Is Style Neutral?

"It is possible that, some day soon, an advertising man who must create a television commercial for a new California Chardonnay will have the following inspiration: Jesus is standing alone in a desert oasis. A gentle breeze flutters the leaves of the stately palms behind him. Soft Mideastern music caresses the air. Jesus holds in his hand a bottle of wine at which he gazes adoringly. Turning toward the camera, he says, 'When I transformed water into wine at Cana, this is what I had in mind. Try it today. You'll become a believer."
—Neil Postman, Technopoly

Well-known New York critic and communications theorist Neil Postman offers the preceding image, warning those of us who think his prediction too far-fetched to consider the fact that already a TV commercial for Hebrew National frankfurters features Uncle Sam pushing the product, closing with an ominous voice declaring, "We have to answer to a Higher Authority." "What we are talking about here," Postman reminds us, "is not blasphemy but trivialization, against which there can be no laws." (1) As in the Middle Ages, images have become more important than words, as the modern world insists that the former are more meaningful and relevant to people than the latter. "One picture, we are told, is worth a thousand words. But a thousand pictures, especially if they are of the same object, may not be worth anything at all." (2) Postman's remarks remind us why God gave the Second Commandment.

The problem is that modern church leaders do not seem to appreciate the extent to which style not only reflects content, but actually shapes it. Postman observes that the TV commercials we see are not concerned with the nature of the products, but with the nature of those who consume them. Extensive marketing surveys are conducted to determine profiles of potential consumers. "Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country–these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies, and dreams of those who might buy them." In this kind of setting, Postman says, "The business of business becomes psychotherapy; the consumer, the patient reassured by psychodramas." (3) Would it be extending our reach to suggest that this is precisely what has happened in evangelical attitudes toward worship? It does not require the explicit denial of the Trinity, the Two Natures of Christ, Original Sin, the Substitutionary Atonement, the Resurrection, Justification, Sanctification, or the Return of Christ. All that is necessary is the trivialization of God, Scripture, and these biblical themes by the spirit of the age. That is why perfectly orthodox Reformed and Lutheran parishes can affirm confessional theology while adopting an essentially secular methodology that undermines everything they wish to pass on to the next generation.

Of course, this tendency is evident in evangelism, where "testimonies," like the advertisement for a station wagon, focus on the satisfaction of felt needs (i.e., the consumer) rather than on God's attributes and his saving work in Christ Jesus (i.e., the "product," to follow Postman's analogy). But nowhere is this in plainer view than in the church growth movement in general and in the contemporary praise and worship service in particular.

The Role of Tradition

As evangelicals, we are committed to a high view of Scripture that subjects even the tradition of the elders to the touchstone of biblical fidelity. And yet, many of those in evangelical leadership who decry the ascendancy of the Sixties radicals in Washington are themselves curiously attached to the rebellion against authority and tradition. "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go," that famous Stanford chant that rallied the student revolt, finds its ironic parallel in a conservative evangelical world in which that which is in the past, part of our heritage from the early church, the Reformation, Protestant Orthodoxy, the Puritans, and the Great Awakening, is rejected in favor of personal liberation and the triumph of the free spirit.

Note Postman's analysis of the modern outlook and see if it is not reflected in the evangelical world in which we live and move and have our being:

In the institutional form it has taken in the United States, advertising is a symptom of a world-view that sees tradition as an obstacle to its claims. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of tradition without a measure of respect for symbols. Tradition is, in fact, nothing but the acknowledgment of the authority of symbols and the relevance of the narratives that gave birth to them. With the erosion of symbols there follows a loss of narrative, which is one of the most debilitating consequences of Technopoly's power. We may take as an example the field of education. In Technopoly, we improve the education of our youth by improving what are called 'learning technologies.' At the moment, it is considered necessary to introduce computers to the classroom, as it once was thought necessary to bring closed-circuit television and film to the classroom. To the question 'Why should we do this?' the answer is: 'To make learning more efficient and more interesting.' Such an answer is considered entirely adequate, since in Technopoly efficiency and interest need no justification. It is, therefore, usually not noticed that this answer does not address the question 'What is learning for?' 'Efficiency and interest' is a technical answer, an answer about means, not ends. (4)

