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… I mean really write. Like this - beautiful.

Worship and Irrelevance

Reading through the very good April 08 edition of the URC’s magazine Reform, my eye stopped on a word that recurred in a couple of items:

“One of the ways we can attract young people to church is by making our worship relevant and contemporary.”

“We worshipped, prayed, studied Bible passages and learnt a little more about God, but we did it in a way so much more relevant to 21st century culture.”

Hmm. Now what is it about these remarks that makes me hesitate?

Certainly I’m aware of the church’s tendency to fall into the trap of tradition, the comforts of the familiar hymn sandwich and from-the-front monologue. Certainly I think it’s important for us to critique these patterns: a healthy dose of iconoclasm is vital in every age, rather than the unthinking perpetuation of ecclesial forms that remain mysterious to the uninitiated.

So whilst the “traditional” model may still be my own comfort zone, I’m actually all for Café Church, Messy Church, Liquid Church, Sk8r Church, in fact any church but empty church.

But I still don’t think I’m quite ready to subscribe to the call to “make worship relevant”. Because it seems to me that this call, well-intentioned as it undoubtedly is, relies upon a presupposition that merits closer attention.

OK, of course there’s a need to connect to people where they’re at, to give people assurance that their concerns and interests matter. Of course we need to challenge any misconception that church concerns spiritual matters entirely disconnected from the “real world”.

But then, didn’t Jesus say something about leaving everything behind to follow him? Wasn’t his arrival in Jerusalem marked by an overturning of ingrained and culturally prevalent expectations of a warrior-king Messiah? And speaking of overturning, when he threw the traders’ tables over in the Temple complex wasn’t this a demand to liberate his Father’s house from its thrall to the prevailing culture?

Insofar as worship is offered by people living in today’s world with today’s tastes and technologies, our worship can and (one might say) should be contemporary. But is that the same as “making worship relevant”? Or isn’t it rather a function of worship to be profoundly irrelevant – to proclaim that, far from being a mere lifestyle choice, worship brings us face-to-face with realities that relativise all our lifestyle choices?

When the Westminster Divines proclaimed that our chief end was “to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever”, I have a hunch that they were referring to God’s pleasure, not ours (grammar-geek note: cf. the way we use words such as enchant, encircle etc.). If our concern is to package and deliver worship in such a way that it slots into the cultural milieu utterly seamlessly, is there not a danger that we have put the cart before the horse? When another article in Reform asserts that “Worship works partly because of our investment in [musicians and hardware]” (my emphasis), hasn’t our perspective become slightly skewed, quasi-Pelagian even?

With Tim Hughes (also in April’s Reform), I would affirm that our songs “mean very little to God if we’re not living lives of worship” – which I take to encompass a way of life that may at times sit ill-at-ease with prevailing cultural mores. In the world but not of it, as someone once said.

And that, for me, suggests that in the final analysis we can no more make worship relevant to our culture than we can make God irrelevant to our world.

Please, Professor Dawkins, can I be a cultural atheist?

I wrote this open letter back in December 2007, in response to Richard Dawkins’ remarks about singing Christmas carols. Richard at Connexions kindly posted it at the time, as I was then blogless.

Dear Professor Dawkins

I think we can agree that this is contextually a post-Christendom country.

And yes, like everybody else I enjoy watching The Golden Compass (or reading The Da Vinci Code, or singing along to that old jazz number It Ain’t Necessarily So, or countless other activities that would seem to reflect a sceptical approach to religious faith and its institutions). Furthermore, at this time of year I’m as likely as the next person to overindulge in mince pies and mulled wine, to get caught up in the commercialism, to drop heavy hints about expensive and extravagant objects of desire that I hope to find under the tree come Christmas Day.

The trouble is, though, that I am a person of faith. You might legitimately say that I am dogmatic in my intellectual rejection of atheism in all its forms.

Am I being hypocritical, therefore, in quaffing so freely from the tankard of post-Christian culture? Is it legitimate, or even possible, for me to “suspend my belief” in this way?

This has been a troubling dilemma for me. I was relieved therefore to read of your own enjoyment in singing Christmas carols, and indeed your magnanimous acceptance of this nation’s Christian traditions and history.

So would it be alright with you if I regard myself as a cultural atheist?

Perhaps we could, in a cultural sense at least, swap places for a while. By all means go ahead and have a good sing about midwinter snow in Bethlehem, and an infant who doesn’t even cry. Meanwhile I’ll book my panto tickets, put an inflatable snowman in the front garden, and sing Jingle Bells to my heart’s content.

But then, I wonder whether we can really disengage our behavioural selves from our intellectual selves in the manner you suggest. If we enter into the practices of a particular culture, then sooner or later don’t we find that something of the spirit of that culture rubs off on us? Don’t we end up preaching what we practise?

So, when Christmas is over for another year and you and I swap places back again, perhaps I’ll find myself wanting to challenge unthinking pietism and the introspective traditionalism to which some religious people can be prone. Perhaps I’ll ask awkward questions of people of faith; perhaps I’ll demand to know how and why the Christmas message of “Peace on earth and goodwill to all” has been transformed into authoritarian dogma and too-ready acceptance of continuing warfare and injustice.

And perhaps you might welcome that.

But I wonder, Professor Dawkins: after you’ve celebrated Christmas, what will you do next year?