Chants of the Roman Missal: A Review

With that experience as background I have read with pure delight Neil Xavier O’Donoghue’s groundbreaking and magnificently “holistic” The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011) ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03732-1. On the one hand, the author updates a field that has not been carefully surveyed since F. E. Warren’s Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, published in 1881. On the other, he models for all students of liturgical studies the integration of textual and non-textual data called for in “holistic” liturgical studies. After an extensive chapter outlining the historical development of Irish Christianity (and in the process challenging many of the assumptions and methods of earlier historians of the area), O’Donoghue lists, situates, and interprets the written sources by which pre-Norman Irish liturgy might be re-constructed. These include liturgical texts proper (the Stowe Missal with its Old Irish Mass Tract, the Palimpsest Sacramentary , various rites of the sick, the Old Hymnal and the Antiphonary of Bangor) and ancillary texts found in the Penitentials, monastic rules, saints’ vitae, homiletic materials, and treatises such as Gille of Limerick’s De statu ecclesiae and Gerald of Wales’ The History and Topography of Ireland. Having exhaustively gleaned these textual sources for what they can tell us about Eucharistic practices and texts, the author then surveys the remaining monuments in which the Eucharist might have been celebrated in pre-Norman Ireland (church construction, round towers, altars, monastic “cities” and stational liturgies) as well as the objects associated with its celebration (Eucharistic vessels, bread, flabella, and the Eucharistic iconography of high crosses and illustrated manuscripts).

O’Donoghue quotes Robert Taft in the conclusion of this wonderful work to the effect that “the history of liturgy is a mosaic of reconstruction, a work-in-progress, and it is not guesswork but only the recovering, cleaning and repositioning of each small tessera that renders this reconstruction possible.” I strongly encourage the readers of Pray Tell to make The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland part of their reading, if not to dispel any myths about a separate Celtic or Irish Eucharistic rite in this period, to observe a master of “holistic” liturgical studies incorporating written and non-written sources in re-constructing a portion of the mosaic of Christian worship practices.

Its principal author, Charlotte Kroeker, is executive director of the Church Music Institute in Dallas, TX, and a pianist who has performed throughout the United States, Asia and England, frequently in the context of worship services. Her fellow researchers and co-authors include Annette Conklin (two chapters) and Linda J. Clark (one chapter). The research method is well articulated in the “Preface”: “Each pastor and musician [leader] was interviewed individually, with the researcher using the questions in appendix A. Then the researcher attended worship services to observe the liturgy in action. A second interview with pastor and musician followed, based on the questions in appendix B. We later returned to the interviewees to ask questions about congregational perspectives, listed in appendix C.” The three sets of questions printed in the appendices alone would make the book worth its price for those interested in systematic study of congregational music leadership.

After chapters devoted to each of the nine congregations researched, the work concludes with three chapters summarizing the findings (“Commonalities Across Denominations and Contexts”), dreaming about ideal environments for worship music (“Characteristics of Special Note”) and suggesting courses of action (“Implications for the Future”). As one might expect, there is a strong emphasis upon education: of clergy-musicians, of musician-theologians, and of life-long worship music learners in the congregation. Since so much of the acrimony of the discussion on the Pray Tell blog seems to arise from varying understandings of what “the best” worship is, I found the author’s five statements on striving for “the best” worship music in a particular place and time to be quite helpful:

1. Our best is the accumulated wisdom of the gifted people in our midst.
2. Our best is the accumulated wisdom from the fields of both theology and music.
3. Our best is a congregation equipped to fulfill its task in worship.
4. Our best is the development of a repertoire of music within a congregation that has lasting value over the years, music that provides nourishment for the Christian journey.
5. Our best is the development of leaders of music for the future.

I hope these few reflections will encourage readers of the Pray Tell blog, especially those involved in clerical and/or musical leadership, to put “The Sounds of our Offerings” on their “to read” list. I also hope that this research will encourage others to refine the method and continue the project.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (2011).

Review by Jordan Zarembo, PhD student, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University.  [1]

Fifty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council, divergent viewpoints continue to shape post-conciliar liturgical discourse. The rapidly approaching introduction of a new English translation for Mass based on the third typical edition of the Missale Romanum, as well as recent decisions by two American bishops to restrict the administration of the Eucharistic cup to the laity [2] underscores differences between Catholics supportive of liturgical renewal and Catholics critical of post-conciliar liturgical developments.  Today’s liturgical contentions resemble at times the relationship between the public and private spheres in late antique institutional Christianity.