Like the Bible, Technopoly has its own "grand story" or "metanarrative"–its way of explaining the whole enchilada. Now let's adapt Postman's description of its effects on education to worship. First, tradition is an obstacle to Technopoly's claims. How is Technopoly–the tyranny of the technological world-view over all of life–directing our thoughts in this supreme religious activity? It trivializes everything that a particular tradition holds dear. For instance, the commercialization of the American flag ends up trivializing it to the point where it can be worn on clothing or even burned in public spectacle. While many Christian leaders would issue the gravest invectives against the burning of the American flag, how many stand up for the desecration of God at the local Christian bookstore, where T-shirts and other paraphernalia are sold with "This Blood's For You" printed over a mock beer can or Jesus is portrayed as doing push-ups with a cross, with the line, "God's Gym: Bench Press This"?

Taken into the church sanctuary itself, this trivialization of the sacred takes the form of shallow, repetitive ditties in which God's name is taken in vain and the music bears striking familiarity to commercial jingles. An overhead projector is simply a "worship technology," an element of style, we are told, justified, like Postman's classroom computers, purely on the ground of efficiency. As Postman noted that the "learning technologies" are justified on the "unquestionable" basis that they "make learning more efficient and more interesting," the same can be claimed for worship. How can one question praise and worship choruses simply on the basis of style? This is because Technopoly rather than Scripture has the last word: it works. And yet, as with so many other useless products that we buy because of clever advertising and smooth, caressing images, before long we become bored with this trivialized deity. We move on, like the consumers in John chapter six who followed Jesus after the free lunch, but left him after he began teaching his "hard doctrines," stomachs growling for the next meal.

Style is not neutral.

Cicero reminds us of what every Christian should know from Scripture, that "to remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child." The so-called "tyranny of the urgent," so much a part of our ever-changing Technopoly, is adopted in church growth strategies that eagerly anticipate the next "wave" in worship technology, like a computer hacker salivating over the arrival of a new PC. At least the latter is appropriate to its sphere, computer technology being the proper province of such innovation.

Getting "Blessed": By Grace or By Works?

But worship is not a technology. God is not stirred from his heavenly throne by the whirl of the electronic keyboard and the beat of the steel drums. Unmoved by the uplifted hands and the praise band's steamrolling crescendo (ending in harmony on a high note, at full volume), God waits to hear his Word rightly preached and his sacraments rightly administered before he sends his Spirit to bless his people and reconcile the lost.

When writing of his Jewish countrymen, Paul laments that they are lost because in spite of their zeal they do not accept the righteousness that is a gift and comes by faith rather than by their own efforts. "But the righteousness that is by faith speaks in this way, 'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?"' (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, "Who will descend into the abyss?" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).' But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart' (that is, the word of faith we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom 10:6-9).

There are, therefore, two ways of seeking God's blessing or salvation: one in which we seek to pull Christ down, and one in which we receive Christ as he comes to us freely and on his own terms in the Word of faith–that is, the Gospel. Is our worship characterized by our ascent to him in order to bring him into our meeting through our own efforts, determination, emotional zeal, with the assistance of "worship technology"? Or is it characterized by finding him as he is already present to us in Word and sacrament? He is not far away. He cannot be summoned before us, as if we were the Judge and he the defendant. Rather he summons us into his presence, as he judges us through the preaching of the Law and reconciles us through the preaching of the Gospel.

So it isn't a matter of style after all. Those who seek God's face apart from Christ (as so many of the praise choruses either imply or explicitly entreat) can find only a God of glory and wrath, doom, and judgment. To avoid the "consuming fire," we must come humbly, stripped of our righteousness, with no confidence in our zeal or emotion, the purity of our hearts or the dedication of our energies. We come empty-handed to receive.

