The Strawman and Liturgical Supremacy
“So what I’m reading here is “proper” worship requires formal Latin liturgy, pipe organs, hymn books, vestments, and expensive materials. I guess all those Christians hiding out in China, North Korea, the Middle East and sub-Sahara [sic] African [sic] can just slink off to their not-as-good-as-your worship that may simply cost them... I dunno, their lives?”
“Dennis” is, as the kids say, “big mad” about my last post about liturgy. He responded with a long and bizarre comment that was really more of a blogpost in its own right. Rather than publish his post in its entirety, I would like to focus on his opening paragraph, shared verbatim above. “Dennis” is a disgruntled former member of an LCMS congregation that he alleges, “literally chose pipe organs over missions,” and this is “one reason why [he] left the LCMS.”
At any rate, I find his passive-aggressive straw-manning to be typical responses to any and all such opinions that traditional liturgy is superior to contemporary non-liturgy, that traditional liturgy is authentically Lutheran (per the Book of Concord), whereas contemporary non-liturgy is not, and that traditional liturgy is God’s preference as articulated in Scripture, and contemporary non-liturgy - especially given its entertainment-based premises - is not.
What I’m reading here is…
No, it isn’t. It’s what you are eisegeting into the text in order to create an opponent that doesn’t exist in reality.
“formal Latin liturgy”
No, we are not attacking worship in the vernacular. It has been part of our Lutheran tradition since 1526.
pipe organs, hymn books, vestments, and expensive materials.
My congregation doesn’t have a pipe organ. We can’t afford one. Moreover, most LCMS congregations don’t have pipe organs. And in fact, we just participated in a Wednesday night Divine Service a cappella because our organist was out of town. And that is the beauty of the traditional liturgy: it can include a full orchestra, a pipe organ, or no instrumentation at all. It might include a highly-trained choir, or no choristers at all. All one needs to do is to be familiar with the service itself - the one “Dennis” denigrated as “Lutherans sitting in the back row with face buried in hymn books chanting the same liturgy they memorized as kids and now can recite from rote repetition without any thought whatsoever.” Lutherans can participate in the Divine Service even without hymnals - unless the service changes from week to week. Little children who cannot yet read, those with visual impairment or blindness, those with mental handicaps, and those suffering from dementia are all included in the liturgical church’s worship.
And vestments provide flexibility in various situations. For example, I live in the deep, deep South. We don’t have money to make our sanctuary first-world comfortable 24-7 in the summer time, even though we have a daily Matins service. When it is too hot, my vestments consist only of my one and only surplice that I purchased 22 years ago. And when I visit shut-ins, my vestments consist of exactly one very small pocket-sized stole from the communion kit that was given to me as a gift 19 years ago. We have lovely vestments that were donated to us, but there was indeed a time when our vestments were more spartan.
Two years ago, I wrote about how we were able to worship liturgically and minimalistically in our blazing-hot holy sanctuary powered by a gasoline generator after our last major hurricane (see “The Flexibility of the Liturgy”). I imagine that when the children of Israel were wandering across the Sinai desert, there were probably some grumblers you-know-whatting and moaning that the priests were wearing expensive vestments, and the “worship space” was all fancy-schmancy with gold, silver, bronze, and fine-twined linen, even though there were times when the people did not know where their next meal would be coming from.
Take it up with the Boss. I’m just the messenger.
I guess all those Christians hiding out in China, North Korea, the Middle East and sub-Sahara African can just slink off to their not-as-good-as-your worship that may simply cost them... I dunno, their lives?
This is the best part of “Dennis’s” rambling. I don’t know how much traveling he has done in worshiping with Lutherans from impoverished and persecuted places in the world. But I’ve been to Siberia a couple times to lecture, to tour, and to join our brothers and sisters for worship. The Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church grew out of the ashes of Russian Communism, with several congregations being located in famous (infamous) locations that were concentration camps. And even to this day, as a rule, they are nowhere near as wealthy as even the poorest of our LCMS congregations are.
Only one of their congregations has a pipe organ (and come to think of it, I’m not 100% sure that it is a pipe organ) - a church that was rebuilt by a local government that had earlier been bulldozed by the communists. The cathedral church in Novosibirsk does not have a pipe organ. And yet, all Siberian congregations sing hymns. Our Siberian brethren do not have hymnals. They have never had a hymnal in any of their congregations. And yet, they have the traditional liturgy and hymns. And in spite of their poverty, they have vestments - whether a simple surplice and stole, or chasubles, and in the case of the bishop, cope and miter. If some of the pastors had no access to a set of stoles, the bishop would make sure they had them.
In 2012, I wrote about a reverent celebration of the Divine Service in a closed beauty salon in Chelyabinsk (see “An Example of Reverent Worship and Why it Matters”). The video originally embedded in this piece can be seen below). The key is reverence. It would be a gross manifestation of the Theology of Glory to assert that only the wealthy can participate in the traditional liturgy. In fact, one can worship using the liturgy with almost no materials at all - especially if the order of the Mass and some of the hymns have been committed to memory. Technology has made the keyboard accessible for next to no cost at all, and the pipe organ can even be simulated by a small electronic instrument. By contrast, today’s contemporary worship (so-called) often must have expensive equipment: guitars, drums, a mixing board, amplifiers, lighting, etc. and often such music precludes congregational singing.
Christians who risk their lives to confess and worship are, in a sense, like Christian people on their deathbeds. They don’t have the luxury of “worshiptainment.” To hear the Word, to confess the creed, to praise the Lord, to receive His miraculous sacraments - is poignant beyond our bored first-world “make church fun” culture.
“Dennis’s” mention of Sub-Saharan Africa was interesting, considering that just today, this announcement from the Lutheran Church in East Africa in Tanzania popped up in my feed:
We are working toward altar and pulpit fellowship with the Tanzanian Lutherans. The LCMS is in full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya. It is ironic that “Dennis” may not take communion in any of our churches. But all pastors in our Kenyan sister church may preach in our pulpits, celebrate at our altars, and all members of the ELCK can commune in our churches. “Dennis” is not their spokesman.
Africa is a massive continent comprised of 54 countries, a myriad of nationalities and languages, and about a billion people. There are more African Lutherans than North American Lutherans, many times over (24.1 million versus 3.7 million). “Dennis’s” stereotyping of our Sub-Saharan brethren is shockingly obtuse and oblivious. It calls to mind western celebrities singing that Africa has no rivers, no snow, that nothing ever grows there, and they don’t know anything about Christmas.
Lord, have mercy!
“Dennis’s” remarks betray a particular - and all-too-common - prejudice against the traditional liturgy that is propped up by falsities, fallacious logic, and a lack of understanding of what Lutheran worship actually is.
We will continue to “fight for our rites.”