Worship And Personal Conversion

Because Christian faith runs counter to other understandings of life, rites of conversion and incorporation are important. The reorientation of values that occurs with the emergence of Christian commitment cannot be totally incorporated within the paradigm of nurture. Even those brought up within the church need to be "converted" in some significant way.

Initiation rites, as studied by anthropologists, comprise ritual actions and oral teachings which result in decisive changes in a person's religious and social status and role. Typically, through a series of ordeals, people learn the ways and the understandings of the adult community, encounter the sacred, experience death and rebirth, and emerge as new persons whose existence in the community is significantly transformed. Historically, initiation plays an essential role in practically every known religion. Indeed, it appears that we only fully understand and are committed to religious truth insofar as we are initiated into it by acts of personal faith or conversion symbolically dramatized through ritual. Elaborate incorporation rites, by which Christians became full members of the church, were characteristic of the first four centuries of the Christian era. Wrapped in secrecy, after weeks of intense preparation, these rites were calculated to inspire religious experience and celebrate the occasion of a profound conversion. Initiation lies at the core of all genuine life, but in the modern Western world significant initiation rites are practically nonexistent. However, to understand those incorporation rites which have survived in contemporary Christian churches, it is necessary to differentiate between (1) faith commitment incorporation rites, through which people witness to personal faith, and (2) institutional incorporation initiation rites, through which persons join the church. Faith commitment initiation rites are most typical of those reported upon in the historical and comparative study of religion. The Christian church during the first three centuries is a good example. Vestiges of this understanding still persist in some churches, but institutional incorporation rites appear most typically in contemporary churches of the mainline denominational tradition. Conversion and Initiation Few concepts are more vague and confusing to liberal mainline Protestants than conversion. Rarely have we used the word conversion; and all too frequently we have limited our concerns to membership campaigns. However, until we find a place for conversion within our educational ministry, the church's mission will remain impotent. Indeed, without converts, the church will have difficulty being a community of Christian nurture. Evangelism, as the word is used here, refers to the process by which the Christian community of faith, through the proclamation of the gospel in word and deed, leads people inside and outside the church to a radical reorientation of life—that is, conversion. Evangelism is not indoctrination. It is testifying through transformed lives to the acts of God both within and without the community of faith. When we evangelize, we witness through word-in-deed to the acts of God in Jesus Christ. Without this witness to the lordship of Christ, to the Good News of God's new possibility, and to the gospel's prophetic protest against all false religiousness, the church loses its soul. It becomes an institution of cultural continuity maintaining the status quo, rather than an institution of cultural change living in and for God's new community. Evangelism is best understood, therefore, as the means by which the church continually transforms its life and the lives of its people into a body of committed believers, willing to give anything and everything to the cause of historically mediating God's reconciling love in the world. Christian faith goes counter to many ordinary understandings and ways of life. It is hardly possible for anything less than a converted, disciplined body to be the historical agent of God's work in the world. Christians are not born. Neither are they simply made, formed, or nurtured. Conversion—a reorientation of life, a change of heart, mind, and behavior—is a necessary aspect of mature Christian faith whether or not one grows up in the church. The church can no longer surrender to the illusion that child nurture, in and of itself, can or will kindle the fire of Christian faith either in persons or in the church. We have expected too much of nurture. We can nurture individuals into institutional religion, but not into mature Christian faith. The Christian faith, by its very nature, demands conversion. We do not gradually educate persons to be Christian. To be Christian is to be baptized into the community of the faithful, but to be a mature Christian is to be converted. Conversion implies the reordering of our perceptions, a radical change without which no further growth or learning is possible. Conversion, therefore, is not an end, but a new beginning. It is a reorientation of a person's life, a deliberate turning from indifference, indecision, doubt, or earlier forms of piety to enthusiasm, conviction, illumination, and new understandings and ways. Conversion is not solely a shift from no faith or another faith to Christian faith; it is also an essential dimension in the life of all baptized, faithful Christians. Those who have been baptized as children and reared in the church also need to be converted. At some point, all Christians must fully internalize the faith of the church and affirm their own faith by being confronted with the choice of whether or not they will accept or reject the authority of the gospel. Incorporation into the Christian church requires that persons be brought to a personal life-transforming commitment to Christ. However, since Christian maturity and conversion never exist apart from human maturity, we ought not to impose the demands of adult faith and conversion on those who lack the prerequisites of human maturity. Children and youth are Christians and members of the community of Christian faith by their baptisms. They are to be nurtured in this community's understandings and ways. They are also to be evangelized by God's transforming Word until in their maturity (adulthood) they experience a moment or period of conversion. Commitment is neither a single occasion nor a singular kind. In baptism, our parents and the church make a commitment on our behalf. When we celebrate our first Communion, we make a first commitment of faith and we declare our desire to participate in the life of a nurturing, tradition-bearing family. Later that commitment takes the strange and unsettling shape of personal doubt and struggle with the community of our nurture. Finally, in adulthood, following the experience of conversion, a new sense of personal commitment is realized. While not final, this commitment has the quality of a significant new start. Conversion, then, is best understood as a significant aspect of a long process in the growth and maturation of faith by Christians within the Christian family. Thus, conversions experienced by Christians nurtured within the community of faith do not characteristically happen in a moment. They are not always sudden, dramatic, or emotional, though they may be all or any of these. Conversions are best understood as a radical turning from "?faith given?" (through nurture) to "?faith lived?" (through conversion). Conversions are radical because they imply internalization and the corresponding transformation of our lives. Conversions are the result of the witness of the faithful and imply a