The Ultimate in Self Advertising

Here is a selection from Fit Bodies, Fat Minds by Os Guinness (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994), 89–90.

At its heart, style is a term of identification, as substance is. But style and substance are in direct contrast. Substance is a matter of who or what someone or something is; style is the manner through which that distinctiveness is presented and perceived.

The term “style” has traditionally identified the leading characteristic or ruling taste of a period or school—in the sense that we refer to “Romanesque” and “Gothic” architecture or to “classical,” “impressionist,” and “cubist” art. Each new style is in some ways a break from the past and embodies a different way of seeing or doing things. But what matters in this usage is that style is viewed as the outer expression of the inner character of the period. The style, therefore, is as enduring as the period itself.

Today, however, style has become an end in itself. No longer expressive of substance or inner character, style is all that matters now. No longer enduring, it is transient, changeable, and fashion- oriented. As a glance at any magazine rack will show, style is the number one mantra of late twentieth-century America. Used more often on magazine covers than even the word “sex,” style is a leading source of anxiety, hope, and fascination for millions.

To be up-to-date and in touch with one’s style is essential; to be out-of-date or out-of-touch is unforgivable. At a time when permanence of personality is as forlorn as permanence of place, change is the order of the day. Identity is now a matter of perception and presentation. And style is the art of skillfully presenting illusions as we walk down the corridor of images that make up modern society.

From the perspective of its purveyors, style is the official currency of marketing products. From the perspective of consumers, style is the leading idiom of the image of one’s choice—the desired sense of projected meaning and belonging. Style, image, and consumption are foundational to modern identity and discourse. In a world of increasing anonymity where scrutiny by unknown others is our daily norm, style is a sort of armor for city life. Wear something and walk down the street and you don’t just say, “I like this,” but “I’m like this.”

As Stuart Ewen shows [All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, New York: Basic Books, 1988], style is the sorcery that turns the banal necessities of our everyday world into an enchanted utopia of mouth-watering freedom. This is the illusory world where no conflicts grate and no needs are unmet. If modern society is a Vanity Fair of consumable styles, style itself is the ultimate in human self-advertising.

Does Alternative Worship Represent an Alternative Lifestyle?

The following is a portion of Frank Senn’s exposé in the May 1995 issue of Worship, pages 194–224.

In an effort to appeal to the unchurched, congregations within mainline denominations have begun offering “alternative worship services,” sometimes also called “contemporary services” to distinguish them from “traditional liturgies.” Such “alternative services” may feature lite rock combos, on-stage dramatizations by church players, testimonials from celebrities, and upbeat messages which draw on the insights of popular psychological theories.

Advice given in church-growth seminars on “worship that attracts and holds the unchurched” includes such admonitions as “make it user-friendly,” “keep it simple,” let it be “from the heart,” cultivate informality, maintain a hospitable atmosphere, give a positive message, keep the music up-beat, and exercise quality control. Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and even some Episcopal congregations have provided options for such “alternative worship” as well as “traditional worship” on the Sunday morning menu (sometimes two services being held simultaneously in different spaces).

It is not surprising that a market-oriented approach to the Church’s life and mission (aiming specifically at “baby boomers” and now also at “baby busters”) would emulate the shopping mall with its varied choices. It is also not surprising that this atmosphere has encouraged a great deal of liturgical entrepreneurship, with megachurches sponsoring “how to do it [like us]” seminars and publishers providing “celebration kits” and “Worship Alive!” resources.

In spite of its seemingly anti-liturgical stance, there is a whole liturgical movement going on in the church-growth movement which is oriented toward “reaching the unchurched” on their own terms. Promoters of church growth are absolutely convinced that dynamic, corporate worship is the key to successful evangelism.

The serious membership hemorrhaging that has occurred in the mainline churches over the last twenty-five years has prompted denominational staffs to encourage the implementation of the principles of church growth in their congregations. A worship style, quite “ecumenical” in its own terms, has evolved from these principles. Yet while this kind of worship is called “alternative” or “contemporary,” it has not emerged ex nihilo.

