Evangelical Worship

Almost invariably, media stories with the word evangelical in their headlines are accompanied by a familiar stock photo: a mass of middle-class worshippers with eyes closed, faces tilted upward, and hands raised to the sky. Yet, despite the fact that worship has become symbolic of evangelicalism’s identity in the twenty-first century, it remains an understudied locus of academic inquiry. Historians of American evangelicalism tend to define the movement by its political entanglements (the “rise of the religious Right”), and academic trajectories (the formation of the “evangelical mind”), not its ecclesial practices. Theological scholars frequently dismiss evangelical worship as a reiteration of nineteenth-century revivalism or a derivative imitation of secular entertainment (three Christian rock songs and a spiritual TED talk). But by failing to engage this worship seriously, we miss vital insights into a form of Protestantism that exerts widespread influence in the United States and around the world. Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic models a new way forward. Drawing together insights from American religious history and liturgical studies, and putting both in conversation with ethnographic fieldwork in seven congregations, this book argues that corporate worship is not a peripheral “extra” tacked onto a fully formed spiritual/political/cultural movement, but rather the crucible through which congregations forge and negotiate the contours of evangelicalism’s contested theological identity.

Introduction

The introduction explains why corporate worship is central to evangelical identity. It sets the book in historical and cultural context and frames the study it in relationship recent scholarship on contemporary American evangelicalism. The author introduces the seven ethnographic case studies at the heart of the book, describing how each congregation represents a key “tile” or type of evangelical worship in the American mosaic. After delineating the scope and limitations of the study, the chapter details the main argument of the book: worship is the vehicle through which congregations express their theological identity by negotiating the three paradoxes of constancy and change, consensus and contestation, and sameness and difference.

“Navigating the Beautiful Tension”

The book’s conclusion draws together the seven ethnographic studies by arguing that evangelical worship is better understood as a theological culture than as a static structure. In contrast to the scholarship Kathryn Tanner and Molly Worthen, which understands the culture of Christianity and/or evangelicalism as an essentially contested concept, this chapter ultimately affirms the perspective of theologians John Webster and Kevin Vanhoozer, who understand evangelicalism eschatologically, as a unified diversity. When congregations gather in the presence of the living God, they are dislocated and re-established, changed into something they were not before the event began. Consequentially, corporate worship is not a peripheral “extra” tacked on to a fully formed spiritual/political/cultural movement, but rather the crucible in which congregations forge, debate over, and enact their unique contributions to the American mosaic known as evangelicalism.

“You Can’t Make Me Sing”

Chapter 6 introduces Wayfarers Collective, an “emerging church” that decries what it perceives as the superficiality and entertainment-centeredness of mainstream evangelicalism. The Collective meets in a temporary rental spaces, eschews categories of formal membership, and brands itself as a “last stop” for people who are considering leaving the church forever. The Collective faces significant evangelistic hurdles: residents of the Pacific Northwest tend to be fiercely independent, and hostile towards institutions that seek to limit their personal freedom, creativity, or identity. The Collective’s anti-authoritarian ethos both helps and hinders its practices of corporate worship. Positively speaking, sermons at the Collective are a back-and-forth conversation between preacher and congregation: all participants are on equal ground. Musical worship—where the congregation must follow the directions of an authority figure—is more problematic.

“One Voice in Many Languages”

Chapter 8 examines “Holy Inheritance,” a multiethnic congregation comprised of African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian members. However, the theological ideal of multiethnic worship is difficult to realize in practice. Some congregants tolerate unfamiliar additions to corporate worship as “accommodations” that need to be made for members of different races. Other congregants warn that this perspective exposes a problematic power dynamic: one that construes minority people as “guests” of the majority group’s largess. Over time, the leaders of Holy Inheritance hope to resolve these debates by developing a new, hybrid worship culture that expresses the church’s unified collective identity—one in which there is no sense of “us” or “them” according to race.

We Believe: Group Belief and the Liturgical use of Creeds

The recitation of creeds in corporate worship is widespread in the Christian tradition. Intuitively, the use of creeds captures the belief not only of the individuals reciting it, but of the Church as a whole. This paper seeks to provide a philosophical analysis of the meaning of the words, ‘We believe…’, in the context of the liturgical recitation of the Creed. Drawing from recent work in group ontology, I explore three recent accounts of group belief (summative accounts, joint commitment accounts, and functionalist accounts) and consider the potential of applying these to the group belief contained in the Creed.

The ‘Recusancy Revolt’ of 1603 Revisited, Popular Politics, and Civic Catholicism in Early Modern Ireland

This article contributes to a body of work exploring the possibilities of a popular politics in Ireland before the rising of 1641. It does so by revisiting the ‘recusancy revolt’ of 1603 in which, in the interregnum created by Elizabeth I's death, churches and civic space in towns in the south and west of Ireland were reoccupied for Catholic worship. Reading for meaning in the shaping and timing of the crowd rituals at the heart of the protest, the article argues that Old English elites and people physically acted out the recovery of these spaces for the public performance of a civic Catholicism, in which corporate worship was integral both to the maintenance of the civic order and to the defence of ancient liberties and freedoms against the encroachments of an anglicizing and Protestant regime. Analysing the dynamics of these confessional protests, the article assesses the potential for an active citizenry represented by popular political mobilization in 1603 and contrasts this with later popular mobilization in the 1641 rising. It explores the paradox at the heart of a protest in which it was believed that the restoration of public Catholic worship could co-exist with continuing civic loyalty to an English and Protestant monarchy.

Affiliates and Non-Affiliates in Later Life

The purpose of this study was to examine the types, meanings, and benefits of spiritual practices among older adults and to discuss their implications for well-being. In-depth interviews were conducted with 122 individuals, with an average age of 77. Of these, 102 were highly involved in churches or synagogues, and 20 were atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, or religiously indifferent. The chapter’s authors found a wide array of activities identified by respondents as spiritual practices, ranging from the anticipated (prayer, participating in corporate worship, reading) to the more novel (attending long-distance Bible study groups via Skype, watercolor painting). They also found an overlap between the religious and the nonreligious older adults in many spiritual practices. Most respondents reported that their spiritual practices had increased with age. Respondents perceived significant benefits from their spiritual practices. Too often, health practitioners have not been sensitive to the benefits of spiritual practices in the lives of older adults.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.