Kim Bowes’s investigation of fourth and early fifth century Roman Christianity [3] places today’s contentions in perspective.  Roman Christians in the fourth century CE encountered both an ascendant hierarchy bolstered by Constantinian wealth and an already established network of home devotions and liturgies supported by private benefactors. [4]  While Constantine’s peace of 312 returned property held in common by Roman Christian communities to the episcopate, [5] the Liber Pontificalis implies that confiscated private property frequently filled episcopal coffers at the expense of rightful owners. [6] Established domestic churches, diverse pre-Nicene Roman Christian communities, and private Christian beneficence frustrated a newly-wealthy episcopate’s domination of Roman Christian life. [7]

Fourth century Roman Christians continued their pre-Nicene focus on home devotion. [8]  The still-heeded exhortations of the early theologians Cyprian, Origen, and Tertullian, as well as church orders such as the Apostolic Tradition, all recommended daily private prayer and home Eucharist. [9]  Even so, cramped living conditions, the possibility of “profane” activities such as sexual acts, the presence of a pagan spouse, unworthy reception of the Eucharist by a non-baptized person, [10] or the contamination of the home Eucharist with pagan temple bread, [11] greatly complicated Origen and Tertullian’s exhortations.  [12]

Bowes notes in her conclusion to fourth-century Roman liturgy that “to build a domestic church or to partake of the reserved Eucharist in Rome during [the late fourth century] was to jump into a whirlpool.” [13] Bowes notes that towards the end of the fourth century, enhanced hierarchical power uneasily coexisted with the existing private donor networks which the episcopate and clergy still relied on for building capital. [14] The compact between private beneficence and hierarchical administration of titular churches [15] created an uneasy bargain. The titular agreement pitted the donors’ desire to place churches within longstanding Christian neighborhood communities [16] against episcopal desires to control the clergy of titular churches beholden to private donors. [17] Pope Damasus’s (366 – 384) pandering to wealthy women donors, as well as his determination to limit clerical control over titular finances, resulted in episcopal regulation of diaconal charity to counter clergy paid out of private donation.[18]  Bowes concludes that the fermentum rite, in which titular churches shared a portion of episcopally consecrated Eucharistic bread as a gesture of unity, attempted to solidify hierarchical control over “privately funded communities”.[19]  Perhaps one might also understand the fermentum as an episcopal attempt at the hierarchicalization of Eucharistic celebration and the suppression of home reservation of the Eucharist.

As Fr. Anthony Ruff, editor of the blog Pray Tell, has noted, “in late antiquity, episcopal power truly was in the ascendancy. Now it isn’t. Bishops’ efforts to pretend otherwise only diminishes their real power even more.”[20] Nearly 1700 years and multiple reinventions of the episcopate separate Damasus’ episcopacy and the role of bishops in the post-Vatican II Church. Even so, the complications of the intersection of liturgy and power still complicate relationships between bishops, clergy, and the laity.  Bowes’s investigation of the public and private tension in late fourth century Rome suggests that both the late antique Church and Catholicism of the 21th century have encountered the trying complexities of competing ideologies and visions.

NB: The preceding book review relies on the 2011 paperback edition.

—

Notes:

[1]  I have submitted similar but longer and more detailed review of this same book to ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University.  This longer review is being considered for the 2011 edition of the journal.

[2]  Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix, AZ and Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, WI have both issued guidelines  that restrict the administration of the Eucharist under both species to the laity.  For a critical assessment of Bishop Olmsted’s decision to withhold the cup from the laity on most occasions, consider Zoe Ryan, “Phoenix diocese to restrict Communion wine”. National Catholic Reporter, October 10, 2011. http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/phoenix-diocese-restrict-communion-wine?page=1 Accessed November 18, 2001.  For a supportive assessment of Bishop Morlino’s decision to withold the cup from the laity, consider Kevin J. Jones, “Bishop Morlino Supports New Missal’s Communion Norms”, National Catholic Register, October 12, 2011.  http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/bishop-morlino-supports-new-missals-communion-norms/ Accessed November 18, 2011.

