I was talking to a very nice Baptist fellow the other day who was interested in my journey from Bob Jones University to the Catholic faith. He said, “We go to a very liturgical Baptist Church.” I’m not quite sure what he meant, but he assured me that they had had an Ash Wednesday Service and they were ‘very liturgical’.
I expect he means what my Presbyterian mother means when she tells me her church is ‘liturgical’. She means they are starting to observe Advent and Lent. They have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve with classical music and a printed order of service. In fact many Evangelical churches are beginning to go ‘high church’. The preachers sometimes wear robes, maybe they chant the odd psalm, have some candles here and there and they pick and choose other liturgical stuff they like and put together their own mish mash of a ‘liturgical’ service.
Far be it from me to criticize them. I think it is rather nice that some of our separated brethren want to be ‘more liturgical’, and I don’t really mind if they shop in a sort of ecclesiastical thrift store to find some bargains and take them home.
What interests me more is how American Protestant denominationalism is disintegrating. Can anybody really tell the difference anymore between a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian? What is happening is that all the mainstream Protestant denominations are being ‘Anglicanized.’ In other words, the same range of opinion and practice that used to be the ‘big tent’ hallmark of Anglicanism is now commonplace in all denominations.
So you have low church and high church Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodist and Lutherans. You have radical liberals and radical conservatives in all the denominations. You have those who are ‘Catholic’ in their beliefs and practices and those who are ‘Evangelical’.
Yes, a ‘high church’ Baptist is still lower than a ‘high church’ Lutheran or Episcopalian, and a ‘low Church Evangelical’ Episcopalian is not quite as low as an independent Baptist, but the fine distinctions are secondary to the overall trend that there is no longer a clearly identified denominational style. If you say ‘I’m Baptist’ we used to know pretty much what that meant. Now you have to say, “I’m a liturgical Baptist” or “I’m an Evangelical Lutheran.”
I suspect what is true of their practice is true of their beliefs as well. Do you have to be a Calvinist anymore to be a Presbyterian? I doubt it. Do you have to believe in consubstantiation if you want to join a low Lutheran Church. Probably not. If you are a Baptist do you still have to deny infant baptism? Probably not always.
As a result, what identity do any of the denominations have? They are increasingly defined not by their historical theological or liturgical or ecclesiological views, but by their stance on moral and theological debating points. So Presbyterian Church USA is liberal and Presbyterian Church of America is conservative. Consequently each has more in common with other denominations (either liberal or conservative) than they do with each other as fellow Presbyterians.
PCA members will be closer to Missouri Synod Lutherans and PCUSA members will be closer to the main Lutheran body.
The point of these observations is this: can a particular ecclesial body maintain itself once it loses its identity? I suspect we will see the disintegration of these large Protestant denominations as each congregation increasingly asserts its own identity–and that identity will be determined by the sincere, but individualistic choices of its leadership.
Thus Protestantism will become a collection of independent local churches doing Christianity however they see fit.
In other words, are you saying that all of these churches are in effect independent? More like the non-denominationals?
I think this is all true. Yet when I was Protestant it wouldn’t have bothered me one bit. I would have said, “Yes, each independent local church must do as it sees fit. It would be worse if there were a central authority over the individual churches– what if that authority were wrong? Let churches be autonomous, and then if the members of a church are reasonably faithful, the Holy Spirit will guide that church to do the right thing most of the time, especially when it’s important. And all the faithful believers and churches will have an invisible unity and together the broad movement of faithful Christians will influence the country and the world.”I think that was true as far as it went, but I was missing SO much and writing off so much… the Holy Spirit does a lot more than I gave Him credit for.
You may also notice that churches which are aligned with a particular denomination are dropping the title of the denomination in their church name. What used to be “Such and Such Assembly of God” is now “Such and Such Church. I think this is definitely an interesting trend.
Yes! I grew up in Lake Avenue Congregational Church and it’s now Lake Avenue Church. And my Protestant friends tend to scorn people and pastors who take denominational differences seriously. Like Father writes in the post below, they think “dogma is divisive”, and not important, and everything Christians really need to know is obvious from the Bible (they haven’t noticed that many of their beliefs aren’t obvious from the Bible at all).One friend was upset by a preacher who preached about Calvinism and Arminianism. “How about we all just call ourselves CHRISTIANS?” she blogged. I don’t think she’s really thought out which differences matter and which don’t, and how you can decide all by yourself which differences are important without begging the question.
Saying that dogmas are divisive and therefore should be dismissed is crazy. Jesus said that he came to divide. Sounds like these people are afraid to take a stand on issues. What did the early Christians die for?
As long as the only authority is the Bible as interpreted by me, anything is possible.Re dogma: to the extent that dogma is truth, and truth is divisive, then dogma will be divisive in a good way.
Well, when you pick and choose your own church–you can do whatever YOU want. If, however, you belong to God’s church–you have to do whatever GOD wants–and that’s hard!The biggest problem I see, is that Christian’s take truths from God’s REAL Church, and think they have the fullness of truth–but they don’t.Father Padre Pio said that the Catholic Church is like a large unpolished diamond, they take a small piece from it, and polish it until it sparkles brightly–and that’s what people are attracted to–the sparkle, but then they use it so much–it comes to nothing–turns to dust.
