Now for a slightly different Good Friday theology…

But at the ninth hour, penetrating to hades, [Jesus] there by the brightness of His splendour extinguished the indescribable darkness of hell, and, bursting its brazen gates and breaking the iron bars brought away with Him to the skies the captive band of saints which was there shut up and detained in the darkness of inexorable hell, and, by taking away the fiery sword, restored to paradise its original inhabitants by his pious confession.

John Cassian, Institutes 3.3

Ps 107:10-16
Some sat in darkness and deep gloom, *
bound fast in misery and iron;
Because they rebelled against the words of God *
and despised the counsel of the Most High.
So he humbled their spirits with hard labor; *
they stumbled, and there was none to help.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, *
and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them out of darkness and deep gloom *
and broke their bonds asunder.
Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy *
and the wonders he does for his children.
For he shatters the doors of bronze *
and breaks in two the iron bars.

Isa 45:1-3
Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus [Kyrios–i.e., “Lord”–in many Greek textual traditions], whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

Okay–most of the people who are talking about demographics in regard to mainline church decline are being overly simplistic. And I’m tired of it.

The way the debate is normally framed is this–
Conservative: The mainline churches are declining because they don’t preach the Gospel.
Liberal: The mainline churches aren’t declining because of theology–it’s because of low birth rates and non-mainline immigrants.

There is a small but non-zero amount of truth in both of these positions. What both sides are not taking into account is the current cultural life-cycle. If a family goes to church, a child raised in that family experiences one kind of church for several years. Confirmation happens in most mainline churches in middle school. Many parents make church attendence optional at that point. Teen years happen; rebellion happens, particularly rebellion against the parental world-view including–guess what–parents’ church. This can go many different ways, forms, and degrees. Sometimes it’s attending the parents’ church wearing prominent neo-pagan or satanic symbols. Sometimes it’s going to the “cool” youth group of the church down the street that just happens to not synch with parental theology (Baptist, Catholic, whatever works). Many, of course, just stop going all together. Then college happens. Most college-age folk I know rarely darken a church door in this period. Singelness happens. Ever see a single person come into church? Ever notice how they get treated? People will wonder why they’re there since they don’t have kids. Some parishioners with problematic social skills may come right out and ask…don’t laugh, it’s happened to both M and me before…

It’s not until married life and children that most young Americans really start thinking about church again IMHO. When they do, they’re looking for good stuff for the kids… (Now I know that this is a generalization. I kept going to church all through adolesence and college but then I’m not sure I’m the typical case either. And, I suspect the majority of my readers aren’t that way…But my brother is. Most of my friends in high school and college were.)

The result is, to my mind, that decline has much less to do with birth-rate issues than adolescent/college/young adult retention rates. Is it theology that attracts the young families? I don’t know–but I know that good children’s programs do. If I were trying to start/grow a church right now, I’d promote really good children’s ministries, then use them as a hook to get people in the door, then offer some programs concurrently to get their parents interested… Is this a bit cynical and manipulative? Maybe. But churches are in a competetive game. There are a lot of things competing, not just for people’s money but their most precious commodity–time.

Thoughts?

This morning–against my usual custom–I was led to use Rite I. In reading through it, I was slightly annoyed that the removed the traditional directions for canticles and put the Te Deum at the end of the list as if it was to be used second or something. Historically, the Te Deum is used after the first reading, the Benedictus after the second. But not in Lent–the Benedicite gets used instead of the Te Deum. But I never stopped to think why… It came to me today, though, reading through it. The Te Deum is a joyful call for the orders of beings to praise God–and so is the Benedicite. The second is more appropriate for Lent I suppose because it’s OT, doesn’t have the A, etc. but the theo-logic of it is the same–all the orders of creation praising God. I thought that was pretty cool…

I know that there are a lot of different reasons why your average Episcopal/Anglican lay person (not to speak of clergy…) don’t pray the Offices. I wonder, though, if it might be worth creating and desseminating an “instructed” Office. That is, a version of the Office with explanatory interpolation designed to de-mystify things and to make it easier for people to catch on. I’m thinking of something that could be used in Christian Ed classes as an introduction to what the Offices are and how to do them.

