Prayer Book Revision Again?

The decision of the 1994 General Convention directing the Standing Liturgical Commission (SLC) to prepare a rationale and plan for the next revision of the Book of Common Prayer has encouraged the Diocese of Newark to participate actively in the process.

By resolution of our diocesan convention in January, Bishop John Spong appointed a task force "to study the theological issues that should be considered in the next revision of the prayer book, to report in two years to our diocesan convention, and ultimately to communicate the results of its work to the SLC before the next General Convention."

The intent of this grassroots task force of laity and clergy is for us to be included in the revision process and the attending debate. It is our hope that other dioceses will do likewise.

The Episcopal Women's Caucus has led the way in pressing for inclusive language in our church's liturgies. This is the major need which our task force recognizes for prayer book revision but with an expanded scope: We believe our worship should be intentionally inclusive both of the worshipers and of the God in whom we believe. Inclusive language for the first issue concerns principally the nouns and pronouns we use in liturgy to refer to the worshipers and to the God we worship. The second involves the verbs that are used, particularly their moods and tenses.

The exigencies of 16th-century England that initially prompted the 1549 BCP were largely political correctness and inclusive language (English in place of Latin). The language usage deemed inclusive then, and which is largely used in our prayer books since, was determined by the predisposition of the common world view of that era-- male-oriented, Anglo-Saxon, politically autocratic, and clergy controlled--which is or ought to be no longer the case today.

For our prayer book to be common to people as we enter the 21st century, the nouns and pronouns, titles and terms used should be inclusive of gender, of people of color (cf. the association of darkness with evil), of sexual orientation and of scientific and political realities. Because of the timing of the revision process that produced the 1979 BCP, these issues were largely unaddressed as they were arising coincidentally.

The second and long overdue need for revision is for the language of our worship to be inclusive of the God to Whom we are called to witness both in our corporate worship and personal life. This is a call for the revision of the verbs used in the prayer book relative to the God revealed in Jesus.

With the predominant use of the subjunctive and imperative moods of the verbs in our current prayers and salutations (inherited from preReformation theology), are we not perceived as wishing for or asking for what we believe our God has already done, is doing, or has willed to be done? To what god are we actually bearing witness with such language? Might we not be perceived to be like the 450 hapless prophets of Baal who besought their god vainly on Mount Carmel to hear them, all the while rejecting the God of Elijah whom they beheld to have acted quite indicatively? At worst, the verb forms, both in mood and tense, of our present usage deny and exclude the God of grace revealed in Jesus Christ. What bears true and awesome witness to our God and the good news? Is it our familiar subjunctive well-wishing as commonly perceived in "The Lord be with you" and imperative pleading as in "Lord, have mercy" and "Lord, hear our prayer"? Or would an indicative proclamation such as "The Lord is with you!" and affirmative thanksgiving such as "We thank you Lord" bear more faithful testimony to Christ?

The difference is between popular "Hallmark card theology" (e.g. "May God's peace be with you...") which, though well-meaning, does not send "the very best" message about God and the gospel of God's grace that was claimed unequivocally and proclaimed boldly and indicatively by the early church as exemplified in the Easter epistle, Colossians 3:1-4.

At best, the verbs regarding God's work of redemption are patently inconsistent and contradictory. One poignant illustration is in our public testimony to the Resurrection. At the Easter Vigil we thankfully attest that in baptism we are buried with Christ in his death, by it we share in his Resurrection, through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. And again we declare that God has bestowed on the baptized the forgiveness of sin and has raised us to the new life of grace. Then on Easter Day, with the collect we implore God to grant that we may be raised from the death of sin. This is followed directly by the Easter epistle that states, "If then you have been raised with Christ..." Again on Easter Tuesday the collect indicatively avers that we have been raised with Christ.

This is but one of many of the theological contradictions both within the prayer book itself and between the prayer book and scripture. It points to the need to examine carefully the verbs we used and reform them to be inclusive of the God who has indicatively redeemed us and to be intentional in our testimony to God as eucharistic people, the body of Christ, whose awe-filled hearts have great cause to be lifted up with thanksgiving. The New Zealand BCP and portions of the baptismal liturgy in the 1979 BCP express this and provide encouraging examples for the continued revision of our prayer book.