If this is true, how do we judge contemporary praise music? By my own reckoning, ninety-five percent of the praise and worship choruses I tracked down in two leading Maranatha and Vineyard songbooks were entirely subjective. That is, the focus was on me: I will, I feel, I just want, I promise, I love, and so on. Contrast this with the objective focus of the older hymns: "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Alas, And Did My Savior Bleed," "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," "Amazing Grace," "A Mighty Fortress," "No Other Lamb," and "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise."

Style is not neutral.

Is Anybody In Charge?

Authority, like tradition, is a shibboleth in modern society, and conservatives and radicals find their own ways of pursuing this quintessentially American pastime of iconoclasm. Here again Neil Postman is helpful. "A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age," he notes, "and a terrible burden to bear." Wondering how Adolf Eichmann might have exonerated himself from his actions if he had enjoyed the assistance of computers in the extermination of the Jews, Postman ponders, "I am constantly amazed at how obediently people accept explanations that begin with the words, 'The computer shows…' or 'The computer has determined…' It is Technopoly's equivalent of the sentence 'It is God's will,' and the effect is roughly the same." (5)

One of the reasons that the mainline churches fell to liberalism was due to the shift of authority from the church courts (local churches, responsible to regional and national assemblies) to bureaucrats. It is no wonder that they all moved in together on Riverside Drive in New York City. After all, they were all the same person. It mattered little whether the bureaucrat was United Presbyterian, Reformed, Evangelical Lutheran, Episcopalian, American Baptist, United Church of Christ, United Methodist, or whatever. It was the frustrated social worker who dominated the church committees and knew how the endless paper trail worked.

Today, it will not be the frustrated social worker, but the frustrated CEO who will destroy what is left of American Protestantism, if given the opportunity. It matters not whether one is Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Reformed, Wesleyan, for they are all similarly de-theologized, like their parent bodies whose collapse gave rise to the new denominations. Where the style of worship used to immediately distinguish such churches from one another, today a visitor to a Reformed church might never know that he or she was not in a contemporary Pentecostal meeting on a given Lord's Day. They have all bought into the same technology, buy from the same Pentecostal music conglomerates (Integrity-Hosanna, Maranatha, The Vineyard, etc.), and favor the same soft lighting, theater seats and stage-platform architecture.

Some years ago, Marshal McLuhan made the famous observation that "the medium is the message." That is the point here. Style and content cannot be divorced any more than the body can be divorced of the soul. Like the physical body, style is a matter of sights, sounds, touch, gestures, postures. When the people of God were commanded to "worship and bow down…[and] kneel before the LORD our Maker" (Ps 95:6), and to "present your bodies a living sacrifice" (Rom 12:1), the possibility of separating style from content was excluded. The way in which we worship God is not only an implication of the content of what we believe about God, but is part of that content itself. To seek to separate style from substance is not only like separating the body from the soul; it is as if to say that one may obey the First Commandment while breaking the Second.

Then What Determines Our Style?

It is one thing to make the case for style being value-laden and normatively-determined. It is quite another to suggest a norm upon which everyone can agree. However, if it can be established that the Scriptures themselves provide just such a norm, surely every Christian is obliged to follow it.

The assumption one often finds is that the Bible provides the answers to our doctrinal and moral questions, but leaves the business of style up to us. One may worship the true God in various settings–some would say, even in various religions–so long as one is sincere, relativism being the tie that binds, the dogma over all dogmatism. But even where Bible-believing men and women are committed to the exclusivity of Christ and the infallibility of his Word, one finds a relativism in this matter of worship. Does God leave this up to us? Surely Cain, Nadab and Abihu, Uzzuh, Ananias and Saphira, and the Corinthians who were going to early graves because they turned Holy Communion into a fiasco would answer in the negative.

