speaking to and through the Church. And when I say the “Spirit speaking to and through the Church,” I don’t mean that in the sense of an authoritative church heirarchy. I mean it in a more Reformed sense of the Spirit working in and through the community of believers.
An appreciation for how the Spirit speaks to and through the Church, it seems to me, is something Evangelicalism needs to recover. It’s something of a mystery: God uses people to exposit doctrine and to develop worship practices. It’s an incarnational process, not simply a descent of some sort of Platonic “Form” of worship.
Somehow, though, we Evangelicals sometimes seem to think that the Spirit only spoke in and through the Church according to the little outline Phil provided above. Or, like the preacher at my church last week, we want to think the Spirit only spoke to the American fundamentalists circa 1950. Clearly, that isn’t so.
And this makes the complaint about a “smorgasbord” even sillier. When we sit at the spiritual smorgasbord, we’re sitting at a table set by the Spirit Himself.
David,
Amen. I am happy to be at the feast with you and our Lord!
I don’t myself see the attitudes that you attribute to evangelicals. Christians who have recovered the centrality of the Scriptures as a guide to the life and doctrine naturally are more interested in periods of church history where Christians were working within these frameworks.
For busy Christians, it is difficult to draw much sap from the deadwood surrounding Christian writing in the 14c. By contrast, I find I can read Augustine without as much effort as Aquinas or Bonaventure. It is doubly natural for me to be more interested in those who are (1) easier to access and (2) more in agreement with my view of the Scriptures.
(Yes, I know there is an argument about how Augustine regarded tradition — but I think his actual practice and teaching in De Doctrine Christiana brings him down closer to the modern evangelical position than the Roman position).
As always, thanks for your thought provoking blog.
Regards,
Pensans – It is interesting how the grandchildren of the reformation(validly) find Augustine to be the father of the reformation and the Catholic church (validly) finds him to be the father of medievel theology. We pick and choose with everyone. I’m not advocating that every theologian who happens to get words on paper is relevant or valid, but perhaps some of the other theologians that are more difficult for you to wade through have points that are that much more important for us to hear (because we are less comfortable with them). Birds of a feather and all that stuff….
Great post! I was actually just thinking about the importance of mystery in our faith, which I think relates to this post in that a lot of what the emergent movement tries to recapture (by their own admission) is some of the mysterious things of the faith. Contemplative prayer being one of those things. At anyrate, I agree with your thought that our own diversity reflects God’s creativity and love. That is an excellent way of looking at things, at least I think so.
I well remember the speaker you are referring to – he taught at the college I attended in the late ’80 & early 90’s. He was definitely on the traditional side of things, but a very good teacher, nonetheless.
I am a first-generation American. My earlier formative years were spent in a Russian Baptist congregation where 2 hour services were the norm (your example of a 20-minute sermon made me chuckle – that’s how long it took the pastor just to introduce his topic). Later, we began to attend an American independent church (yours). In college, I attended a C & MA church (and also tried an evangelical Caholic church – well worth the experience!). After we married, my husband and I attended an Evangelical Free Church. We recently moved to another state and are now attending a Bible Fellowship congregation.
Why the personal history? While my theology, by large, has been formulated in the Protestant realm, none of these congregations were exactly alike. Their definitions of “traditional” only applied to their own practices. There were some similar elements in liturgy, but each had their own “must haves”.
As you have rightly pointed out, there is no thing as traditional. It’s like a quilt. There are so many different patterns, variations within patterns and so many colors to work with. There is no traditional quilt, but there is a series of qualifications that a piece of handwork has to stand up to in order to be classified as a quilt rather than a rug. You may not necessarily prefer the colors used or the pattern of my quilt, but it doesn’t make it any less a quilt.
So it is with Christianity. We have to be constantly on guard to ensure that our worship and systems of belief are in accordance with scripture – making sure that the quilt is still a quilt. Russians worship differently than Americans, Catholic liturgy differs from Protestant. A Pentecostal church service does not resemble that of a Reformed Church. Once we have ascertained that what we have is still a quilt, why quibble over patterns and colors? God endowed humanity with creativity and we should use it to His glory.
I generally agree, but would like to push back a bit. It is one thing to be a patchwork quilt–something that is shaped over time–and the sort of “slapped together” approach that some churches use. A quilter finds the pieces and takes the time to work it into the pattern. They are respectful of tradition. But too often, we rip traditional elements out of their context in accordance with our tastes. This can be crude and unreflective. So I do think there is something to this professor’s critique. While I think we should be free to explore the rich tapestry of Christian Tradition, I think we need to do so carefully and reflectively. And some people are doing it consumeristically and unreflectively.
I wrote about this a while back here.
Absolutely!! In a world where we’re always waiting for the next new thing to emerge, it’s too easy to discard the “old” for something new and exciting.
I am an advocate for change, but not for the sake of change alone. As you noted, there is no place for haphazardness – our God is not one of chaos. However, familiarity can beget the perfunctory. Too often, folks go into worship on auto-pilot (guilty of this myself, on occasion). We stand at the right moments, sing the right verses of the songs and sit at the appropriate time – almost to a formulaic standard. This can become so ingrained that it is possible to do it all without being consciously aware of what we’re doing and saying.
At our previous church, we were privileged to work with a pastor who, among other things, was wise enough to know when and how to change something to make the worship service fresher (for lack of a better description). My husband was the worship leader, I was the pianist. To promote conscious worship, we would include into our liturgy various elements from other churches: Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Reformed – you name it – but it was all done to enhance the theme for that particular service. Sometimes, we would take the music from one familiar hymn and use it to sing another. It forced the congregant (and us musicians) to really concentrate on what they were doing.
One of my personal favorites was when the sermon and the music was all blended into one entire unit. The sermon would start near the beginning of the service. Music would then be interspersed throughout the sermon to punctuate various points.
The variety of races, cultures and church practices throughout history gives us a brilliant spectrum to work with. Change is good if it serves a purpose other than change itself and is done in a respectful manner.