The task of this article is to explore its historical roots, analyze its cultural context and appeal, and probe the challenge that it raises for orthodox Christian worship and confessional theology. Since the use of contemporary popular music characterizes most “alternative worship services,” the celebrants and devotees of such worship may not have discerned that it stands in a tradition at least two centuries old. The ethos, if not the form, of this “alternative worship” is found in the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Especially in Lutheran and Reformed Churches, there was a pietistic reaction to the perceived “sterility” of orthodox church life which sought to “convert the outward orthodox confession into an inner, living theology of the heart.” The orthodox reaction to pietism was probably overly caustic; on the other hand, examples of actual orthodox church life, such as in Leipzig during the music directorship of Johann Sebastian Bach (1723–1750), show such church life to be far from sterile.

Pietism had no liturgical program of its own. Its aim was to inject some “heart” into the church orders authorized for use and to deepen the personal religious life. However, hymnwriting for worship and devotion was an ongoing activity in Lutheran Churches, and hymns around the beginning of the eighteenth century reflected the more subjectivistic faith of pietism, as well as pietism’s stress on sanctification. Indeed, the pietistic movement gave a new impetus to hymnwriting and congregational song that even secured a place in the worship of the German Reformed Church around the beginning of the eighteenth century through influence of the Lower Rhenish poets Joachim Neander (e.g., “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”) and Gerhard Tersteegen (e.g., “God Himself Is Present”). New hymnbooks reflected the emphases of pietism, arranging their anthologies according to the “order of salvation” rather than the church year.

New tunes were composed for the new lyrics, which had a more sentimental quality than the old chorale tunes. Even the syncopated rhythms of the old chorales were “smoothed out” to even note values. The lyrics and the lyrical musical qualities popular in “alternative worship” reflect the warm Jesus-mysticism of pietist hymns, though hardly with the same theological depth. But nothing under pietism could match the assault on the liturgy that occurred under the influence of rationalism.

The Enlightenment held that the chief function of worship was “edification.” This was an emphasis on which both pietism and rationalism agreed (and against which J. S. Bach stood with his old fashioned notion that worship is rendered soli Deo gloria). Everything that “edified” was kept; everything else had to be revised or abolished. To “edify” meant to induce feelings of reverence. Simplicity was the order of the day. Church music accordingly underwent a thorough revolution in which the simpler homophonic harmonies, but quasi-operatic oratorios of G. F. Handel served as more of a model than the complex contrapuntal structures and chorale-based cantatas and organ works of J. S. Bach.

Preaching, too, had to have a practical purpose. Whatever did not teach a practical moral lesson could be dismissed, for the way the pastor could make himself useful was, for example, “by helping the farmer to follow a better plan of life, by replacing superstitious quack medicines with truly effective remedies, and by giving prompt aid to those suffering from external lesions and wounds.” The pastor, as an educated person, had a responsibility to help simple people deal better with the needs of everyday life.

Immanuel Kant denied that prayer, church-going, and the sacraments were “means of grace,” and suggested that clergymen dominated the hearts of others by attaching to themselves exclusive possession of the so-called means of grace. But he found the sacraments useful in social terms in that baptism is “the ceremonial initiation, taking place but once, into the church . . . community” and Holy Communion is “The oft-repeated ceremony . . . of a renewal, continuation, and propagation of this churchly community under laws of equality.” If the sacraments had any efficacy, it was understood in terms of natural rather than supernatural purposes.

In the religion of the Enlightenment, we are already dealing with the desiderata of the church-growth movement: concerns for simplicity, authenticity (worship which is “more from the heart”), singable music, and practical preaching, although informality is not something one would associate with the German Aufklärung. But it is something one would associate with revivalism. In spite of some differences in theological emphases, the kind of worship fostered by revivalism was in line with the principles of worship championed in the Enlightenment under both pietism and rationalism: it was oriented toward human ends; it was a tool used to accomplish sanctification (pietism), edification (rationalism), or conversion (revivalism) rather than an offering “to the glory of God alone."

It should be noted that bringing the forms and styles of revivalism into the mainline churches is not new. Even Lutherans in America have flirted with revival practices. Most Lutheran immigrants to North America were imbued with a pietistic spirituality and had their own Jesus-songs which matched those of revivalism (e.g., “Beautiful Savior”). Having brought to North America also their own spiritual folk songs (especially the Scandinavian Lutherans), they resonate with the folk character of the songs popularly sung in “alternative worship services.” For several decades John Ylvisaker has been providing American Lutherans with their own spiritual folk songs.

