Where do the so-called “worship
wars” stand now?
Guest Editor and long-time board member of The Liturgical
Conference, Lester Ruth, set that question as his topic for Liturgy 32, no. 1. Ruth requested new
essays from a wide range for worship leaders and scholars because it is now nearly
thirty years since our churches have been experimentation with worship practices.
Here is Ruth’s description
of the beginning of the conflicts over worship.
In two weeks, I will post some
of his conclusions about worship themes that have resulted from this explosion
of interest in worship.
Around 1993, American
Protestants declared war on each other. And they did so over worship. Although
the weapons used did not inflict physical harm on the combatants, there were
wounds nonetheless. Bitter disagreements, angry arguments, and political machinations
spilled across the church. Pastors and musicians were fired or sometimes left
on their own, shaking the dust off of their feet. Congregants voted with their
feet, or their wallets, or with raised hands if the question of which worship
style was right was brought to a vote. And thus were the conflicts known as the
worship wars.
The most obvious front
line of combat in the wars was music. Fighting occurred over instrumentation
(guitar vs. organ was a common conflict), song repertoires (hymns vs. choruses),
and even the role of song in corporate worship. As historian Michael Hamilton
has noted, these musical issues were not simply musical but were caught up in
larger issues of social identity: what music one preferred was a statement
about who one was and with whom one identified.
But music was not the
only grounds for conflict. Among a variety of fronts, combatants battled over
preaching styles, the use of technology, the impact of popular entertainment,
the relationship between the pastoral dimensions of worship (Is the service for
us?) and its evangelistic ones (Is the service for others?), and even the level
of informality and dress appropriate for Christian worship.
It appears that we can
date the beginning of the worship wars—if the term’s emergence in publications
is any indication—to the year when commentators began using the term to
describe the fight over worship styles. The contentious issues quickly got
subsumed under the large categories of “traditional” versus “contemporary.”
This dichotomy became the verbal topography for identifying the front lines of
conflict. . . .
The simple dichotomy was
erroneous, too, in that “contemporary” worship was never a monolithic entity.
While much of the ink spilled over the worship wars by mainline observers came from
those concerned about the influence of a few megachurches advocating an
approach that reshaped worship for evangelistic purposes (Willow Creek
Community Church in Illinois being the most prominent), other forms of
contemporary worship were emerging at the same time. This emergence occurred in
both older Pentecostal denominations, like the Assemblies of God, and in
upstart Pentecostal renewal, like the churches influenced by the mid-century
Latter Rain revival in Canada. The emergence happened, too, in “new paradigm”
churches (to use the language of sociologist Donald E. Miller) like the
Vineyard Fellowships, Calvary Chapels, or Hope Chapels. A wide variety of
congregations even felt the liturgical influence of transdenominational
movements like Promise Keepers. New worship impulses arose even in mainline
congregations usually associated with youth or young adult ministry or with
renewal movements like United Methodism’s Walk to Emmaus program. If we factor
in developments among different ethnic groups, the result is an amazing
hodgepodge of new forms of Protestant worship emerging decades after the 1960s.
“Contemporary” worship had never been a single thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment