Letters
from 15 November 2004 to 21 November 2004
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Understanded by
the people?
I
ENJOYED YOUR FRONT PAGE this week. I have often thought
about the words we use in worship and feel like you that with
the desperate desire to modernise our liturgy we have lost something
along the way.
It occurred to
me when reading / singing hymns from the 16th / 17th / 18th / 19th centuries
just how much the ordinary people using them in those days would have
understood. There was little or no education for most. Theological statements
made in hymns would have been beyond most people's understanding (as
they are today, even in 'modern' hymns) How about the last stanza from Christ
is Made the Sure Foundation: 'Consubstantial, co-eternal, while unending
ages run'? A powerful end to a great hymn.
In the rush to
modernise we have lost the mystery, the sense of the unknown and unknowable
yet powerfully drawing us in to the experience of the God Head. Other
faiths (as far as I know) do not attempt to modernise the words, the
concepts, the mystery of God. Even in the Christian community we have
parts which take a lot of understanding yet when we make the attempt
we discover a mine of gold well worth digging a bit deeper.
We need to reach
out (and be helped to reach out -- perhaps the work of the preacher?)
to discover the truth beyond the words we so unthinkingly use. So rather
than fall to the lowest common denominator we reach for the highest common
factor.
Keep up the good
work -- AO as ever a joy to open on a Monday morning!
The Reverend Lindsay
Dew
Thornhill Parish Church
Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, UNITED KINGDOM
LindsayAllangels@aol.com
15 November 2004
Empty away!
THE LETTER
ON 14 NOVEMBER on
liturgical language found this reader agreeing completely with the need
to retain some of the older liturgical language. I miss 'inestimable'
mightily, for instance, replaced by the ghastly 'immeasurable' in the
General Thanksgiving. And Mary must have sent the rich 'empty away' instead
of 'away empty.'
At the same time,
I was reminded that one of the great criticisms leveled at Archbishop
Cranmer's first Book of Common Prayer was that it used a flat and tedious
English style.
Perhaps an even
greater question, if I may say so, is who actually controls the revising.
As Geoffrey Wainwright (no Anglican he) has pointed out, the liturgy
specialists have had the upper hand for years, and in a church that says
that the way it prays expresses what it believes, this is a very serious
matter indeed.
Bishop
Pierre Whalon
Paris, France
bppwhalon@aol.com
15 November 2004
NZPB gets it
right ...
THANK YOU FOR
YOUR PERTINENT comments
regarding the beauty (or lack thereof) of modern liturgy, and your suggestion
that poets and writers should be invited onto liturgy committees. As
a poet, writer, theologian, and passionate lover of the English language,
I applaud your sentiments, and only hope that your seeds find fruitful
ground.
I am deeply grateful
to the Liturgy Committee that revised 'A New Zealand Prayer Book/He Karakia
Mihinare o Aotearoa'; they managed to keep a limpid, poetic, theologically
satisfying shape to our liturgy when translating it into the vernacular.
The rhythm of poetic, liturgical English has, in general, been retained
in our Prayer Book -- there are few signs that the Book was revised
by a committee. However, I still enjoy monthly Evensong services when
the lovely 1662 Evensong liturgy is routinely used.
Robyn Parkin
St James' Lower Hutt
Lower Hutt, NEW ZEALAND
16 November 2004
... Almost
AMEN TO YOUR
EXPOSITION
on liturgical language! I cringe each time I hear the response still
lurking in the New Zealand Prayer Book:
'Awaken in
us a sense of wonder for the earth and all that is in it.
R/ TEACH US TO CARE CREATIVELY FOR ITS RESOURCES"
Straight out of
a 70s eco-legal-theme packet. Can anyone think up a poetic replacement?
Funny. My choristers,
being given lots of opportunity to sing modern texts of the psalms, still
insist on Coverdale, even in an otherwise modern service. They appreciate
the poetry, flow of words, the rhythm, the sheer idiocy of his mistranslations
of Hebrew, the aged English. It becomes FUN and MEMORABLE....
God is come down
in a fair ground.... one deep calleth another because of the sound of
the water pipes...
Gillian Lander
St John the Baptist
Northcote, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
16 November 2004
'A high place of
honor'
IT IS ALWAYS
A PLEASURE to
read your editorials with which I most often agree! However, while it
is true that our liturgical language occasionally may be lacking in subtlety
of thought and beauty of expression, the 1979 BCP [Episcopal Church in
the USA] occupies a high place of honor in the wide panoply of contemporary
liturgical texts. One need only listen to the prayers of other western
faith traditions to realize how fortunate we are to have the 1979 BCP,
warts and all.
The Reverend Carlton
Kelley
Non parochial
Richmond, Indiana, USA
FrCarlton@aol.com
15 November 2004
Casualties in the
battle over liturgical revision
There is
language that to 'insiders' can be comforting and familiar, but
to those on the threshold of our church can be off-putting or
intimidating
Is this really
true? Back when prayer book revision was in process this was repeated
so often that it was taken as a given. But was there ever any compelling
evidence for it?