“American Lutherans” (as they were called in the mid-nineteenth century) were also influenced by evangelical revivalism. Their leader, Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799–1873), believed that the practices of revivalism could be incorporated into Lutheran services. They were, including the singing of revival songs, a breakdown of liturgical order and (especially in Pennsylvania) a strong commitment to the abolition and temperance movements (which Finney also supported).

Those partisans of confessional revival in the mid-nineteenth century who were opposed to Schmucker, such as Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883), came to see that forms of worship were not incidental to confessional theology. They instinctively realized that revivalistic worship supported a theology that was opposed to Lutheran confessional theology. They embraced the romantic liturgical restoration movement as that eventuated in the compilation of the “Common Service” and in the recovery of church hymns. But while the “church songs” were sung in the liturgy, the revival songs continued to be sung downstairs in the Sunday School. The result is that Lutheranism in America has been a church with confessions and an ordered liturgy, but these have not served to form spirituality, so that liturgical worship and popular devotion have often been at odds with each other in American Lutheran church life.

Church Polity is a Confessional Issue

The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod appears to be on the brink of a radical realignment of its structure and constitution. Business models and the centralization of power seem to be in the offing, but what of doctrinal considerations? Hermann Sasse provides a perspective worth considering in this excerpt from Here We Stand, p. 142-144.

The Holy Scriptures know nothing of a Christ who gave “general rules” for the organization of the church. Calvin, like the theologians of other churches, read this picture of Christ into [emphasis original] the New Testament. And just as we do not know this Christ who legislates, who instituted a senatorial, or presbyterian, form of church government for His church in order that His “sole sovereignty” in the church might not be infringed upon, so we do not know the church which can be recognized as a church of Christ by its obedience to His law.

We, too, know that the church must obey His commandments —- His real commandments, not those which are mistakenly attributed to Him. But this obedience is no part of the nature of the church. For it if were, the church would not owe its existence solely to Him, the Lord who is truly present and active in His Word and Sacrament, but to us as well in consequence of what we are and do.

We have no objection either to church discipline (provided it serves no other purpose -— no purpose, for example, like glorifying God -— besides that of saving sinners) or to a proper church polity. If the Reformed teaching concerning ecclesiastical government were only intended to remind Christendom that the church should he an ordered church properly to fulfil its task of preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments, this doctrine would be a valuable and arguable contribution to the problem of church government. But it happens not to be intended for that.

It claims to indicate —- and this claim has not been given up by the Reformed even today, despite all the liberalizing and softening of Calvin’s rigid principles -- what fundamental commands for the organization of the church the New Testament contains. And as long as it claims to do this, the doctrine is beyond discussion.

“A discussion concerning the correctness or applicability of this form of church polity is out of the question for us who are Reformed” — these words came, in 1929, from the French Reformed Consistory in Berlin — just as a discussion concerning the dogma of the Trinity or the doctrine of the Sacraments is impossible for every other evangelical Christian. For us the question of church polity is a confessional question.”

Here, as in the curious “articles of faith” in the Calvinistic Confessions which treat of the equality of pastors and the election of presbyters, the conclusion is expressly drawn, as it must necessarily be drawn whenever the boundary between Law and Gospel is obliterated, that faith has been turned into obedience, and the Gospel into a new law.

This has an important effect on the work of the church in the world. According to the common testimony of all church bodies, it is one of its tasks to preach the Law — which includes what our Confessions call the “political use” of the Law. According to the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, since Jesus Christ is not, in His essential nature, a Lawgiver, the Gospel cannot “bring new laws concerning the civil state,” but it “permits us outwardly to use legitimate political ordinances of every nation in which we live.”

According to the Reformed view, on the contrary, the Gospel must be the source of all the laws in society and state. That Jesus Christ, the Lord to whom “all authority hath been given . . . in heaven and on earth,” should be manifest before the Last Day when He reveals His glory which is now hidden, the church should see to it that the world obeys His laws, which are contained in the Gospel, even now.