Does then our prayer book need to be revised? And what about the hymnal? That depends for whom our books for worship are to be common and to what god or God we believe we are called to worship and to bear witness. These are basic issues that profoundly affect our church's primary mission in the decades to come and have moved the Diocese of Newark to be engaged actively in raising them up in the revision process. We look forward to other dioceses participating in this work in furthering our church's intentional proclamation of the good news revealed in Jesus Christ to all people.

The Rev. Wade Renn is rector of Grace Church, Nutley, and co-chair of the Diocese of Newark's Task Force on Prayer Book Revision.
This article first appeared in The Living Church, September 10, 1995, and is reprinted with permission.

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PROPAGANDA OR EDUCATION? A NEW VOCATION FOR THE CHURCH

The fall of the year is traditionally a time of intense institutional activity in the life of the Church. Sunday school classes and the youth group are reorganized. The adult education program is advertised. The plans for the every-member canvas are announced. Social events are scheduled and attempts are made to invite the faithful into the various programs that are offered. These activities consume enormous energy on the part of both clergy and lay leaders, and each September there is great hope that this will be a successful church year.

However, if one charts the trends present in institutional religious life, it becomes apparent that these traditional activities have a declining appeal to the people they are designed to serve. Studies reveal that, before the program year is complete, the Church leaders will once again be discouraged. If one looks at these activities over a longer perspective, it is clear that the decline is precipitous. It is a demoralizing time for leaders in institutional religion.

That discouragement becomes more ominous when one looks at recent opinion polls on American religious sentiments today. In this nation there appears to be a very high level of religious feeling, a yearning for God, for spiritual things, for meaning, and for a sense of transcendence. However, few people who express these desires believe that any institutional religious entity is the place where one can go to explore these dimensions of life. So we have a society in which the interest in things religious is growing while the interest in organized religion is declining. One wonders what this means, why it is so and what the future holds for an institution like the Church.

To begin to formulate an answer, we might examine first some of the presuppositions that still operate, perhaps not always consciously, in the structures of the Church. One of those presuppositions is that the Church has a duty and a responsibility to provide its people with a variety of religious answers. The assumption has been made that the leadership of the Church was in possession of those answers, perhaps by divine revelation. But the world has evolved to a place where this assumption is no longer trusted, especially since this very claim of ecclesiastical authority has been used in the past to suppress the questions that religious people want to ask. Today's spiritually hungry world would like the freedom to probe new experiences, new understandings and new realities. People yearn, not so much for answers in this generation, as to have their questions honored and explored. Perhaps my daughter was right when she informed me years ago, "Dad, the Church keeps answering questions that I don't even ask anymore." So far removed from the real issues of life has the Church grown that those who have abandoned its life now appear to regard the Church as irrelevant, and those who have not left its sacred walls frequently regard the Church as boring. The only exception to this rule appears to be in that right-wing of Christianity where a passionate hysteria is promoted to remove doubts and to create the momentary illusion of well-being in an otherwise frightened world. But when either this passion or those simple answers are challenged, this form of religion inevitably turns angry and vindictive and reveals an empty despair. One has only to listen to the fear- mongering of a Patrick Buchanan, or the veiled threats delivered through constant smiles of a Ralph Reed or a Pat Robertson to have this confirmed. These observations raise for me the dramatic question as to how the Church in this moment of history can fulfill its vocation.

Christian leaders might begin to address these concerns by seeking the difference between what believers call Christian education and what religious critics call Christian propaganda. It is my conviction that these two have been so deeply confused over the centuries that in the minds of most people they are the same thing. Indeed, the more established the Church has been in the power structures of the society, the more propaganda has masqueraded as education.