At the more Anglo-Catholic parish where M is assisting, there’s something that has always confused me. The priest–we’ll call him Fr. B–incorporates a number of things from the Anglican Missal, is proper in all sorts of ways–but doesn’t do the great elevations. That is, when he says the Verba over the bread and wine, he doesn’t lift them. Now this is odd. Virtually all High Church/Anglo-Catholic clergy elevate the elements. In fact, I take not doing so as one of the pre-eminent signs of a Low celebration. I couldn’t take it any more so I asked him yesterday after Mass what was up.

His response was this (paraphrased, of course): After thinking about it for years, I finally came to the conclusion that it presents an incorrect theology of the Eucharist. To elevate the elements is to show the *consecrated* elements to the people. But Anglican theology tells us that it is the whole prayer–all 5 parts–that effects the consecration. Therefore, I decided that to elevate them at the Verba would, in essence, be premature, and would teach the congregation an improper Eucharistic theology. Furthermore, that’s why I do a great elevation only at the end for the Great Amen–which is why it is called the Great Amen–because then the elements really are consecrated.

Much conversation ensued…

Personally, I prefer to be rather imprecise about trying to define both when and how the elements are consecrated. I think that what’s really important is that they are and that Jesus is really there once it happens. I prefer to leave specualtions to others…but as Fr. B indicates, our gestures teach our theology and attention to them is a part of Christian Formation.

Personally, I think Fr. B’s wrong. To simplify, this is the discussion of what one of my profs refers to as the “ping”. That is, is there a “ping” moment before which the elements are just bread and wine and after which they are the Body and Blood of Christ? (And the notion of a ping is clearly an oversimplification but is useful in discussions like this one). Essentially Fr. B’s saying, if there’s no ping, there should be no elevation, no congregation crossing of self, etc. Historically, generally speaking, the West has placed the “ping” in the Verba whereas the East has placed the “ping” at the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit to descend upon the elements). I put the “ping” at the Verba, M puts the “ping” at the epiclesis. Undoubtedly part of my response comes from my Lutheran upbringing. Luther dramatically curtailed the canon of the Mass as human hocus-pocus and cut it essentially down to the Verba. What consecrated for Luther was not the descent of the Holy Spirit, not 5 parts of the prayer, but the promise of Jesus to be present contained in the words, “this is my Body…this is my Blood”. If Fr. B is “right”, then he’d essentially be saying that most if not all of the Lutheran consecrations down to the most recent American books were invalid. And some would agree–certainly our Catholic friends would agree citing quite a number of things that would render the whole kit-‘n’-kaboodle invalid. But I don’t. I’ve criticized in the past a mechanistic understaing of the Sacraments and think that Grace and the Spirit are foremost in God’s relating to his people, not a checklist of formal elements.

This one situation raises all sorts of questions for me in terms of how we go about thinking about liturgy. The Anglican Scotist raised below the issue of essences. How does one determine a liturgical essence–and for it to be a truly catholic “essence” must it be agreed upon both East and West (one of the arguments for following 4th century practice)? To what degree does liturgical action force us (okay–me) into theological decisions that I think are properly ambiguous? Should the weight of history be unequally balanced(that is, elevations at the Verba have been part of the Western tradition for almost a thousand years now…if we want to take the Tradition seriously, is earlier better (taking a Romantic view that says whatever is closest to the origin is more pure and proper) or is later better (arguing that developments reflect the on-going movement of the Spirit in and through the Christian community guiding it into all truth–like Jesus said) or do we use some other set of criteria entirely?

Here’s an interesting T19 post…

I really am all for using original wordings and texts and complete texts. It’s amazing how many of our hymns in standard hymnals have been abridged or altered and we don’t even know it…

Speaking of things being changed, how many realize how much the Great Litany and the Collects have been altered? I rarely use Rite 1 for personal devotions because 1) it’s no longer the common prayer of the Church no matter how much I love the language but also because 2) it’s the modern version in traditional dress. I go back and forth on modern alterations of the Prayer book’s liturgies. Especially the excising of things that baby boomers didn’t like.

So here’s the story… A good friend of mine (anonymous for the time being) has agreed to do a class in Christian Apologetics at a Christian middle school. He’s an orthodox Trinitarian Christian but is a bit on the liberal side. Oddly, he was asked to lead this class by one of the major denominational figures in his area who is very conservative. Interesting situation to say the least…

So we’ve been kicking around some thoughts on what this might look like. Apologetics has always seemed a sticky issue for me. As y’all know, I think of myself as being pretty much in the middle theologically (and politically). I see apologetics as the playground of the conservatives, generally the provenance of those who have no qualms about shoving their faith claims down someone else’s throat. It’s a style of debate characterized more often by volume than intellectual and spiritual engagement. Of late, I tend to associate it with those former Anglicans who now boast of the superiority of the magisterium which has saved them from the horrors of individual decision making as well as the stereotypical Baptist-y apologists who want to tell me I’m not a *real* Christian because I say the Angelus and Hail Marys.

