Evangelicalism as a whole seems to have guarded its fundamental teachings better than its more liberal opponents, there is, by and large, no distinct form that one can expect evangelical worship and piety to take. In the past, evangelicals did not see this as a problem, for they believed that doctrinal substance was separable from worship style. They were wrong.
Changes in worship signify changes in our thinking about God. The Signs and Wonders movement, for example, represents a shift in focus from an incarnate God who encounters people in preaching and sacraments to a spirit God who encounters them directly. In the past we opened our mouths to receive God's flesh. Now we open our arms to receive his Spirit. Because it is clear that worship and piety cannot be separated from theology, evangelicals have been forced to ask a new question, aware that their answer could well decide the future of evangelical doctrine.
The question is "How can evangelicals renew church worship?" James Rutz, an evangelical, and Robert Webber, an Episcopalian, are among those who attempt to answer this question. Rutz proposes making the church more spontaneous, a free-for-all in which anything could happen. Webber proposes making it more liturgical, where everything is carefully planned in advance. At first glance, the answers appear to be contradictory. Looking deeper, we discover that Rutz and Webber have discovered their programs for church reform in the same place: the life and practice of the early church.
When we compare positions such as these, it is sometimes easy to miss the fact that they contain a common element that must be evaluated on its own merit. In our rush to discover which author offers the best answer to a question, we may forget to ask if the question itself was properly framed.
James Rutz and Robert Webber are in a secret alliance. Though each has a recipe for reform, they consult the same cookbook: early church worship and practice. They also leave out a crucial ingredient of Reformation church life: sola scriptura–scripture alone is our authority. Rutz's and Webber's recipes may be liberating, and may be deeply moving, but they are not Protestant.
I will begin my critique with the more easily refutable position. To be fair, Robert Webber is open about his reservations about Protestantism. His speech at Wheaton College, "The Tragedy of the Reformation," marked his conversion to the Episcopal church. James Rutz, however, sees his program as merely the finishing of an incomplete reformation. I believe both authors have failed to grasp the meaning and significance of early Protestantism.
James Rutz offers his readers a brief history of Christian worship, which consists of three main phases: the early church, the Catholic era, and the Protestant era (Rutz, pp. 160-161). He finds the key points of failure at the beginnings of the Protestant and Catholic eras. The beginning of the Catholic era in the fourth century institutionalized the church, making it repressive. Rutz claims that although the Protestant Reformation succeeded in bringing doctrinal renewal to the church, it failed to renew church practice (Rutz, p. 13). The priesthood of the believer was not truly restored. One repressive institution was replaced by a better and slightly less oppressive institution. The Reformation was incomplete.
Rutz offers us a plan that would finish the job Luther began. Rutz claims that his plan will recover the three freedoms that the laity lost in the fourth century: pure worship, true sharing, and free ministry (Rutz, p. 2). He calls for the church to transfer responsibility for the church service to the laity.
No pews, just chairs arranged in a square. (He says circles don't work.) No pastor, not even a moderator, would be in charge. He gives practical advice to avoid chaos. Someone shouts the number of a hymn, and all join in to sing. During sharing time members stand and share concerns, spiritual insights, pray for each other, and perhaps someone delivers a message. Rutz claims that this is a return to the first century, a return that Luther failed to make.
Rutz fails to see that the purpose of the Reformation was not institutional renewal, or even the delegation of church functions to laymen, but the recovery of the gospel. These goals are easy to confuse. In many cases, the only way to communicate the gospel more clearly was to alter church practice. The church service is a case in point. The reformers taught that God had reconciled the world to himself through the death of the Second Person of the Trinity. The canon of the mass, however, taught that God must be placated by human efforts. This contradiction between new belief and old practice required a new church service. Observing such vast changes in worship format, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that this overhaul had one goal: delivering the gospel to the people. Though every wrong may not have been made right, the goal was achieved. The Reformation was one of the most successful evangelistic campaigns in history.
Like Rutz, some of Luther's detractors in the sixteenth century saw in the Reformation a half-hearted renovation of worship. The opportunity for a clean sweep had arrived, but instead the changes were fairly modest. Andreas Karlstadt, one of Luther's former colleagues at the University of Wittenberg, decided that the responsibility to complete the Reformation fell to him. His method of bringing change about involved the smashing of icons, crucifixes and stained-glass windows. He abandoned his clerical robes and donned grey peasant garb. He refused to be called "Doctor" and took the name "Brother Andrew." He claimed to be the true reformer.
Luther addressed his critics in words which are very applicable today. The gospel is what matters, not the purging of every last element of medieval Catholicism. As long as the gospel is unhindered, we are free to retain or abandon any element of the old Catholic service we desire. He says that he has attended services of utter simplicity without elaborate vestments and rituals, and also lavish services with splendid robes and intricate ceremony. He calls this freedom the "middle course." He even says that the use of the catholic practice may be a demonstration of Protestant liberty. It is just this point which is often missed.
Protestantism does not consist in formality or informality, but in liberty under the gospel. Luther's opponents, far from freeing the church, were in danger of placing it in bondage to informality. The lack of ceremony would be made into as much of a law as the old ceremony. Karlstadt, for example, forbade the elevation of the communion cup because Christ did not elevate it. To Luther, this finding of law in scripture where a law was not given was a threat to the understanding of the gospel. Luther opposed this tyranny by celebrating communion in simplicity or in splendor as the occasion demanded, elevating or not elevating the cup as he saw fit.
We place ourselves in the same danger when we allow the early church practice to be set up as law. Perhaps the early church was more informal than today's church. So what? Does that make present practices wrong? We cannot claim that the early church was inerrant. A rereading of the New Testament is enough to refute that opinion. Look at the Corinthian congregation whose Lord's Supper had ceased to be the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:20), or the Galatians who had been bewitched by the Judaizers. (Gal 3:1) If even these churches with their close contact with an apostle were nearly overcome by error, what can we expect from their successors in the next four centuries? Can we even be certain that unearthed house churches were the sites of Christian gatherings and not those of gnostics?
