Evangelicals and Liturgy
This weekend I read Melanie Ross’s wonderful new book Evangelical vs. Liturgical? published this year by Eerdmans. Since reading James K.A. Smith’s Cultural Liturgies books last year, I’ve been struggling to think about the proper relationship between liturgical development and evangelical theology. It’s easy to think about the relationship as essentially two opposite pairs: on the one side, historic liturgy, seen most evidently within the Roman Catholic and mainline churches; on the other side, evangelicalism with its gnostic flavor, having descended straight from Finney to Osteen. Indeed, this is one of the assumptions that Ross seeks to correct.
The only problem with this characterization is that it is a mischaracterization. Ross shows two examples of evangelical churches that don’t look exactly like Finney’s “prairie liturgy,“ and goes so far as to suggest that liturgical theologians would do well to toss the caricatures and learn — as well as listen — to their evangelical neighbors.
However, on the role of liturgy within evangelical worship, one of Ross’ points stuck out to me: while the answer for evangelicals is not to ditch their own tradition for the sake of a more liturgical theology, they must at least think about what their liturgy is doing in terms of formation. This is one of Smith’s major points in both Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom. The shape and scope of a liturgy is already at work in conforming worshippers to something. The question is what?
This is why that I appreciate the simple, liturgical movement of the church I now worship with: a call to worship from the Word, followed by singing the Word, reading the Word, praying the Word, preaching the Word, and then tasting the Word in response to the exaltation of the Word made flesh. Contra much liturgical theology, what is communicated to worshippers via the liturgical movement is that the Word makes the church come alive, not the church’s usage of the Word. Within this Word-shaped liturgy is a simple movement that exalts Christ from Scripture, from start to finish; from call to worship to benediction.
Thus, evangelicals don’t need to be ashamed of their liturgical tradition. Instead, they can embrace the simplicity of a Word-shaped liturgy and it’s effectiveness in conforming disciples more into the image of Christ who is the head over his body, the Church.