When the western world conceived of itself as "Christendom," the dominant religious tradition was understood to speak with the literal voice of God. The leaders of this tradition identified their understanding of God with God and claimed for it an infallibility. Hierarchical pronouncements and institutional interpretations of what the Church called "God's scriptures" were clothed with inerrancy. Church leaders, from the papal office to the local priest, presented themselves to the people as the source of answers. As such, they tolerated no questions that relativized the authority of their conclusions. The educational function of the Church was actually propaganda designed to impart "the true faith," to explain the intricacies of doctrine and to discern the correctness of scripture. The assumption was abroad that if one mastered these things one became a true believer. Vestiges of that mentality are still present in the life of the Church today, and it is that mentality which contributes mightily to the Church's growing irrelevance and to the decreasing appeal found in normative church activities. The people resent being propagandized. The Church refuses to educate.

Christendom as an organizing principle of our society no longer exists, whether the institutional Church recognizes that or not. Christendom has been replaced by the secular city. In that secular city the authority of the Church is at best badly compromised and at worst non-existent. The secular city came into being, at least in part, because the Church, in the defense of the ultimate authority of Christendom, fought and lost battles against Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, just to name a few. The once unchallenged moral authority of the Church has been devastated by its defenses of slavery, apartheid and segregation, by its persecution of heretics, by its opposition to the emancipation of women and by its hostility towards gay and lesbian people. For these reasons neither the intellectual nor the moral authority of the Church is today intact, and efforts to relate to this present day out of the propagandizing authority of the past is pitifully inept. The Church may well still make pronouncements, but the fact is that very few people are listening. That is one major reason why the programmatic activities of the Church today are in trouble and have declining appeal. That is also why a whole new concept of how to be the Church and how to engage the task of Christian education in our generation needs to be born. That might begin by drawing a clear distinction between propaganda and education. Christian propaganda assumes that the Church possesses the "truth," so it is designed to give people the right answers. Christian education must be done in a secular society and be designed to help people ask the right questions.

Christian propaganda assumes that there is a fixed goal to which a person's life is properly destined. Christian education is open-ended and invites a person into a journey into the largely undefined mystery of God. Its destination is thus not clear. It offers no fixed guideposts and no detailed maps that we can follow along the way. Christian propaganda calls its adherents to master the content of the Christian faith as if that content were self- evident and totally set. Christian education suggests that truth is always relative and that ultimate and unchanging truth is finally unknowable except "through a glass, darkly." Thus it proclaims that the sources of the authority in the life of the Church, such as the scriptures, the creeds and that body of doctrines, do but point to God, they never capture God.

Christian propaganda invites one to be secure and seduces its recipients into the belief that the Church can provide that security. Therefore, Christian propaganda aims to remove doubt and to claim certainty. Christian education, however, invites one to embrace insecurity as an essential mark of our growing humanity, to walk courageously into it, to celebrate doubt and to recognize that certainty is nothing but the pious face of ecclesiastical idolatry. Christian propaganda invests the Bible with inerrancy. Christian education searches the biblical tradition as one means of seeking the Word of God, but it recognizes that this Word can never be identified with the literal words of scripture.

Christian propaganda regards the teaching of the Bible as a process of learning the facts and reconciling the contradictions. Christian education invites the participant to taste the spirit behind the dated and sometimes confusing words of scripture until those words become not literal symbols, but doorways into the reality of God. The Church that will live in the present and survive into the future will not be about the task of propagandizing its people. It will, however, be about the task of educating them. It will see its task not to be that of providing answers, denying doubt and building security. Rather it will entertain questions, help people to be open to all kinds of new growing experiences, while welcoming insecurity as a virtue to be embraced, not a vice to be remedied. It will see the Christian life as a journey that is ongoing, a journey the goal of which is the undefined mystery of God and in the pursuit of that goal, no boundaries on the human spirit will be admissible. If these principles could undergird the programs the Church inaugurates each fall, the response might well be different, the decline of interest reversed and perhaps, once again, the Church would be perceived as the place where the deepest religious yearnings present in the human heart could be explored openly and honestly, without fear or threat. The time has come for the Church to forsake its authoritative answers of the past that were delivered inside such discredited cliches as "The Bible says" or "the Church teaches." A better text for our time might come out of the Book of Isaiah, where the prophet said, "Come let us reason together, saith The Lord." A declining institution just might welcome this new possibility.

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