One of the great insights of the Protestant Reformation was the recovery of the analogia fidei, or the idea that Scripture interprets Scripture. The problem in the medieval church on this point was the concern over who interprets the Bible. How could Luther and Calvin justify this controversy that would lead inevitably to a break with Rome? Rome saw it in terms of the pope's interpretation versus the reformers' interpretation, but the reformers saw it in terms of the Bible's interpretation of itself versus the pope's interpretation. This is not simply a rhetorical slight of hand, for they believed that the difficult passages (which, for Rome, oddly enough, tended to be those which clearly preached justification by grace alone through faith alone) were to be interpreted in light of the clearer passages. They demonstrated how reliable this method was in actual practice. Purgatory was not declared erroneous because it conflicted with the reformers' interpretation, but because the passages upon which it had been precariously and dubiously based were understood to be reconciled with the rest of Scripture only by the rejection of the medieval doctrine. The clearer passages did not "win out" over the difficult ones, but so clarified the latter that it was obvious even to many who never joined the reformers.

This displays an enormous confidence in the Word of God not only to convey the truth, but to interpret itself. If one thinks this approach impracticable, one need only be reminded how many popes and councils have issued contradictory "infallible" interpretations! Fallible human interpreters may err, but the Bible never errs in its interpretation of itself.

Now take this key principle of interpretation and apply it to worship, for Scripture knows no division between doctrine and worship. Genuine orthodoxy does not simply require correct doctrine, but correct praise. If Scripture is sufficient to guide us in faith and life, then surely it is sufficient to instruct us in the manner of our worship. What are we to make of the numerous commands in the Old Testament concerning worship? Is the Psalter, God's inspired hymnal, not filled with directives for the correct responses, postures and even the tempo of the musical arrangements?

Of course, in the New Testament, we are not regulated by the ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant, since the reality to whom they all pointed has come and fulfilled all shadows (Col 2:16-19). Nevertheless, we are crucified and raised with Christ. "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God" (Rom 6:12-13). The body is still involved in worship as well as the soul, the style as well as the content under the lordship of Christ.

The glorious liberty of the New Covenant leaves no room for us to conclude that there are not restrictions concerning New Testament worship. In fact, quite the contrary. It is because we have been united to Christ that we are not to participate in false worship of any kind (1 Cor 10:21). In the New Testament, we find the following elements of worship: Divine greeting, prayers of confession, thanksgiving and intercession, reading and preaching of the Word, Communion, and the Benediction. At least mentioned, in other places described in detail, these are the elements for which we find precedence in the worship of the apostolic community, recorded in Scripture. In Acts 2 we see many of these elements together: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers" (v. 42). In 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, Paul lays out the importance and centrality of Communion in worship, hinting at the way in which it is to be conducted. In chapter 14, he mandates order and decency as over-arching principles in the services.

Granted, we have no single place outlining the specific acts of worship in one list, so we have to carefully study a number of passages. Brothers and sisters of good will can and do come to differences on these interpretations and there should be latitude where the analogia fidei does not yield such obvious conclusions. While exclusive psalm-singing, for instance, enjoys a long history among a number of Reformed Christians around the world, it is not anywhere mentioned in the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic, Heidelberg, Dort) and even the Westminster Standards do not require this position. It is important, as we defend biblical absolutes, that we do not command and forbid beyond God's own authority.

Within the Reformed tradition, there has always been a certain degree of suspicion toward any form of worship that does not sanction every act of worship by the biblical text, ranging from the more latitudinarian approach of Anglicanism (allowing that which is not forbidden in Scripture, but is conformable to it) to the view of the Puritans (rejecting anything that is not clearly prescribed in Scripture). While there may be differing views on this scale, no Reformed theologian (or, for that matter, Lutheran) argued that the way in which we worship is neutral, that style was a matter of preference or fashion. In fact, it was the universal protest of the entire Reformation movement against the medieval fancy for new and exciting additions to the service (including drama and entertaining ceremonies) that caused the reformers to devote so much time and energy to the subject of correct worship. "Worship is the most important matter with which we have to deal," said Calvin, as he comprehended even the debate over the nature of salvation in terms of the correct worship of God.