Perhaps nothing proves more divisive to a church than disagreement about how worship should be conducted. Some find it ironic or even scandalous that believers should be at odds about worship. Assembly to praise and glorify God ought to be a source of unity. But, of course, this concern ignores the fact that Christian worship must be true worship, and if believers have sincere disagreements about how true worship should be conducted, then they must attempt to resolve their differences.
Disagreement itself is not scandalous, but sometimes the manner of it is. Anathemas are more numerous than serious argument. Catholic theologian John Courtney Murray has observed that true disagreement is a great achievement. In other words, it takes a lot of work for two parties to come to the point where they have a mutual understanding of the precise nature of their differences. The history of wrangling about worship indicates that disagreement is rarely achieved.
The Westminster Confession of Faith addresses the question of worship in several ways. The chapter on Christian liberty (20) mentions worship in the context of protecting the consciences of believers from being encumbered by obligations that go beyond scripture.
Chapter 21, "Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day," is the largest section on worship. This chapter insists that although certain things about God can be known from nature, "the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestion of Satan, under any visible representation, or any way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture." Only God establishes the terms of true worship.
Chapter 21 echoes Chapter 1, "Of the Holy Scripture" in which the Confession eagerly defends the unique role of the Bible in defining the Christian life. This includes worship. It, too, begins with the assertion that certain things about God are knowable from "the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence," but that the knowledge necessary for salvation is not known apart from scripture.
By beginning with the doctrine of scripture, rather than the doctrine of God, or with the reality of the Christian experience as do some other confessions, the Westminster Confession is clearly concerned that the source of authority in the Christian religion be not compromised. By contrast, the Thirty-Nine articles of the Church of England commence with a declaration of the doctrine of the Trinity, moving to Christology, the Resurrection, and the Holy Ghost before discussing the sufficiency of Scripture.
In asserting that knowledge about salvation and the divine expectations of human worship is only available from scripture, the Westminster divines were clearly not despising the availability of knowledge from "the light of nature." In fact, there are even matters pertaining to worship that must be gleaned from general revelation, as Chapter 1, paragraph 6 indicates: "there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed."
The allusion to circumstances that are "common to human actions and societies" deserves some attention, especially in view of the Confession's repeated appeal to "the light of nature," and the course of Western culture since the Westminster Assembly completed its work.
Cultural critics who discuss how modern culture differs from premodern cultures are almost unanimous in concluding that the modern social order has a radical dehumanizing effect. From the effect of machines and mass production to political obsession with rights, equality, and power; to the outright opposition to humanity of many modern ideologies, modern culture is as much an assault on the identity of man as it is on the person of God. Modern culture is suicidal because it is dei-cidal and anthropocidal.
Today what is "common to human actions and societies" is no longer ordered by the light of nature, as the Westminster divines assumed it always would be. Our contemporaries no longer believe that nature has any light. Perhaps one reason for this is the uncomfortable fact that, as the divines understood, one does learn a lot about God from the light of nature, including that he deserves to be feared, praised, and served.
Human societies, pagan and Christian, were once unanimous in their convictions that children obey and respect their parents, that sexual adventurism be stigmatized and punished by the community, and that public displays of blasphemy were not healthful. Our society, among others, no longer gives consent to these expressions of what might be called natural virtue.
One must ask if, by the phrase "common to human actions and societies," the Westminster divines meant to refer to circumstances that were commonplace in any time or place, but contrary to the testimony of the entire human race concerning human nature and the nature of human society.
Writing in the seventeenth century, the Westminster divines could never have predicted how inhuman some human societies would become. What would they have made, for example, of drive-in churches? Certainly, the convenience of not leaving one's car is a common feature of modern life. One can bank, shop, and eat without ever leaving the car. Why shouldn't one be allowed to worship there? (I've always wondered if the sacrament is served by carhops on roller skates at drive-in churches.)