It is dangerous enough to make everything that was done in scripture into a law when it was not presented that way. If this is true of scripture, how much more is it true of Christian history. When church history becomes your infallible guide to life and practice, you enter a morass you will not easily escape.
James Rutz does offer some fresh ideas for the makeover of church life. I do not wish people to avoid his ideas concerning church life. Some of these might be very helpful. It is his claim that his plan ought to be followed because it follows the pattern of the early church. We must reject this claim out of hand. If his ideas seem worth following on their own merit, then that is another thing altogether.
While James Rutz faults the Reformation for failing to alter the church more radically, Robert Webber accuses it of damaging Christendom. It is at this point that I find the comparison between Webber and Rutz so interesting. It is just here that their similarities and differences appear sharpest. They agree when it comes to taking Christian history as authoritative, but they diverge in how they will read it.
Rutz finds his golden age in the early church. If a practice is earlier, it must be better. Webber, in contrast, does not look back to one golden age, but to the accumulated wisdom of the living organism of the church. In this respect, Webber seems wiser than Rutz.
We are faced with a problem in either case. It is impossible to have more than one authority. Inevitably our sources of authority will come into conflict, and at that point we will learn which was truly the authority. The Reformation was clearer on this point. When it identified scripture as the sole authority, it did not exclude reason, tradition, or experience from the search for truth. In every case, however, any of these guides had to yield to the clear teaching of scripture.
What happens when we make church history authoritative? If we follow in the steps of James Rutz, archeology becomes authoritative. Perhaps we settle into an informal house church setting and an archaeologist unearths a Christian synagogue where the worship was liturgical. What now? Do we switch to liturgical worship because it is more ancient, or do we ignore the new finding and stay with what works for us? Was the early date of house worship a divine mandate? Or did we first discover that we liked this type of worship, and only later legitimize with recent archaeological findings?
Robert Webber at least does not make history itself authoritative. The best example of his Anglican approach to church tradition can be found in the Book of Common Prayer. The compilers of the Book of Common Prayer brought together the worship of past ages, but in a principled manner. In some cases, usage was scriptural; in others it just seemed inherently reasonable. Some material was newly composed because the church needed it. No one age was considered golden, and neither were the compilers themselves guilty of chronological snobbery.
The surprise is how many problems of contemporary church life are solved by the liturgy. Liturgical churches require much more participation by the congregation than most non-liturgical Protestant churches. Worshipers are always active: standing, kneeling, praying, responding, singing, or going forward for communion. The service is much less man-centered, less focused on the pastor. (See Webber pp. 102-106.) The breadth of scripture that is woven into the service guards the church from its tendency to reduce spirituality to a fad formula. Children of believers, for example, don't end up feeling left out because of failure to relate to the "born again" model of conversion. The Book of Common Prayer is a wonderful guide. It is a treasure of Christendom.
The question remains, however, as to where ultimate authority rests. What if prayers or statements in the Book of Common Prayer are found to be flawed? To the Holy Spirit Webber attributes his opinion that "even if the classic expressions of the faith are flawed, no Christian has the authority to decide as an individual what it means to be orthodox" (Webber, p. 157). But the Apostle Paul tells us differently in the book of Galatians. Paul assumed the ability of laymen to judge doctrine when he condemned any gospel different the one he delivered, even it came from an "angel from heaven." (Gal 1:8) He did not expect his respondent to ask the self-deprecating question "Who am I to stand in judgment over an angel?"
This case for Protestant doctrine must be argued with–shall I hazard the word?–self-righteousness. The problem is that all our moralistic training has taught us to cultivate a self-centered false humility. To admit that we cannot understand the basic message of scripture is seen as virtuous, since it humbles us. The problem is that we are faced with a question not about how well we can hear, but about how clearly God can speak. To be Protestant means to believe that in the fundamental matters of the faith. God can make himself understood. This is not claiming a grandiose ability for laymen. It is claiming that God's ability to communicate is at least as good as any decent human author.
My fear is not that evangelicals will follow Webber's call and begin a trek down the Canterbury Trail. I believe this would be an improvement for most evangelicals, and for many of the reasons Webber lists. I would rather they follow the road to Wittenberg, but many cross the Atlantic before crossing the Channel. My fear is not that evangelicals will don chasubles, learn the chant, and swing thuribles. The early Protestants did that and were still burned at the stake. My real fear is that evangelicals will become Anglicans without ever having known what it is to be Protestant.
Offering a critical review of two books may cause an uncritical reader to assume that I disliked reading Rutz's and Webber's books. Not so. I found Rutz likable and Webber captivating. My hope is that evangelicals will read Rutz and Webber. I also hope that with them, they will read the reformers. It is in the reformers that we see what is achieved by a renewal of worship grounded in a renewal of doctrine. If our efforts at renewal begin with worship, we will likely be drawn anywhere but to truth. If we begin with doctrine, however, our knowledge of God will deepen, and our worship will become more profound as a result.
In the book of Revelation, God presents New Jerusalem as the goal of human history. Notice that New Jerusalem comes from the sky, not from the past. It is created by God's Word, not human programs of reform. A broad knowledge of historical church practice does much for us. It demonstrates that the current manner of doing things is not always the best. It is folly to mistake an historical episode in the church as God's perfect will for his church. Scripture alone is our source for knowing God's will, for only there does he reveal it directly. If our descendants ever look upon our own day as a golden age, it will be because we came to recognize that scripture is our only authority. Only then will our lampstand shine brightly in the temple of God.
