Curmudgeons, Unite!

Recently Brad affectionately referred to my husband as a "curmudgeon." Well, it looks like Steve's got company... (grin!)

From Richard John Neuhaus, "The Public Square," First Things, March 2007:

Call him a curmudgeon if you wish, but Dr. Stephen Bower nicely puts some common complaints in his open letter to the Spring Valley Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. Apparently the church has been “updating” its “worship style” in order to appeal to a broader “market.” Dr. Bower writes:

“We could easily integrate some of the so-called contemporary into our worship service as we know it. This is more a question of whether we should be striving to build up the Body of Christ or multiple bodies, each with its own brand of theology, liturgy, and church culture-i.e. old light people are irrelevant, new light people are relevant; old light people live in the past, new light people live in the present; old light people meet in the sanctuary, new light people meet in fellowship hall; old light people remain stiff, unemotional, and impersonal, new light people are relaxed, emotional, and personal; old light people are uncaring, new light people really care; old light people sit in hard wooden pews while new light people sit in soft chairs and gather informally around a table; old light people like to hear the word of God from the pulpit, new light people like to see the word of God on a screen; old light people are conceptual, new light people are visual; old light people want to be educated, new light people want to be counseled; old light people like to think, new light people like to feel; old light people seek communion with God, new light people seek communion with themselves; old light people believe in open invitational communion, new light people believe that is not enough; old light people believe they are sinners, new light people believe they are emotionally unsatisfied; old light people believe the church ought to serve others, new light people believe it ought to serve them.”

If some folks don’t like the Presbyterian tradition, Dr. Bower concludes, “we, they, and the Lord would be better served” if they were directed to churches more attuned to their tastes. Of course, he is painting with broad strokes, and the idea of attending “the church of your choice” reflects a very Protestant ecclesiology, although in recent decades, and despite rules about parish boundaries, many Catholics also “church shop” within the capacious ambience of Catholic worship.

Apart from Dr. Bower’s letter, I know nothing about Spring Valley Presbyterian, but the concerns he addresses are probably a permanent feature of church life in America: the tension, if not war, between unbridled voluntarism and marketing on the one hand and, on the other, the struggle to maintain an ecclesial community that at least approximates a biblical understanding of the one Church of Jesus Christ.