While the Church
was producing liturgies in contemporary English to avoid scaring of potential
converts with weird, unfamiliar, language, 'seekers' -- especially the "young
people" the Church was
courting -- were turning to Buddhism, Hinduism, eclectic
New Age products and other religious exotica. They were not only unfazed
by unfamiliar, 'insider' language and practices -- they actively sought
them out. From ancient mystery religions to contemporary New Age cults,
religious ceremonies have always incorporated unfamiliar practices and
archaic language. People aren't put off by it: they expect it and some
seek it out.
The Church's program
to make its practices more 'relevant,' to
bridge the gap between religious practice and secular
life -- by introducing dumbed down contemporary English and attempting
to simulate the idiom of youth culture to attract adolescents --
was pointless, wrong-headed and counterproductive. It did not attract
seekers or keep 'young people' on board and it turned off church-goers.
I
left the Church 20 years after the fact because I just couldn't stand
the new Prayer Book, much as I tried over the years to be reconciled
to it, and because I could never forget the way it was pushed
through. The battle over liturgical revision seems trivial compared to
the current dispute about sexual conduct, but the opposite is the case.
The sexual practices of clergy or other laypeople in the pews make no
difference to my church experience: it isn't the business of the Church
to make windows into men's souls -- or bedrooms. But if repeating formulae
like 'and
also with you' sets my teeth on edge and passing
the Peace stresses me out, and if I cannot go
to church without remembering how the Church
without any good reason threw away the liturgy
I, and millions of other people, loved makes
me angry, then church-going doesn't contribute
to my religious life.
H. E. Baber
University of San Diego
San Diego, California, USA
baber@sandiego.edu
19 November 2004
Sacred sociology?
YOUR COLUMN of
11/15/04 is correct. The new Bible we are 'using' in our services reads
like a sociology text. The King James version might not have been 'right',
but it certainly encourages one to read it for its own sake.
Eric Freischlag
St. John's
Wilson, New York, USA
ericpaulf@adelphia.net
15 November 2004
The beauty of the
iambic foot
THANK YOU FOR
ADDRESSING THE ISSUE of
the deteriorating language of the Book of Common Prayer. I agree with
you that pedestrian language is probably the result of committee work,
and I suspect that what has happened is what happened in the very first
revisions of the BCP: we began with Cranmer's elegant and skillful prose,
only to have it dismantled by committees on theology. Unfortunately,
no one repaired the rhetoric after 'correcting' the theology. Some of
the changes would be simple: In the Litany of Thanksgiving, the people's
response is 'We thank you, God.' It would be much smoother if the response
were 'we give you thanks, O God.' The natural rhythm of English is iambic
foot, so the second response sounds more natural to our ears. Arguably,
this also is not a response more difficult to understand.
Other changes would be more extensive, but I don't believe they would
be more difficult, in the long run. And what a blessing it would be to
be able to offer God our most beautiful language once again in our worship.
The Reverend
Peggy Blanchard
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Jefferson City
Kingston, Tennessee, USA
revpeg@hotmail.com
22 November 2004
Are we building
or destroying?
GAY AND LESBIAN
CONCERNS are the hot issue in the Anglican and overall Christian community these
days. No-one seems to have the solution so far, but I believe only God
can save us now. If we all claim to be worshipping the same Lord, with
the same objectives of serving him and honouring him with all our lives,
then we should not be speaking different languages on this matter. It
has clearly divided the church -- and I take that as a clever strategy
by the devil, as he is always happy to divide. If being homosexual is
being demon-possessed, then those of us who are not need to kneel and
pray for the redemption of those who are. If they leave the church because
of this stigma, then certainly we are all guilty of not showing love,
support, and care for one another. Every Sunday we pray 'We who are many
are one body, for we all partake of the one bread'. I pose this challenge
to all of us: to do some self introspection and see how much we are building
up or destroying God's children; how much we practise what we preach;
and how much we are living up to God's expectations.
Sibongile Mavimbela
St Bart's Anglican Church
Nelspruit, Mpumalanga Province of South Africa, SOUTH AFRICA
sibomavs@yahoo.com
15 November 2004
Political puzzlement
RECENT LETTERS
ABOUT the
US presidential election increase my sense of puzzlement about American
politics. I
am no fan of John Kerry, whose appalling 'reporting for doo-dee' moment
even made my dear old mum think he was worse than Bush. However, I am
baffled by a reference to his 'betrayal' in the Vietnam War. I understand
that, having served with courage, Mr Kerry changed his mind about the
legitimacy of the war. To most observers outside the USA, that seems
a rather more honourable position than a spoilt rich brat asking daddy
to fix him up with a sinecure in the 'Texas air force'.
Alan Harrison
S. Mary the Virgin, Hayes, Diocese of London
Uxbridge, UNITED KINGDOM
15 November 2004
Earlier
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