Following Up on Cultural Liturgies

Last week I wrote a review of James KA Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom, which you can read here. I mentioned toward the end of my review that I feel like this is a book that is going to stick with me, that even though I felt Smith overstated his point his point was still well worth making. In my reading in the past week or so there have been a couple of other things that have made me think about the importance of liturgy and worship. The first, N.T. Wright's thoughts on the subject which are outlined briefly in his recent tome on the Apostle Paul. The second, a novel I am reading about a young Hasidic Jew. 

Wright's work is something I plan on engaging with often and at length as I work my way through its 1800 or so pages, but for my purpose in this post I want to draw out some of his thoughts on "worldview" that are germane to Smith's work. Smith balks, somewhat, at the language of worldview altogether, since such talk privileges, as he sees it, the life of the mind over a more embodied, holistic experience. Wright is not entirely comfortable with the term "worldview" himself, but caveats noted he says in reference to the worldview of Paul, 

"the life of the mind was itself elevated by Paul from a secondary social activity, for those with the leisure to muse and ponder life's tricky questions, to a primary socio-cultural activity for all the Messiah's people. The interesting question of whether one thinks oneself into a new way of acting or acts oneself into a new way of thinking will, I suspect, continue to tease those who try to answer it (not least because it is of course reflexive: should you answer it by thinking of by acting?). . . Worldview creates a context for theology, but theology is necessary to sustain the worldview." (PFG 27)

Wright is driving toward something here that is tricky when evaluating a work like Smith's. While I agree with Smith's assessment that humans are by nature worshiping beings and that this is an inextricable part of our humanity, the call to discipleship within Christianity demands that we engage fully with our minds as well as our bodies and our affections. Which is merely to say that both men are right. At certain times and in certain contexts (such as Smith's Reformed world) it is right to emphasize the centrality of the body and of desire to Christian worship. At other times and in other contexts, for example a believer who only reads the Bible devotionally or refuses to deal with any "theology" cuz that's bad and divisive, it is helpful to be reminded that we are instructed to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

As to the second provoking text, this week I have been reading (and loving) Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a young Ladover Jew in Brooklyn who is blessed with a gift for painting. Perhaps I will write more about the book at some point, but for the subject at hand what stands out to me is the way the faith of the Ladovers invades every portion of their day. They pray at morning, noon, and night. They sing Psalms, they study Torah, they recite Scripture. Their days are infused throughout with reminders of their core identity: Jewish followers of the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Even their dress and hairstyle are formed in such a way as to set them apart. 

I found myself reading Asher's father asking him every night to say his Krias Shema ("Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one") and longing for that level of devotion, that simplicity of faith standing at the center of one's identity. Theological and cultural differences aside, I find it extremely admirable. Moreover, kids raised in this tradition will know that their faith marks them out from the world at large, that to follow God is a costly and precious thing. They will grow up with Scripture grafted into their heart. 

I can hear some people already casting doubt, claiming that such a system would only breed rebellion. My response: at least children raised under such a system would know what they are rebelling against. Given the Biblical illiteracy of even church-going Christians today, whose kids by and large walk away from the faith in rebellion anyway, I wonder if those kids have any idea of the depth of the tradition they are casting aside. With my own kids, I want them to see the depth of their faith tradition, to taste of its riches when they are in my home, and know that to follow Christ is no mean pursuit. And they would feel what it is to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Why the Church Loses Its Kids

I am linking hereto an article that has been making the rounds in the Christian corner of the interwebs. I recommend that you read it or at least browse it in order to have my comments make sense.

Articles like this have really started to bother me. I don't want to impute bad motives to the author or anything like that. At one time in my life I would have really enjoyed an article like this. I enjoy many things I get to nod along knowingly to, as if I am the bearer of some profound insight somehow shared by the author. But now they feel too out of touch and too simple, much like the arguments of many Republicans in the wake of the last election: it is not our policies that are turning people away, but our packaging! Maybe if Marco Rubio says the same old stuff Latinos will vote for us in droves. Christians fall into this same trap. We can think: maybe it is not that Christian doctrine is really, really hard to swallow and follow in our instant gratification, intensely individualistic, insanely privileged world, but that we are doing some easily correctable thing wrong that once we correct will lead to massive revival. But Christian doctrine is divisive and unsettling. It requires us to believe things absolutely unpalatable to our culture. And once kids raised in the church get out and fully immersed in that culture, this reality can become too much to bear.

Articles like this are indicative of what Kenneth Stewart of Covenant Seminary recently called evangelicalism's "liturgical inferiority complex." We don't have all of the fancy ritual of other, older denominations and now that we are in a brief zeitgeist where older and liturgical is hipper than newer and free-flowing we are scrambling to keep up and reconsidering traditions jettisoned recently by the seeker sensitive movement.

Stewart's example was the recent move by many lower church evangelicals to embrace Lent. I like the tradition of Lent, and generally practice some form of mild observance, but it is not the ancient practice its advocates make it out to be and uneducated laity believe it to be. Neither is it based on anything strictly Biblical. This doesn't mean it is wrong to celebrate Lent, merely wrong to act as if the majority of evangelicals who do not observe the season are somehow deficient for refraining from an extrabiblical tradition. We may wish for the return of liturgy to the church, but there is nothing inherently Biblical about liturgy. One can appreciate Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer or the Westminster Catechism, but if one actually takes seriously the prayers and claims in the liturgical works, the last thing it ought to make one is proud. 

Furthermore, this author sort of blithely accepts that Christian youth who leave the church when they march off into the gaping maw of the university do so because they were unprepared by their parents and their church. "Train a child in the way that he shall go and when he is old he will not depart from it," is a proverb, not doctrine. Want proof? How did the kids of the guy who wrote this proverb turn out? Some kids will fall away. Most will not fall away because they read Nietzsche and now harbor deep theological reservations about Biblical Christianity, but because they want to have sex and get drunk without feeling guilty. There are exceptions, but that is the rule.

Also, #10 and #9 on this list are directly the result of a previous movement to make church more attractive to kids, by the previous generation of evangelical parents that were freaked out when their kids started leaving the church. In other words, stuff gets complicated when your goal becomes not to lose the kids. One generation tends toward severer discipline, the other towards entertainment, both with the same goal in mind. Raising kids on a diet of grace, as this author recommends, is great as long as you understand (and teach them) that grace binds as well as frees. God does care how we act, even though we are saved through his favor alone. I hate how carelessly character and good works are dismissed by these purveyors of grace as if conduct no longer matters. Of course a tally sheet shouldn't be kept at youth group to keep track of how good each individual is doing in arbitrary categories, but there ought to be accountability, especially with high schoolers. I am not yet far enough removed from high school to forget that high school aged people are very stupid. Even the smart ones.

I think it is hard to know why people leave or why they have dark times of doubt. I was beset by a severe dark night of the soul my senior year of college. I still don't know what caused it or why it happened when it did. I have theorized multiple things, all possible, but even eight years later I can't say fully why it happened. It just did. My guess is these kids who gave these answers about why they left the church actually have little idea why they left. Or they know, but it is better to complain about Noah's ark themed playrooms and the ignorance of their former leaders. Anything but turning the gaze inward. In any event, the severely anecdotal observations related in this article probably should not be made too much of. The reason for most church loss is in many senses far easier than all of this handwringing leads us to believe. Our grandparent's generation had a word for it. It was sin.