In various ways Reformed theologians and churches — Zwingli more than the prudent Calvin, the Puritans in England and America more than the German Reformed — have proclaimed a Theocracy (or “Christocracy,” to use the expression of the Reformed theologian, August Lang) and thus set before the church tasks with which the church, as Lutheranism sees it, has nothing to do whatsoever.

It's NOT the Church's Mission

Henry P. Hamann’s book On Being A Christian is a commendable text for confessional Lutherans. The following passage directs us to what is and what is not the mission of the Church (pp. 113-114).

The marks of the church determine the mission of the Lutheran Church in the world. It is in the world to bear clear, genuine, unambiguous witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the sacraments he instituted: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is there to make this witness both to those who are Lutherans and to those who are not, both to Christians and to non-Christians, for it is entrusted with the very Word of God, the Word of salvation. . . .

Discerning readers will probably think at this point of the argument that I have been guilty of a grave omission in my account of the mission of the church. They will be aware that most churches in the world — and especially the large representative bodies like the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, as well as the pope of Rome — have assumed for themselves a leading role in the endeavor to bring about a better world. The various churches make solemn declarations on a whole host of important concerns: on war and peace, on poverty and health, on justice and human rights, on freedom and the role of women in society. The churches have much to say on the proper action of governments in all quarters of the globe, calling upon them to change such-and-such a policy and enact such-and-such reforms. Knowing all this, it may well be a matter for wonder that the present description of the mission of the church has failed to speak of such activity as part of that mission.

The answer is that the confessional Lutheran just does not consider these matters to be part of the mission of the church. A distinctive teaching of Lutheranism comes up here: the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms — although this traditional view has also been discarded by a great part of the modern Lutheran church.

Evil Pietism

Northwestern Publishing House has made available a very important and timely translation. It is The Complete Timotheus Verinus by Valentin Ernst Loescher. This work, originally written in two parts (1718 and 1721), “is the most comprehensive analysis of the pietistic movement in the German Lutheran Church.” With the resurgence of pietism in our own day, it is a work which needs to find its way into the hands of many. The following excerpt comes from pages 49-50.

Pietism in general is an evil; but there are also some specific evils.

First, there is the pious-appearing indifferentism; by that I mean that the revealed doctrines, faith, the supports for serving the preservation of religion (church constitutions, the symbolical books, polemics, an accurate style of teaching, and church ordinances), even religion itself, have been made indifferent and unimportant, even suspicious and objectionable. Some of these pietistic doctrines and practices were inherently connected with indifferentism, others flowed from it.

Second, there is the incipient fanaticism, or Crypto-enthusiasm; the means of grace and the ministry have been depreciated, and even revoked, through pietistic doctrines and practices; in their place, coarse enthusiastic and fanatical things were commended, defended, and excused.

Third, there is the so-called theoretical operatism, or work righteousness; the works of men have been too highly regarded and have been mingled into the basis of salvation, namely into righteousness by faith.

Fourth, there is millenialism; many have sought and hoped for the end of Christ’s kingdom of grace and cross, and the beginning of an absolute kingdom of glory in this life.

Fifth, there is terminism, which cuts short in this life God’s gracious will to save all.

Sixth, there is precisionism; the sharpness of the law has been enlarged and increased and the inquisition was reintroduced.

Seventh, there is mysticism; through pietistic doctrines and practices, false and harmful conceits, if only the appeared to be spiritual and holy, were introduced as divine secrets.

Eighth, there is perfectionism; pietistic doctrines and practices have led men to overstep the mark, and to introduce a home-made fulfilling of the law and an imagined paradisiacal condition in this life.

Ninth, there is reformatism; the present condition of the church has been regarded as completely corrupt, so that a fundamental reformation, or the establishment of a completely different church, is needed. All of these special evils will be treated in more depth below so that they are less often misunderstood. The schisms and doctrinal separations, which were caused intentionally and without sufficient reason, will not be forgotten.

But in all these things, there was something else, very special, which characterizes pietism even more accurately. A conceited striving for piety in doctrines and practices was mixed into all, or at least into most of the theological points of religion; they regarded these points as nothing without their kind of piety. They altogether, or for the most part, approved or excused the movements and harmful exploits which have arisen up to this time. They denied that an evil called pietism was present in the church.