Uh-oh...Worship Mascots?
My Sacramental Nazarene friends will not like what I saw at The Lark, an online satire of (and by) Evangelical culture. Of course, everything is just a joke here. But doesn't there have to be some truth in a joke to make it funny?
From my (admittedly hazy) memory of studying nineteenth century revivalism, it seems to me that the seeds for the kind of nonsense that is only parodied here, were latent in that movement. What's scary is that I can actually imagine this kind of worship taking place, and traditionally sacramental churches are not at all exempt. My understanding is that many Lutheran congregations in the Western U.S. are now adopting "happy clappy" worship. A friend told me that her sister had to travel quite a distance from her home near Berkley, CA to find a Lutheran congregation that says the Creeds weekly and takes communion regularly. Perhaps that's just Berkley, which is, of course, known for its weirdness.
I think any student of Church history ought to realize that Montanus has always been among us, whatever our theological tradition, and wherever we are.
While the subject of parody is still fresh, let me happily say that CPE, that liberal-protestant (and I do use "liberal" in the philosophical sense, and protestant in the cultural sense) parody of itself, is almost over for me. Only four more days! Two of those are taken up with evaluations and graduation exercises, so there are really only two more days.
Then, it is on to internship in lovely Boone, NC. My wife & I are quite excited, not least about the lower temperatures. The highs here in Columbia, SC have been in the high nineties, with the heat index pushing those temps even higher. Boone's high today was eighty-four. What more could one ask for?
My Sacramental Nazarene friends will not like what I saw at The Lark, an online satire of (and by) Evangelical culture. Of course, everything is just a joke here. But doesn't there have to be some truth in a joke to make it funny?
From my (admittedly hazy) memory of studying nineteenth century revivalism, it seems to me that the seeds for the kind of nonsense that is only parodied here, were latent in that movement. What's scary is that I can actually imagine this kind of worship taking place, and traditionally sacramental churches are not at all exempt. My understanding is that many Lutheran congregations in the Western U.S. are now adopting "happy clappy" worship. A friend told me that her sister had to travel quite a distance from her home near Berkley, CA to find a Lutheran congregation that says the Creeds weekly and takes communion regularly. Perhaps that's just Berkley, which is, of course, known for its weirdness.
I think any student of Church history ought to realize that Montanus has always been among us, whatever our theological tradition, and wherever we are.
While the subject of parody is still fresh, let me happily say that CPE, that liberal-protestant (and I do use "liberal" in the philosophical sense, and protestant in the cultural sense) parody of itself, is almost over for me. Only four more days! Two of those are taken up with evaluations and graduation exercises, so there are really only two more days.
Then, it is on to internship in lovely Boone, NC. My wife & I are quite excited, not least about the lower temperatures. The highs here in Columbia, SC have been in the high nineties, with the heat index pushing those temps even higher. Boone's high today was eighty-four. What more could one ask for?
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