Tom Wright (23:29)
You know, there's a crossover of fundamentalist and evangelical. They mean things in America to what they mean elsewhere in the world. But also that goes with a particular political stance. It goes with a particular view of the so called. It goes with styles of worship. And often those churches grew out of movements, one of whose defining characteristics in the 19th century was we are exactly not Roman Catholics. I mean, the great dispensationalist movement came from J.N. darby, who was a disaffected Anglican clergyman in Ireland. And the Anglican Church in Ireland more or less defined itself by not being Roman Catholic, by making sure that you had long surpluses as opposed to the short ones that the Catholics wore, etc. Etc. Now, of course, the idea of high church and low church is very, very broad brush and has meant many different things to many different people. When I grew up, being high church meant that you probably would genuflect in the church before the altar or before the reserved sacrament, indeed, that you would have a reserved sacrament and that you would almost certainly have incense, you would have processions, you would sing particularly particular hymns, and you would expect a particular eucharistic theology, a theology of the real presence of Jesus in the bread and the wine. And the low church movements had rejected pretty well all of that. But when I grew up low church, you still wore a cassock service instead of a stole, which associated with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. You would wear a scarf and a hood, which was your degree, your hood which many people thought that was a bit odd, as though God was going to be impressed by your academic qualifications, et cetera. Then I discovered that by the late 1970s, many people in the newer bouncier Pentecostal churches regarded any sort of robes as high church and regarded any sort of procession or announcing of a hymn and then walking in while it was being sung. Oh, this is so high church. And so many went to the oppos extreme, where you had the people leading the worship dressed very casually with open neck shirts rather than clerical collars, with jeans and so on, as though to say, we are not doing any of that fussy stuff. And I very much understand why that happened. But I also very much understand that some people would say, do you know what? I'm coming to worship the God who made heaven and earth. Can I just wander into his presence dressed like I am on the street? And part of the answer is, yes, you can. God is not fussy. Think of the Pharisee and the publican. There's the poor man at the back. God be merciful to me, a sinner. This is the man who went down to his house justified. So in other words, you don't need all the razzmatazz. However, as I've often said, I'm not a great wine drinker, but I know the people who are will say, here's a wonderful bottle of wine. It's special wine. Now you can, if you choose, drink it out of a Styrofoam cup, such as you'd get on a coffee stool. It's still the same wine, but you'll find if you drink it out of a wine glass of the sort that is made precisely for a wine like that, you will find much more in it. Now, in the same way, I've often said to people that the more elaborate services are like the fine wine glass. If you go to a church where they don't bother about any of that stuff, it's still Jesus you're meeting, it's still the Gospel that you're hearing. But actually, if you want to take it seriously, then you don't just want to mess around as though you could drift in and out of God's presence and it really doesn't matter, and treat God casually. You want to take this very seriously. And if this means you want to spend time on your knees, you want to organize worship in such a way that there is a dignity and a majesty and a solemnity about it, then let's find ways of doing that while recognizing that at both Ends of the scale. It's possible to be careless, casual, flippant, idolatrous, etc. In other words, you don't escape idolatry by becoming low church and you don't escape flippancy by becoming high church. It's much more subtle than that. There are also personality things going on. There are also socio cultural things going on. Where certainly in England, there are certain parts of the country where the high church people have been of a certain social class. And part of the appeal of the low church has been we're just ordinary working class chaps, so we don't want any of that fussy stuff that they have up the road at the Anglican or the Roman Church. But then there have been other things coming in alongside, like a lot of Irish people who came to live in England, broadcast their Roman Catholicism with them. So that kind of cut across those things. Now, I think God looks at all of that and just shakes his head and says, you're just playing games. The really important thing is constantly to be refreshed in who Jesus is, what the breaking of bread is all about. And if as you do that, you find yourself drawn into wanting to worship in particular ways, well, explore that, but do it with your eyes open with prayer for discernment. There is folly in all quarters of the church. Trust me, I'm a bishop, I've seen it. There is also extraordinary holiness and grace in all corners of the church. And again, thank God, I've seen it so often. This is a matter for the personal preference and preferably talk about it with a spiritual director. Find somebody you trust who can say now from where you are and the prayer life you've had so far and your reading of scripture, why don't you try doing this and see? And let's lighten up about this. There is no one size fits all. We're all different. Wouldn't it be wonderful if instead of different denominations doing things differently, we were able to move this way and that and find space for one another so that we could all worship in ways that we found more and more drawing us out of ourselves to adore the God in whose image we're made? That, after all, is what it's all about.