Most interesting Father, and I tend to agree. I can see the historical cascade…. contraception, womens’ ordination, openly homosexual clergy. The questions which follow are: why would other denominations follow the Anglican Church, and what one must wonder, is at the heart of the Anglican Church that leads it down such a path? How truly dark is that heart?
Fr – thought this article was timely and of interest to you!The Coming Evangelical CollapseI was surprised it was in a major publication!
This is only the obvious final path of Protestantism.Once men left God’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, for whatever reason, they became their own arbiters of the faith. Each became his or her own pope. And naturally they have continued to disagree and split ever since. Straight back to the Garden of Eden and the original sin – PRIDE.Adam and Eve knew better than God. Luther and Calvin knew better than God’s Church and so it goes on.Why they can’t see this is strange?
Yeah, Protestantism has become a free-for-all really. Ask five people in the same church what they believe, and you’ll come up with five different answers. Coming into the Catholic Church has amazed me…finally there are definite answers to my questions–everything is defined. I love it.
Take away the human forms of expression (ie.,Art) and you have Zwinglism. Make the artistic expression an end in itself and you have (in so many cases) high-church Anglicanism.
Yes, it’s great to belong to the One True Church -the One that can speak with Authority. And of course, it is good to see things tighten up after all the air-headed, post VC2-Age of Aquarius-silliness. But there is a down side to living in this era. By closing ranks and tightening-up, intellectual inquiry is often squelched. Remember, good people, some of our greatest theologians were often at odds with the ecclesial establishment of their time.
Well, to be fair to our separated brethren, if you walked into five Catholic Churches and asked people what they believed, you’d probably get a wide variety of responses (and some or most of them heterodox).The difference is that we have an authoritative Magisterium to get us back on track when we start to “interpret” things to death.
Unfortunately, the reality Fr. Longenecker describes could in many ways describe contemporary American Catholicism. So, under one eccelsiological umbrella, you have your progressive parishes, your charismatic parishes, traditional parishes, and on and on. The worship in one church can look vastly different from another Catholic church just down the street. And, as many of us know from experience, one is likely to get different answers about dogmatic and moral questions depending on where one attends RCIA or catechism classes. Obviously, the existence of an authoritative magisterium mitigates this reality. One can always weigh the answers of lay pastor Jane against the authentic teaching of the living magisterium, but we should probably be careful about too quickly casting stones. In my view, one possible corrective to the chaotic elements within contemporary Catholicism would be liturgical reform. The “heresy of formlessness” characteristic of contemporary liturgical expression tends to foster a context in which anything goes in terms of doctrine and praxis. While there was no golden age of liturgy in preconciliar Catholicism, by and large, liturgical uniformity served as a base reality upon which the faithful could defend. May the Lord, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, steer the Church back to such a place.St. Gregory the Great, pray for us.
This is one of the things that first started my path toward the Catholic Church. My parents, technically Presbyterians (PC USA) “church hopped and church shopped” for most of my growing up. We attended Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Congregational, United Church of Christ, and Evangelical churches, and it didn’t seem to matter much that doctrines could vary widely from one to another. Dr. Tom is right when he says that in many ways this could describe American Catholicism- split between charismatic, traditional, liberal/progressive, etc. However, unlike the Protestant denominations suffering from such divisions, within our Church there *is* unity within the Pope, Bishops, and Magisterium… so dissenting Catholics are dissenters, not just people with different ideas. Indeed, St. Gregory, ora pro nobis!St. Francis de Sales, ora pro nobis!
I have to aggree with CHris M.If you ask a catholic what they belive in, you would get several varied answers.I really wish we would concentrate more on what the Catholic Church needs to get right insted of worrying about what other faiths are doing wrong. It does not behoove us to critiisize, we have enough problems in our own Chruch to deal with. Otherwise Father, this is a great article, and somehthing for us to think about.
I used to have a devout Southern Baptist colleague, and back in the 90s, we were giving a run-through for an upcoming exam on the evening of Ash Wednesday. He said he wouldn’t be there because he was going to services. When I asked him later (because I thought it odd that Southern Baptists would be having Ash Wednesday services), he said they weren’t becoming “popish” (his word), but that they wanted to get back in touch with the church year. This led us to an ongoing discussion about faith and doctrine, and he seemed clear on what he did not believe, but not so clear on what he did, and when presented with a belief or practice he had not yet encountered, he seemed not to be able to evaluate it. For example, when I told him we practiced full-immersion infant baptism, he didn’t know how to respond. He objected to the infant part, but approved of the immersion part. When I told him our infants were chrismated (confirmed) immediately after baptism, and that all chrismated Christians, even infants, could receive Holy Communion, he said he had never heard of such a thing and didn’t know how he felt about it. And he was a “believer,” not an “attender” Baptist who would never have darkened the door of a Methodist, much less a Catholic or Orthodox church.It’s not only the rise of Oprah Church, but the lack of Protestant theologians and corresponding lack of interest in theology among Protestants that has, I think, contributed to this break down.Christ is among us!
