Sacred Actions In The Protestant Churches Today

Ever ready to adopt new methods, Protestants have been affected by new means of communication and contemporary cultural trends during the twentieth century. In addition, powerful movements of liturgical renewal, combined with the twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic movements have changed the face of Protestant worship.

In regard to the actions of worship, contemporary Protestant churches have inherited competing impulses from the major movements of the modern period: Pietism, Rationalism, and Restorationism. To this should be added three additional influences: the liturgical pragmatism that grew out of revivalist religion on the American frontier and has found recent expression in televangelism and the church growth movement; the modern liturgical movement in both its Roman Catholic and Protestant manifestations, which developed out of the Restorationism of the nineteenth century; and the charismatic renewal that has emerged from twentieth-century Pentecostalism. The various Protestant traditions of worship have assimilated (or resisted) these impulses and influences in different ways, but widespread ferment concerning the actions of worship continues. The present century has been a period of unprecedented liturgical change for Roman Catholics and most Protestants. The revision of official liturgical books and the production of such books where none previously existed is the primary symptom as well as the principal agent for the renewal of liturgical practice. Among American Protestants, this is especially true of Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and, to some extent, the United Church of Christ. Baptism has gained prominence as the rite of entry into the Christian community and the foundation of life in Christ. In addition to fuller rites for baptism itself, there are provisions for the affirmation and the renewal of baptism as well as proposals to elaborate baptism further as part of an extended catechumenal process. The Eucharist has increasingly become a regular part of Protestant worship, with a renewed emphasis on the act of thanksgiving and on the communion both with Christ and among the people of God. Although frequency in the celebration of the Lord's Supper varies from tradition to tradition, a unified service of Word and sacrament on every Sunday (and feast day) is the practice envisioned by the new liturgies. The liturgical context of preaching has been stressed in the use of new lectionaries. Rites that resonate with historic ritual action have been provided for the celebration of Holy Week and the ancient Easter Vigil. Concern for ritual action is likewise evident in the services provided for ordination, marriage, and burial as well as the pastoral care of the sick and those in need of confession and forgiveness. The conduct of worship, including the gestures and movement of the congregation and those leading worship, has also received fresh attention. Some of the factors contributing to contemporary interest among Protestant churches in the actions of worship include the following. Theological The recovery of eschatological categories stimulated by modern biblical studies has provided new ways to understand the fundamental nature of the church and its worship. When the church is understood as an eschatological community anticipating the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus and inaugurated in his death and resurrection, then it is the very nature of that community to be symbolic. The church is a symbolic community that points beyond itself to the reality of God's kingdom, and consequently symbolic action, most especially liturgy and sacrament, constitutes the life of the church. Such a view is more compatible with Protestant theology than the allegorical interpretations of sacred actions in the Middle Ages or even patristic understandings based upon incarnational categories. Anthropological The studies of cultural anthropologists have shown that ritual behavior is foundational to human culture and have demonstrated how it functions to establish meaning and to sustain social cohesion. The church as a genuinely human community inevitably employs ritual action to constitute its way of life and system of belief. Ecumenical The profound changes in Roman Catholic worship have had enormous impact upon Protestant worship. Inspired by the liturgical movement, the Second Vatican Council initiated a massive effort to reform the Roman liturgical books and to renew liturgical practice. As Roman Catholics adopted the vernacular, expanded the use of hymnody, and took seriously the use of the Scriptures and the place of preaching in the liturgy, many Protestant churches discovered a new freedom to take up Catholic practices and to participate fully in the recovery of a common liturgical heritage. Cultural The cultural factors include the following: the dissolution of Christendom and the crisis of Christian identity in a pluralistic and secular culture; the post-modern intellectual environment, in which the Enlightenment critique of religious practice has given way to a new appreciation of ritual and symbol; and the domination of the electronic media, especially television, over other forms of communication (oral or typographical) in contemporary society. This last factor has encouraged word-centered Protestants to give more attention to the visual and kinesthetic dimensions of worship, but among the liturgical pragmatists it has become the rationale for turning Christian worship into another form of entertainment.