turning from one style of faith, typical of children and adolescents, to another style of faith, possible for adults. Once again, we need to understand that both conversion and nurture have a place in the church's educational ministry if it is to be Christian. Our sole concern with nurture has contributed to our losing both an evangelical power and a social dynamic. While rejecting a sterile revivalism, we constructed a false evangelism through nurture. True evangelism and conversion mean helping people to see that they are called, not only to believe the church's affirmation that Jesus is the Christ but to commit their lives to him and to live as his witnesses in the world. What the church's education ministry needs is a catechesis that evangelizes and an evangelism that catechizes. Nurture and conversion, conversion and nurture, belong together, taking different shapes and forms at various moments in a person's faith pilgrimage within the faith community. The gift of faith is something we are always learning. Conversions understood as process and multiple conversions throughout a person's life are basic to a living faith. Healthy rituals must both convert and nurture us. Learning and Change Our rituals effectively influence human emotion and thought toward some behavioral purpose. Dead rituals are those which have lost their power to stimulate or evoke such experience. Initiation rituals are aimed primarily at the transformation of an individual's psychological orientation—a conversion—a process of moving him or her from one place in the community to another. The ritual process of initiation needs to provide a significant detachment of the individuals from their present position or state in the community; an experience of liminality or in-between-ness; a psychic peak experience or conversion; and a reincorporation into the community as a new, "?reborn?" person. Conversion brings forth a new perspective—be it a matter of many years or a few seconds, a single or multiple experience—and as such is essential to faith. Our belief, disbelief, and re-belief are related to what we expect from experience. Or to put it another way, we all filter the data of experience and identity, what we see, in terms of acculturated presuppositions and assumptions. If a person does not believe in God, it is because any data that might be interpreted to indicate the presence of God is either ignored (filtered out) or labeled with malicious intent to point to something else. Inevitably, our reflection upon our experience has, as a precondition, certain primordial symbols, learned from birth, which dictate in a real way the possibilities of what we perceive in our experience. Those symbols are continued most significantly in our rituals. Milton Rokeach, a sociologist, has discovered in his work on values that it is possible to bring about a dramatic and lasting change in values by bringing out the conflicts in the values people hold. It is possible to suppress the conflict by professing opposing values. However when the awareness of these conflicts is made painfully unavoidable, it is our nature to make a choice between them. It is then that persons become disciples. Christian initiation, the incorporation of persons into Christian faith and life, necessitates this movement from orientation to disorientation to reorientation. The possibility of the integrated spiritual life of religious experience and prophetic action necessitates this reorientation or conversion. Ritual is the primary context for this process. Catechesis, therefore, needs to focus its attention on the transformation of human lives. Christian Initiation in Historic Perspective The genesis of a faith community is marked by the shared religious experience of its members—the resurrection of Jesus experienced by the disciples. But the passing of this founding generation means that the community of faith contains people, who have not had this original conversion. Indeed, in our culture, many are born within the community and never sense the power of a transformed existence. How are we moderns to become "?live?" members of a "?living church?"? More significant initiation rites could provide a context and stimulant for the transformation of consciousness and life. In the first few centuries of the Christian era when an adult was converted to the Christian faith, he or she was brought before the congregation by a sponsor, who testified to the candidate's sincerity of desire to embrace the faith. The moral life of the catechumen was then examined. If found worthy, the person was pronounced a Christian through the laying on of hands and the signing with the cross. For the next two to three years, the catechumen entered a preparation period intended to shape his or her life according to the Christian way. Besides participation in moral instruction, converts were expected to attend the weekly ritual of the community, but only for the first half of the ritual. Following the reading of Scripture, the sermon, and prayers, the converts exchanged the kiss of peace and were dismissed so as not to witness or participate in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Periodically during these probationary years, the converts were brought before the congregation and examined. When a person was considered ready on the first Sunday of Lent, he or she signed the church register and the date of baptism was set, namely the forthcoming Easter. During this period, a more intense form of learning was conducted emphasizing the spiritual life and church dogma. Participation in the Holy Week rituals marked the incorporation of the catechumen into the community of the faithful. Maundy Thursday was celebrated with exorcisms; Good Friday with prayers and fasting. Then, on Easter's eve, the final ritual began. The catechumen was once again exorcised; eyes, ears, and nose were anointed with oil. He or she renounced the devil and made a profession of faith. The salvation story was told. The candidate was stripped naked and was submerged in the coffin-like baptismal font to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Coming out on the other side, he or she was anointed with oil and put on a white garment. Upon processing to the altar, the baptism was confirmed by the laying on of the bishop's hands. For the first time, the convert participated in the Lord's Supper. Baptismal garments were worn until Pentecost. The catechumen came to church each day for the celebration of the Lord's Supper and to learn the meaning of the rites, in which he or she had participated. Thus ended the initiation ritual. Today the church often lacks such significant transforming rituals. In fact, it appears as if many parts of the church have abandoned rituals and left them in the hands of secular society. A challenge faces us. Can we evolve a meaningful rite of Christian maturity? Baptism is the rite of Christian initiation. At our baptism, we are made Christian and incorporated into Christ's church. Baptism needs to be given much greater importance and needs to be treated with greater seriousness. It would be well for us to celebrate our baptism day. It is essential for each of us to renew our baptismal vows at every new baptism. We have a great deal to learn about ritual in the lives of individuals and communities. We have a number of important theological issues to address. And we have a host of educational possibilities to imagine and explore. Liturgy and catechesis belong together. The future of the church's educational ministry and the church's mission are challenged by an awareness of their contemporary estrangement and their historic union.