Brief Response to Raj Gupta

Twitter trawling late at night is such a bad idea. Nevertheless this little number on the Sydney Anglicans Website did catch my attention and I would like to note a thought or two on the matter, and seeing as I'm quite unlikely to have much interaction with the diocese of Sydney any time soon, the hassle of registering and leaving a reply there seemed a bit much.

So the suggestion by Raj Gupta is that the traditional church liturgy feels a bit old hat and a lot of people don't really 'connect' with it as such.

He asks rhetorically, 'Is the central issue the content or form of the liturgy, or is issue the liturgical nature itself?' and the particular answer he provides is interesting to me, for he seems to offer a somewhat conflicted answer, whilst making much of his own experiences and the thoughts of others about feeling alienated from the old rituals, but when he at the same time declares:

"Do not misunderstand me. I am all for preserving good theology. I am all for teaching via our practices, and the repetition of them."

Which does rather beg the question of how such a thing could be achieved that did not resemble the form of a liturgy. Indeed his closing sentence: "Maybe our issue is particular liturgy forms" seems to indicate that the central issue as stated above would in fact be the former, if we're only going to be negotiating particulars.

Of course, it's a well-worn truism that every Church has a liturgy, some just don't realise it, or acknowledge it, and I think most can appreciate that certain phrases crop frequently in supposedly non-liturgical churches, and that there's a shape and an order to the worship more often than not.

So I suppose the real question comes from the idea that the more traditional liturgy is 'out of touch'. And I think going deeper, a bit of unpacking of this statement would be useful. I am deeply sympathetic to those who wish to encourage people to come to Church, to feel that worship is something they are really participating in, but the liturgy is...out of touch with what exactly?

Here I must offer my disagreement with Raj when he says Anglican liturgical inheritance only goes back as far as the Reformation. Liturgy is old. Specifically Christian Liturgy seems to be traceable back to the first century. In Corinthians 10 and 11 (esp 11 23-26) We see words that have a formulaic feel, indeed they have passed down to modern liturgy. I have recently embarked upon studying Liturgy as part of my degree, and frankly I regret it having spent a whole day caught in a simply fascinating discussion as to whether the earliest liturgical practice was to do Bread - Cup or Cup - Bread, or whether there were local variations and whether it started as something sacramental or eschatological[1] etc. etc.

The point I wish to make is that it's not out of touch with the Church itself, in preserving the ancient way of public worship (at least in the Eucharist) we have a connection that (not entirely untenuously, of course, but authentically all the same, I think) stretches right back to the first Christians, and even Christ himself, indeed. Formulaic prayers and certain ritual acts are part and parcel of the Jewish religious milieu that the Church emerges from, so we shouldn't be surprised.

This also goes some way into the possibility that it is out of touch with modernity, for is this really what the Church should be worried about? The Orthodox church of course has barely changed in worship style for centuries- so deeply ingrained is the style of worship that certain pockets of the Russian faithful in the 17th Century preferred to schism and die over such dramatic changes as the way one shapes their hand whilst making the sign of the cross and the spelling of 'Jesus'.

Yet I have yet to meet a person outside of the Christian spectrum...or within for that matter who has not felt something of the beauty of that (entirely liturgical) worship, and felt the holiness that seems to radiate as it goes on, myself included. Perhaps part of that unchanging feel, that weight of history and depth of theology gives an immediate sensation at the least, of something deep and authentic.

Understanding the why Liturgy is 'out of touch' I suspect, has more to do with the personal and particular expectations and desires of those who declare it so, which is somewhat problematic for a real faith cannot grow from the desires of the self, it can only grow by losing the self-will within the Divine, opening oneself to God that he may move in. I've personally found that by taking part in something with a timeless quality in unity with churches across the globe and through time, in rhythm with people immediately around me helps in many ways towards this forgetfulness of the self and to be taken up into something bigger, but as the article says, anecdotes are probably not the best way of determining policy.

I do submit myself to correction however; can anyone help further explain the felt sense of liturgy's irrelevance? and perhaps if Mr. Gupta is reading this himself (and I would consider that an honour) I would be interested to hear more about what he envisages coming under a 'different approach' even if it's only a sketchy thing currently.

For myself, I am weary of simply doing away with centuries of ancient tradition just to cater to the contemporary whims of what Chesterton calls 'the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about'. I think there's a holiness to it, and it binds us with the Church as a whole; across denominations, across the globe, and across time.

[1]Consult Luke's Last Supper narrative which has an anomalous 2 cups and a farewell discourse - a sign of two strands of ancient eucharist being clumsily plonked together?