[3] Bowes, Private Worship, 16

[4] Bowes, Private Worship, 65

[5] Bowes, Private Worship, 64

[6] Bowes, Private Worship, 64 — 65

[7] Bowes, Private Worship, 63 — 65

[8] Bowes, Private Worship, 76

[9] Bowes, Private Worship, 53 citing Bowes, Private Worship, 243 note 217 and note 218 for primary citations and secondary resources for the authors and works listed.

[10] Bowes, Private Worship, 54

[11] For Zeno’s fear of pagan contamination of the Eucharist reserved at home, see Bowes, Private Worship, 83 citing Bowes, Private Worship 252, note 132

[12] Bowes, Private Worship, 54

[13] Bowes, Private Worship, 103.  The review author has substituted the bracketed text [the late fourth century] for Bowes’s “during those years”.

[14] Bowes, Private Worship, 64

[15] Bowes, Private Worship, 69

[16] Bowes, Private Worship, 69

[17] Bowes, Private Worship, 71

[18] Bowes, Private Worship, 71

[19] Bowes, Private Worship, 71

[20] Fr. Anthony Ruff, October 8, 2011, (8:37 am), comment on Paul Ford, “The Case in Phoenix,” PrayTell, October 7, 2011. http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2011/10/07/the-case-in-phoenix/#comment-82315 Accessed 11 November 2011.

“All things considered, Americans’ religious involvement is softening. This is not happening fast, and religious involvement in the United States remains high by world standards. Calling the overall trend a softening of religious involvement rather than an outright decline is my way of balancing between… the still high level of religious involvement… and… the unmistakable signs of change” (p.54).

Mark Chaves is a major contributor to the sociology of religion, known for his ground breaking work both on congregations and church attendance. Chaves stated aim is to provide the general public with a short, aggregate, and descriptive summary of what is changing and what is not in American religion. This book is far shorter than American Grace. It lacks richness of data, congregational vignettes, and interpretation. But the dynamism and vitality of American religion can obscure its vulnerability. Chaves provides a better description of its soft underbelly.

In the italicized portions of this review, I will use Chaves’ metaphor of softness to provide a framework and sharper edge for his descriptive trends (offered in regular type and his more academic style). I will propose that fudging, i.e. to deal vaguely and inadequately with something (in this case change) so as to promote a desired image, is the better metaphor for what is happening to American religion.

Softening at the Congregational Level

The outstanding example of softening of religious involvement is church attendance. For many verbal adherence to the ideal of weekly attendance has replaced actual practice of that ideal. Chaves has contributed significantly to our understanding of church attendance. More people say they attend church weekly than actually attend weekly. They report themselves as weekly church goers when they show up more than monthly but less than weekly. This exaggeration has a very substantial effect upon reported church attendance. Chaves reports the true percentage of people in church on a weekend is closer to 25% rather than the 40% often quoted from polls!

Softening of religious attendance may be related to the decreasing number of children growing up in households where parents attend church weekly. Over generational cohorts, Chaves finds a decline of people reporting they attended weekly at age twelve and a rise of people reporting they had no religion at age sixteen. More strikingly, he reports that 70% of people who were born before 1900 had fathers who attended church regularly. However, only 45% of those born after 1970 had fathers who regularly attended church.

Congregations are making major adaptations such as the increased use of electronic media. Chaves found that 74% of churchgoers are in congregations with websites and 79% are in congregations that use e-mail. Sounds like a good idea. But are these easy ways for members to keep in touch with the congregation without going to church as often?

Increasing informality of worship (seen more often in Protestant than in Catholic congregations) is another example of adaption. These include more: saying amen, applause, raising of hands, jumping and shouting, use of visual equipment and drums (the last two are increasing even among Catholics). Is greater informality of worship a part of the softening of denominational identity?

Softening at the Level of Religions and Denominational Identity

There is a softening of religious identity. When asked whether a person’s religious preference is “Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?” more people are answering “some other religion” which they identify as “Christian.” Chaves reports “no religion” has risen from 3% in 1957 to 17% in 2008. However many of the “no religion” people pray and some attend church.

Congregations are abandoning or loosing organization ties with national denominations. Chaves through innovative random sample studies of congregations found one in five Protestant congregations was independent of any denomination; and one in five Protestants worship in those independent churches. If unaffiliated congregations were in one denomination, they would be the second largest in persons and have the largest number of congregations. Chaves reports that while annual income of denominationally affiliated congregations increased faster than inflation, the amount of money passed to the national denomination decreased in real terms.

