Yes, We Know. We’re Hyper-Euro, or Medieval, or Whatever . . .
As usual, although our new video has already been getting some positive reviews and feedback and thanks, we do get criticized for being too this or that. There’s a comment on the blog post you can read for yourself.
The first complaint in that comment is that “this looks like no Lutheran service in the real world,” to which I am inclined to quip, Whose “real” world is in view here? We are aware of several Gottesdienst-style liturgical services that can be found in a good number of churches in the US, as well as some in other countries, which we—the editors and staff at Gottesdienst and many friends we routinely see at various conferences—can attest to having personally witnessed (see the photo above, for example). We didn’t dream up the liturgical rubrics we teach; they’ve been in Lutheran circulation in America for some time, as some of our church’s well-read 20th century scholars have taught and written (Piepkorn and McClean, and Lang come to mind offhand, though there are more). And aside from that, were it not so, we would hardly have managed to keep at what we’re doing at Gottesdienst since 1992.
As for complaints that what we do looks too Catholic (our critic didn’t quite say that, but you can tell it’s what he was thinking), we do indeed draw instruction from such sources as the Roman Catholic Fortescue and the Anglican Lamburn, but without apology, since we recall having read something helpful about masses among us [Lutherans] being celebrated every Lord’s Day and on the other festivals, in which the Sacrament is offered to those who wish to use it, after they have been examined and absolved, and the usual public ceremonies are observed, the series of lessons, of prayers, vestments, and other like things. But perhaps our critic, who was evidently busy finding “historical fallacies too numerous to count,” missed that helpful bit of reading, though it is in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession.
As for his contention of a widespread movement of altars during the Reformation, I’d reply that no doubt there were been some architectural proposals that accompanied the churches of the Reformation, including some having also pulpits elevated to a central place directly above the altar and other ideas that didn’t take hold. Some of our churches today do have freestanding altars (owing mostly, I think, to Vatican II reforms), but if it’s true that the movement of altars was as widespread as he contends, there must have been at some point a corresponding widespread movement of them back to their original orienting, inasmuch as it’s not easy to find a Lutheran church in America that was built in the 19th or early 20th centuries that corresponds to his assertion.
He speaks of Cranach woodcuts to support his contention, and I vaguely recollect something he may have had in mind. But I also recall Reformation artwork to the contrary that also seems to show the very kind of liturgy we recommend. Like this, for instance:
Or this:
I’d say we’re hardly “jettisoning actual Lutheran liturgical historical practice” as he claims.
But my favorite of his laundry list is the scoff at what he calls a “perplexing gesticular emphasis on copious crossing of oneself and holding one’s hands and fingers a certain way [that] has no genuine provenance in Lutheranism.”
Gesticular! What, as in some sort of wild dramatization? Where is that? To the contrary, we propose—we consistently propose—dignity and intention in everything we do. And if because of our attention to everything we do, we’re called “copious,” as in, too detailed, well I guess we’re guilty as charged. We thought we were just trying to be helpful with respect to every detail. Because in every detail, in everything we do, we wish to teach, to emphasize, to inculcate, to portray this simple truth: here Christ is present, who gave Himself for us and who now gives Himself to us in the Sacrament.
As for the late Paul McCain, whom our critic cites in support, although to be sure he disagreed with us about many things, including his quip that “this kind of hyper-ritualization of all things having to do with worship and liturgy . . . is about the best formula I can imagine for turning people away from the liturgy,” I think we can agree that he is now in the perpetual company of angels and archangels and all the host of heaven, a company in whose presence we poor mortals are only occasionally most privileged to find ourselves, at the sacred altar.
In the end, though we could spend hours demonstrating the “provenance” of our practice—and it is, actually, a matter of record—we prefer to answer with a simple reply, and a question: We mean to worship in a way that accords fully with the sacramental reality we actually believe; and how would you propose otherwise?