But ever since I came back, I've discovered that I can find God in that "religion." That I was moved to share the Eucharist, Elevation and Fraction and queueing up and all. That those creeds and sacraments move me. That they are sacraments; in them everything is brought together and I... relate.Last week, while I was catching up from the time in Connecticut, I stumbled across Slacktivist talking about stuff, because I'd been glued to Balloon Juice that weekend.
And in the comments section of one of the Ross Douthat article, somebody said it better than I:
I get really sick of people from non-liturgical traditions treating the liturgy like some superfluous thing that we should ditch to be more spontaneous or "contemporary."
The liturgy is a pivotal part of my worship experience. It's poetic, it's theologically dense, it ties me in with a greater Christian community, the Body of Christ, throughout time and space who have been reciting the same liturgy.... Even if the sermon is lousy or the hymns are too hard to sing, the liturgy is there for me.
I couldn't be a part of a non-liturgical tradition. It's essential to my worship experience. If every church on the planet ditched it in some attempt to be "modern," I'd become a stay-home Christian, because attending church would become meaningless to me.
Now, I don't have a problem with people updating the liturgy to less droning music or making the language less archaic and more comprehensible.... But man, I will cry should the day ever come we ditch the liturgy altogether.
And I know that this might mean that liturgical traditions could potentially shrink, but I take a big-tent view on Christianity. We can have different traditions and still be Christian and still work together. But we shouldn't all be one traditionless blob of generalized Christianity either. We've got differences, let's embrace our own distinctiveness while accepting the differences in others.Thank you, friendly reader.
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