The softening of religious identity may be related to the increasing positive appreciation of other religions. This diversity is experienced personally in marriages, the extended family, and close friends. Chaves claims more than acceptance is happening. Rather, it is positive appreciation of another religion by experiencing it in people who are close to us. Three-quarters of Americans say that a religion other than their own offers a true path to God.

The softening of denominational identity may be related to a decline of interest in clerical vocations and of confidence in religious leaders. Chaves reports that ten in a thousand college freshmen expected to become clergy in the 1960s; that has declined to three in a thousand. Vocations have declined among the most academically talented. Chaves finds that between 1973 and 2008 the number of people having great confidence in religious leaders declined from 35% to 25%.

Is softening due to some one cause? Or are many fudging in a variety of ways?

In the past some have labeled this softening “secularization.” But labels explain nothing. A more cogent sociological theory maintains that Conservative Protestant denominations with strong beliefs and values continue to flourish while Mainline Protestant denominations without a strong message are declining. It is a Marketing 101 view of religion, i.e. those who have clear and simple messages succeed. Chaves spends a whole chapter debunking misconceptions about this issue. Research has established that 80% of the difference in numbers between Conservative and Liberal Protestants has been due to the earlier and greater decline of birth rates among Liberal Protestants.

Religion is about people as well as beliefs and values. Demographic changes, especially fertility and migration play a strong role in how many Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and Conservative Protestants there will be in the future. As was pointed out in the post Secularism, Fundamentalism, or Catholicism? The USA in 2043! the demographics argue for Catholicism in 2043 even though the media may focus upon secularism and fundamentalism. Excessive concern about beliefs and values and forgetting about people, fertility and migration is one type of fudging.

Is much of the softening of church attendance due to fudging in liturgical churches?

Since differences in fertility account for 80% of the greater numbers of Conservative Protestants perhaps there is an equally simple explanation for their far greater church attendance. Chaves reports that in 1970 only a quarter of those who attended weekly religious services were in predominantly white Conservative Protestant denominations. Today about 40 percent of the weekly attendees are in those denominations. Church attendance like fertility has declined more in some denominations than in others. Why?

In the post last summer, Liturgical Year and Church Attendance,  I summarized the work of Paul Olson which challenges the strictness of beliefs and values explanation for strong church attendance among Conservative Protestants. Olson found that conservative Protestant congregations that emphasized the liturgical year had lower average church attendance, too. He argued that the way to higher average church attendance was to emphasize attendance every week rather than seasonally, and to provide high quality services throughout the year. Conservative congregations that did these had higher average church attendance over the year.

Since 1970 there has been more and more competition for weekend Church attendance from sources both inside and outside the home. People who go to liturgical churches can fudge that they attend weekly when in fact they attend weekly during some seasons and not others. Non-liturgical denominations, mostly conservative, don’t have that easy option to fudge. Is there a slippery slope from seasonal weekly attendance, to Christmas and Easter attendance, and finally non-attendance?

Liturgical denominations have some very good resources available if they wish to emphasize weekly church attendance. The encyclical Dies Domini (1998) provides a very positive argument for the Lord’s Day as the Day of Days, the Primordial Feast. Also there is extensive sociological evidence that weekly church attendance is a powerful predictor of better health, happiness, and giving of time, talent and treasure to civic as well as religious organizations. Like Conservative Churches these would combine a strong theological appeal with an appeal to social values.

However raising the average church attendance in liturgical churches would require sustained high quality services year around, probably for at least several years, perhaps a decade. What might be a reasonable outcome if this were well done? CARA claims “in any given average week, 31% of Catholics are attending. During Lent and Advent, Mass attendance increases into the mid-40% range and on Christmas and Easter, an estimated 68% of Catholics attend.” I suspect high quality services could reasonably bring average weekly attendance into the mid-40% range. CARA estimates that the present Christmas and Easter rates are close to their corrected weekly attendance rates for the legendary 1950s. If liturgical churches changed their programming for low attendance, and their attendance rates gradually approached those of conservative non-liturgical churches, our view of religion in America could dramatically change.

Fudging is a better metaphor than softening for the changing vitality of American religion. Americans and their religious leaders are adapting, but often in vague and inadequate ways. People are focusing upon their desired explanations of what is or should be, selecting favorable facts while ignoring inconvenient evidence.