There are no biblical provisions prohibiting drive-in worship, and there are no biblical requirements of pews or buildings. The best argument against the drive-in church is that it dehumanizes worship. Worship involves the church as the assembly of God, a community of faith, and parking lots don't establish community. The drive-in church offers a depersonalized and detached experience that may meet the minimum requirement for prayer and preaching. But the church is an assembly of human beings, and human beings don't experience community without being closer to one another than drive-in services allow. Worship in automobiles is not really social. Christian prudence and the light of nature suggest that drive-in churches aren't good ideas.
The drive-in church also lacks any sense of gravity about worship. The "come-as-you-are" mentality presents worship as requiring less commitment and discipline than buying a Coke. But of course, we live in a zero-gravity age. Weightlessness characterizes almost everything about modern culture. The scriptures do not dictate for us rules defining gravity or reverence, but they are clear that worship should exhibit such a quality. In Hebrews, we are warned that, "since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is consuming fire."
Exactly how we should display reverence and awe is never defined, but it is obviously possible to be irreverent and insouciant, or the writer of Hebrews would never have been so graphic in describing the wrath that awaits the irreverent. Once again, we must consider the light of nature and Christian prudence. How do people behave when they take something very seriously? How do they display respect and deference? Usually through formalized behavior. Talk to someone who understands protocol in international diplomatic gatherings, and you'll find that despite the cultural differences, certain ways of behaving are almost universally ill mannered and presumptuous. Formalized action has always given weight to an event, be it the slow steps of a bride in a wedding, the measured rhetoric of a political figure, or the centering of words on a greeting card.
Ritual is thus part of human nature. It is not peculiar to religion; it is part of being human. The rejection of ritual is almost impossible, since actions and gestures have a way of becoming formalized even when we don't try to formalize them. But the effort to overturn all ritual is a wonderful way to identify with the dehumanizing tendencies of modern culture; a wonderful way to reject the assumption that there are things common to human actions and societies.
Here I must ask respectfully if the Puritans' distaste for ceremonies and rituals was really consistent with their convictions about the universality of human nature and the necessity of taking the light of nature seriously. One early twentieth-century Lutheran noted that the New England Puritans possessed a "rigid Calvinistic hostility to everything that is studied or uniform in religious ceremony, and for a century or more they seemed to glory in the distinction of maintaining church song in the barbarous condition that this art has ever suffered since the founding of Christianity." The Puritans' purge of liturgy began with the worthy goal of liberating Christian consciences from false obligations imposed by the Roman Church. But one must ask if they didn't err in condemning any effort to structure the experience of worship in ways that accord with created human nature.
Ceremony per se is not a problem. After all, the strictest Reformed churches still structure their services somehow, still have ushers walk in sync when delivering offering plates, and still allow pastors to use certain archaisms when praying. There are hidden rituals in many allegedly ritual-free churches. These hidden rituals simply lack formal names; often they came into being without any thought or care, usually being products of pastors' personalities.
The Reformers and the Puritans faced a different cultural climate than we face today. Where their contemporaries were burdened with a sense of religious obligation that stifled Christian liberty, our contemporaries are obsessed with liberty; they desire no sense of obligation, either as Christians or as human beings. Political philosopher Michael Sandel calls ours the age of "encumbered selves"– autonomous individuals with no sense of duty, authority, reverence or awe. It is a great task to order worship so that it is guided by scripture and rediscovers and reinforces sanctified humanity.
Those who value the legacy of the Reformers and the Puritans would do well to heed the warning of J. I. Packer, who recognizes the danger of asserting our spiritual ancestors' infallibility. "We can make a wrong application of their teaching," warns Packer. "We can parrot their language and ape their manners, and imagine that thereby we place ourselves in the true Puritan tradition. But the Puritans would impress on us that that is precisely what we fail to do if we act so. They sought to apply the eternal truths of scripture to the particular circumstances of their own day-moral, social, political, ecclesiastical, and so forth."
Obstacles to true belief and discipleship are not what they were in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Word of God has not changed, nor has human nature. Most discussion about worship based on the Westminster Standards takes the Word's permanence seriously. It is time for hard reflection on what nature's identity and constancy tells us about how we must worship the King.