Father, I completely agree with your post. This sentence is almost verbatim something I’ve been saying in my small home study group for several years, regarding the liberal wing and conservative wing of any Protestant (and for that matter Catholic) denomination: “Consequently each has more in common with other denominations (either liberal or conservative) than they do with each other as fellow Presbyterians.”Perhaps your conclusion will prove correct. I suspect it is true. However, you mention Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a denomination I know very well from a doctrinal as well as an organizational (“business”) side. My experience with LCMS is that doctrine remains highly important in the two seminaries, and that teaching false doctrine remains one of only a handful of ways a pastor can be removed from the pulpit. Combine that with the denomination’s adherence to Luther’s writings and the Augsburg Confessions as ways to maintain doctrinal unity, and you end up with a denomination that over all remains known not just for conservative moral values but also for its unity in faith teachings. In its relation to other, liberal Lutheran bodies, this has the effect of driving LCMS farther from them.So, I’m agreeing with you, Father, overall, but pointing out that not all denominations have given up on doctrinal differences as important. Perhaps an amendment to your theory might be that the liberal branches of protestant churches might tend to blend together, but perhaps the doctrinally conservative branches might not. This happened within American Lutheranism in the late 1980s when some smaller liberal bodies banded together to form the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church In America), now considered the largest American Lutheran body — but the LCMS and the even more doctrinally conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod didn’t join. So the small bodies as one are able to speak to the media as the “dominant” voice of Lutheranism in the U.S., while the two synods that cared about doctrinal clarity stayed separate and thus are not part of the larger body. A smaller example comes to mind as well, regarding separate protestant traditions. I am aware of a place near my home where a conservative Presbyterian congregation used a Lutheran Missouri Synod building to worship in, but there was never any question that the two groups would remain completely separate over doctrinal issues. They shared perhaps perfectly the same moral stances (Pro-life, pro marriage, opposition to homosexual “marriage”, anti-cloning) and many, many Reformation views, but differed sincerely over a few, and thus remained separate.I personally would love to see through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Missouri Synod and WELS and conservative Presbyterian denominations join back with Rome. Of course, of course, they differ hugely with Rome on some core issues. But in an awful lot of ways, their passion for doctrine, authority, orderliness, beautiful worship, the scriptures and so many moral issues among them, would make them such an injection of energy and order into the Catholic church that would be beautiful to see. From among all the various denominations out there, Missouri Synod Lutherans would make very fine, thoughtful, faithful Catholics, if they could get past the Reformation issues.A word on “liturgy.” I’ve heard Catholics (some of whom are very liberal and don’t even obey their own hierarchy and rules) mock Protestants in general as all wishy-washy on history and beliefs, and say that their services are just a bunch of singing and free-form prayer, but the reality is, some Protestants, such as WELS and LCMS, do follow rich orders of worship that in many cases have prayers that go back to the Latin Mass (translated of course) and use wording that predates the Novus Ordo, such as “and with your spirit.” And praying ad orientam during the prayers of the church. They also follow the traditional church year, have forms of the Divine Office, value the Early Church Fathers, and have collects, prayers of the day, and specific readings for each day. It’s far from free-form. Thanks for indulging me with this long post. May the Lord bless and keep all who read this blog and forgive me if I have unintentionally maligned anyone in my words.
We live in a digital age (as opposed to analog). This observation may be understood as tree-versus-forest. The digital objection is always, “You can’t say that (whatever the forest statement is) because this tree is an elm.” The digital view is incapable of accepting the analog. It will never see the forest because it is argumentative by nature. Its raison d’etre is always to deny any forest statement; its existence is a contradiction to the forest, and it must defend its existence. Hence, the objections to Father’s “forest” post.However, the moment we identify a movement, we can know that it has crested, that it’s on its way out. We can never see where we are subjectively standing. It’s impossible. The moment we do see it, we can know that we have moved–no longer subjective to that place, but objective. The trouble with that reality is that we are now subjectively someplace else.And so now we move from oak trees and maple trees to the forest. We now focus on “global economy,” “universal health care”–indeed, universal everything. Unity is the Cry of the Age. That tolerance is its ethic is the inevitable irony–no differences are allowed in unity. Therefore, England must be covered with those stinking rape fields because the EU needs canola oil, and freedom of conscience must be denied to health care providers in the universal provision of contraception and abortion. No exceptions are allowed in Holy Unity. No elm trees, no pines.The demise of Protestant distinctions is but another of the signs of the time we live in. We now have, pretty much, Generic Christianity, which delights most Generic Christians. They see it as the end of in-fighting, of mutual hostility–much like the EU, which sees itself as the answer to wars.The pendulum never swings but radically–a principle of physics we might do well to observe more often. And rather than try to look where we’re standing, we might do better to look at the looker: Who’s swinging that damned pendulum anyway?
amen.
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