—

Jack Rakosky  has an interdisciplinary doctorate in psychology and sociology, and spent twenty years in applied research and program evaluation in the public mental health system. His current main interest is voluntarism, especially among highly educated people at retirement age.

Waugh is of course a brilliant stylist and good read, even for those of us who find his personality and religious opinions repellent. His pain at the impending changes is expressed sharply, angrily, trenchantly. In a diary entry he eventually accuses Heenan of being ‘double faced’—perhaps fairly, but perhaps also without due sympathy for Heenan’s position, trapped as he was between his own conservative instincts, dictates from above over which he had no real influence, and the conflicts among those whom he had to serve. At any rate, the interplay anticipates only too well the pain and conflict surrounding the new translationese and its high-handed imposition.

I suspect that Waugh was attached so deeply to the emotional symbolisms of the old liturgy because they contained the conflicts in his personality, and enabled him psychically to survive—just as Brideshead’s exotic, arbitrary Catholicism somehow stabilizes the Marchmain family and helps them cope with their turmoils. Waugh compares the Mass to ‘a hunting-field, with the priest as the huntsman, paid to find and kill the fox’, while others tag along at whatever level of closeness they can cope with. As a new convert, Waugh was drawn not by ‘splendid ceremonies’ but by ‘the spectacle of the priest and his server at low Mass, stumping up to the altar … a craftsman and his apprentice; a man with a job which he alone was qualified to do’. They set to work ‘without a glance to those behind them, still less with any intention to make a personal impression on them’.

The separation of the Mass’s ritual from how the faithful happened to be feeling or believing, the idea of ex opere operato, was something Waugh deeply needed.  Ironically, the thought-pattern here resembles Luther’s idea of a righteousness that is aliena—otherish: precisely not dependent on moral or spiritual performance. Vatican II’s changes, for better or worse, were far closer to a Tridentine understanding of grace: an insistence that it is we ourselves, in all our unattractiveness, who are intrinsically transformed. For Waugh this shift of emphasis (though he died before he could experience the full reform) was deeply threatening: an affliction wished on the unsuspecting English by ex-Nazi Germans.

Nevertheless, though Waugh was viscerally opposed to the liturgical movement, he was not blindly authoritarian. He recognised the need for some reform in the Church. His 1962 Tablet article raised questions about the Index of Forbidden Books, as well as calling for a reform of Church courts (was his own experience of the annulment procedures coming through?), and—most strikingly—requesting a clarification of the limits of episcopal authority over the consciences of ordinary Catholics. In many parts of the world,

… it is common to see a proclamation enjoining the faithful “on pain of mortal sin” to vote in a parliamentary election or abstain from certain entertainments. Have our bishops in fact the right to bandy threats of eternal damnation in this way?

Waugh’s plea here, for differentiation in the way official directives are received, is surely well made. Whatever was said about the Church as communio in Lumen gentium, we remain without effective checks and balances, at least of a procedural kind, on hierarchical authority. There is much good will and commitment in the Church, obviously—but the structures enabling and requiring us to learn from the resultant wisdom and experience, in all its diversity, are lacking. Given that absence, the Church’s government, in our own time just as in Waugh’s, cannot easily make executive acts without appearing dictatorial and high-handed. In particular, it is hard for liturgical change—at least beyond small intentional communities—to be organic and peaceful. Real spiritual harm is done to those who need liturgy to take a particular symbolic shape. The point applies to reactionaries and progressives alike.

Probably only one, but according to Thomas J. Craughwell’s Saints Preserved: An Encyclopedia of Relics, at least seven places have claimed to have preserved the holy skull, including the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus (156).

With about 350 separate entities, Craughwell’s Saints Preserved is a whirlwind tour of the world’s bits and bones of sanctity. Although many entities note only where a saint’s body is entombed or major relics are enshrined and venerated, all of the entries of saints’ relics include at least a brief hagiography (biographical sketch), notes on associated patronage, and feast day data. Lengthier entries include what is known about the history of the relic(s) of a given saint, including peregrinations, translations, and thefts.

In addition to cataloguing relics of saints, Craughwell includes major and minor relics associated with the life of Christ—the holy prepuce (foreskin); articles of clothing; boards from the Bethlehem manger; a bench from the Last Supper and other relics of the Passion (crown of thorns, nails). No attempt is made to reconcile competing relic traditions, such as the shroud and sudarium of Aachen with their more famous counterparts at Turin and Oviedo, the various veils of Veronica or the lances of Longinus. Craughwell’s skills as both a serious historian and a popular journalist are in play here, reporting “just the facts,” and refraining from value judgments. Those same skills are also evident in his bibliography, and positively impact his economical but engaging writing style.