The problem is, most liberals are way too…well…*liberal* to want to do apologetics. After all, it’s the liberal wing that has made a truce (however uneasy) with relativism and once that has happened, how or why would you argue for your faith over and against any other options?

I’m caught in a quandry because I see myself between these extremes. I am a committed Christian, I believe it is the right path both for me–and a whole lot of people with emptiness in their lives who are looking for something meaningful. Square in my sights are (to use Schleiermacher’s term) “the cultured despisers of religion” who don’t seem to want to acknowledge anything outside of their empiricist materialist philosophy.

So–(I’m putting myself in my friend’s shoes here) how would I go about designing a curriculum for 8th graders in a (conservative) Christian school that a) meet the school’s felt need for an Apologetics class and b) uphold a faith stance that believes in both God-given reason and divinely revealed truth with some grey areas between where the one starts and the other stops? Here are my initial thoughts for an 8 class session:

1st session—exploring religious debate: basically, you lay out some of the major fallacies in debate and lay down some of the basic ways to create and support and argument with very special reference to what works and what doesn’t in religious debate. I.e., “’Cause the Bible says so” is *not* an argument and will get you nowhere unless the other person already accepts the Bible as authoritative…

2nd session—Me and We: what I believe and what the Church believes. Essentially, this says there’s a difference between arguing Christian truths vs. Denominational truths vs. Personal truths. When you talk Church truths, you’re not talking about subjective personal beliefs but something that has formed as a consensus over centuries. Here’s where you introduce the triple notion of Canon, Creed, and Enduring Tradition as things that the Church has agreed on over the century after much debate. These have become common property and as such have an authority rooted in Christian consensus…

3rd session—The Canon

4th session—The Creeds: Here you hit the highpoints of the various Christological/Trinitarian heresies with a schema that I like to call Divine Algebra (I don’t think I’ve blogged about this before…)

5th session—The Church

I’m really thinking the remaining sessions might function as free-for-all. Sort of theological sparring training using small groups…

Clearly, I’m posting this for your thoughts and input—fire away.

Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

[nb: I didn’t cheat at all. I found I had to put albums after the names to distinguish, though…]

How does the world see you?
Pictures of you, The Cure (Disintegration) [Ha!]

Will I have a happy life?
Clubbed to Death, Rob D. (The Matrix Soundtrack) [Yikes!]

What do my friends really think of me?
Sequence: Stillat in stellam radium, Anonymous 4 (The Lillie and The Lamb)

What do people secretly think of me?
Do the Hansa, The Cure (Join the Dots)

How can I be happy?
Faint, Linkin Park (Meteora)

What should I do with my life?
Dream, The Cure (Join the Dots) [Ha!]

Will I ever have children?
Accuracy, The Cure (Three Imaginary Boys)

What is some good advice for me?
Pictures of You, The Cure (The Secret Gig)

How will I be remembered?
Shimmy, System of a Down (Toxicity)

What is my signature dancing song?
Good Friday Responsory: Tenebrae factae sunt, Chanticleer (Mysterium)

What do I think my current theme song is?
All Cats Are Grey, The Cure (Faith)

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Boys Don’t Cry, The Cure (rare album track on remastered Three Imaginary Boys)

What song will play at my funeral?
Lovecats, The Cure (Greatest Hits)

What type of men/women do you like?
For Your Life, Led Zeppelin (Box Set)

What is my day going to be like?
Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Led Zeppelin (Box Set) [No kidding…]

Now, this is not my main home computer so the results are a little skewed. I’m really kinda shocked that so few Zeppelin songs came up—but the real surprise is the lack of *any* Metallica songs appeared since this computer has roughly four and a half *hours* of Metallica on it. Okay, okay, by way of comparison this unit does have…sixteen and a half hours of The Cure on it…

Check this out. It’s High Church ceremonial for the Offices from the 1850’s and it’s quite interesting to compare to current practice. (Things don’t seem to have changed much from what I’ve read so far…)