The breadth of saints’ relics represented in this collection is truly noteworthy. The European saints included (obviously a majority) span beyond the usual Spanish-French-Italian-German swath and include a number of English and Irish saints (not to mention the Danish Saint Knud Lavard). Of English saints from after the reformation, Craughwell notes what relics remain and where they are enshrined—such as the hand of Saint John Kemble at Hereford, or the eye of Saint Edward Oldcorne at Stonyhurst College. Non-Europeans mentioned in the book include the martyrs of Nagasaki, Uganda, Korea and Vietnam. The balance between women and men is nearly equal, and non-ordained persons are well represented. All United States citizens who have been canonized or beatified are included in the volume, and mention is made of two of the larger relic collections in the United States (Maria Stein, Ohio and Saint Anthony’s Chapel in Pittsburgh). Unfortunately, some saints whose major relics (i.e., full remains) are enshrined in this country—including the boy-martyr Saint Peregrine at Collegeville, MN and Saint Marcellus at Notre Dame in Indiana—are not included among the entries.

Although Craughwell makes no mention of the relics and shrines of those venerated as saints and worthies from communities that emerged after the sixteenth-century reformations, he does include a number of holy ones who have been glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, including Saint Sergius of Radzoneh and Saint Alexander Nevski.

This book suffers only from a few flaws, all of which may be overlooked and some of which have already been mentioned. A comprehensive index including associated locations would have made it more useful, though as an alphabetically arranged book, intended for a popular audience, once can understand the absence. More substantive is Craughwell’s remark that “[e]very Catholic church and chapel contains at least one relic—it is a requirement of the Church under canon law that every altar consecrated fro the celebration of Mass must contain the relic of at least one saint, preferably a martyr” (xvi) is undocumented and simply untrue. While such a case is ideal, highly desirable, laudably customary, every-effort-ought-to-be-made, etc., it is neither a strict requirement of the 1983 Code, nor of the Rite for the Dedication of an Altar that a relic be reposed in a consecrated altar. That factual gaffe may be overlooked in light of the overall achievement of the book’s introduction, which contextualizes the cultus of relics both theologically and anthropologically, making it—along with the rest of the book—as useful an entrée into the world of relics for skeptical Catholics and non-Catholics as for the devout.

Thomas J. Craughwell, Saints Preserved: An Encyclopedia of Relics. New York: Random House/Doubleday/Image, 2011. xx + 313 pages.

$16.00 — ISBN-13: 978-0-307-59073-2
Available from Random House.

The Worship Mall begins by setting the scene of the postmodern world. Spinks discusses that consumerism is one of the main characteristics of this era and briefly analyzes the “Mall” culture’s effect on society, in particular, characteristics of Generation Y. It seems one conclusion is that Generation Y should be more open to religion, but do not always have the background to go deeper or ask the hard questions (p. xxii). The end of the introduction lays out two claims:

1). Religion is in competition with all the leisure and entertainment industries and consumerism is both leisure and entertainment.

2). The very fact that there are different trends in contemporary worship suggests that worship styles too represent a mall, offered by different churches to suit your personal taste or spirituality, all enticing in different ways, and in competition with one another (p. xxiii).

From this brief, but engaging introduction, Spinks then leads us on a journey of exploration through various postmodern worship trends. In each chapter, Spinks provides some concrete examples of various models. He presents a brief history of the movement and then outlines their worship service. This survey is eye opening and intriguing. I think this survey provides a thorough introduction to these various trends. Spinks’ analysis is only a beginning and invites the reader (or a future doctoral student!) to take the next step. What long-term effects will current trends have on religion and religious experience?

As you can see, he covers quite far-flung topics:

1. Blended, fusion or synthesis worship (The U2 Eucharist, Duke Ellington Mass, Hip-Hop Eucharist)
2. Consciously postmodern: alt., emerging and liquid worship (Nine O’Clock service)
3. Entertaining worship or worship as entertainment? Megachurch, seeker services and multi-sensory worship (Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, Willow Creek, Saddleback)
4. Praise and Worship songs and worship in the charismatic churches (music and personality worship, Hillsong and Darlene Zschech)
5. On the margins of corporate global postmodern culture (African Independent Churches, Korean Minjung Eucharists and Kuk-Ak Worship, Appalachian Mountain Religion and Taking Up Serpents)
6. Contemporary “Celtic worship” (Iona Community; Celtic Eucharists)
7. A variety of  post-Vatican II liturgies (from the reclaiming of the 1962 rite to various pick-and-mix liturgies)

Spinks’ project is descriptive rather than evaluative, but as I read each chapter, questions abounded which deserve further treatment and conversation:  In a society that is focused on individual success and gratification, how is our worship affected? Are the adaptations to existing models helpful? Do the new models reinforce consumerist and entertainment attitudes? How is ritual affected? The Worship Mall doesn’t necessarily provide clear answers to these questions, but Spinks does provide some insightful and provoking observations on how these worship trends engage and influence the “shopper.”

A line from the last paragraph of the book has stuck with me, “ Liturgy should entice and enchant us not only to desire, but also fall in love with God the Trinity, and thereby love our neighbours” (p. 216). Although his project is primarily descriptive, this idea can serve as a tool for evaluation for those planning liturgy and seeking a place of worship.

TAJ

I am always interested to see how others rise to this challenge, whether in Catholic or Protestant settings. Worship for Vital Congregations by Talitha Arnold, although it is written primarily for Protestant pastors in the Reformed tradition, addresses the fundamental question of “Why worship?” in ways that anyone might find helpful. What is worship? Why isn’t it just as good to go out and commune with nature, or pursue spirituality on my own? These are questions that continue to arise across the board.

Arnold uses the story of a raft trip on the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon as the source of numerous analogies and illustrations with which to help people understand various aspects of worship. Here is a passage that captures the flavor of the book.

It was a pretty secular group that got into those boats in June. All of us had grown up in faith traditions—Jewish, Hispanic Presbyterian, Mormon, Hispanic Catholic, Irish Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist. The group included the daughter of a Lutheran minister, another of a Mennonite minister, and the son of a Presbyterian pastor. One woman, raised Italian Catholic, had worked in India and new Hindu meditations. But now as adults only one person besides me was a part of any faith community.

Still they knew when to stand in awe of something and how to say thanks to the universe for such beauty. They also knew they weren’t the center of that universe. For each of us, those days immersed in eternity, from the first light of every dawn through every night of stars and moon was a pretty worshipful experience.

But it wasn’t worship. Awe-inspiring, yes. An experience of the Eternal, definitely. Ritual and a sense of community, yes. In short, the journey was deeply worshipful—but it wasn’t worship. Not even those times in the rapids, when we frequently invoked the name of God or Jesus or both.

But if an experience that inspiring isn’t worship, then what is it?

The author is a UCC pastor of a church in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Influenced by Evelyn Underhill and the ecumenical liturgical movement of the late twentieth century, Arnold places emphasis on fundamental issues: the relationship between the Eternal and the creature; Trinitarian faith; baptism, eucharist, liturgical year; covenant; and worship as wellspring of mission. Her pastoral work is among people who are very diverse in their attitudes toward church. Many have fled from the more liturgical churches and are wary of traditional claims and approaches to worship. That she and her pastoral team have made liturgical flowers bloom among folks who do not put a lot of stock in liturgy is a remarkable thing.

Arnold has an oral style of writing which resembles her preaching and makes the book very accessible. Here are a couple of examples:

I think our need for worship began in the Garden, as soon as the first man and the first woman ate the apple and discovered they were ashamed of themselves and afraid of God. …We want to remember we were made for that Garden. We want to take off our shoes, not for airport checkpoints, but to stand on sacred ground, in silent awe and in celebration to praise and give thanks to the Source of this whole and holy life. (p. 30)

Worship begins in praise to remind us “we ain’t it.” Most of us come to worship from a culture that wants us to believe that we and our children are the most important thing in the world and that the world (and its resources) needs to be organized around our desires. From the opening of worship, help your congregation remember who truly “is It.” (p. 41)

Worship for Vital Congregations (The Pilgrim Press, 2007; $12.00) is an engaging little book which proved to be great fun to read. It is full of anecdotes and wisdom about worship in the life of this congregation, out in the desert of New Mexico. Not all of it will apply to everybody, but for pastoral practitioners who want to “think outside the box” it’s well worth reading.