What do we admire most about other Christian traditions?
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I posted a thread along these lines many years ago now.
I think it's timely to do so again.
Not simply because I'm now in a different ecclesial setting to the one I was in back then and have moved from a small t tradition to a Big T one, but also to be serious for a change and not tug other people's chains good-naturedly or otherwise.
So, I'll start off ...
The Big R and small R/eformed tradition.
I admire its seriousness of purpose and the way it engages with the scriptures. I may not always consider it to be going about that in the right way but the intentions are good.
I admire the emphasis on mission and ways that mission can be contextualised and 'tailored' at times.
The Wesleyan tradition. Its warmth.
The Pentecostal tradition. A bit too warm ... but I admire the sense of divine immanence and also the energy.
The Anglican tradition. It's confusing, it's jumbled but it's also magnificent. My heart bleeds for it. It's not just the history and the rural parishes but figures like Herbert and Traherne and a particular 'balance' and moderation.
The Lutheran tradition. I know next to nothing about it other than from these boards and the small number of Lutherans I've met in real life. I see the family resemblance but they do things differently. I get the impression of serious 'wrestling' with scripture and although I might cavill with some of the things that came out of 19th century Lutheranism, the intention is again good.
Roman Catholicism - I admire the discipline, rigour and particular contemplative practices. I'd happily lobby my own Tradition to recognise many post-Schism Saints.
I hope that doesn't come across as patronising or grudging. That is not my intention.
I think it's timely to do so again.
Not simply because I'm now in a different ecclesial setting to the one I was in back then and have moved from a small t tradition to a Big T one, but also to be serious for a change and not tug other people's chains good-naturedly or otherwise.
So, I'll start off ...
The Big R and small R/eformed tradition.
I admire its seriousness of purpose and the way it engages with the scriptures. I may not always consider it to be going about that in the right way but the intentions are good.
I admire the emphasis on mission and ways that mission can be contextualised and 'tailored' at times.
The Wesleyan tradition. Its warmth.
The Pentecostal tradition. A bit too warm ... but I admire the sense of divine immanence and also the energy.
The Anglican tradition. It's confusing, it's jumbled but it's also magnificent. My heart bleeds for it. It's not just the history and the rural parishes but figures like Herbert and Traherne and a particular 'balance' and moderation.
The Lutheran tradition. I know next to nothing about it other than from these boards and the small number of Lutherans I've met in real life. I see the family resemblance but they do things differently. I get the impression of serious 'wrestling' with scripture and although I might cavill with some of the things that came out of 19th century Lutheranism, the intention is again good.
Roman Catholicism - I admire the discipline, rigour and particular contemplative practices. I'd happily lobby my own Tradition to recognise many post-Schism Saints.
I hope that doesn't come across as patronising or grudging. That is not my intention.
Comments
Of the Methodist tradition, the hymns and the tunes, and the tradition of singing.
Of Roman Catholicism, the quiet confidence in the church's purpose as keeper and source of the sacraments, and the unselfconscious way they do it. Well, by comparison with the Church of England, which is perpetual embodied self-consciousness, whatever does.
I am, of course, speaking as a terminally self-conscious member of the Church of England.
That will do for the moment.
But crudely put, I thinks there’s still a lot to be said for this saying.
“I’d rather have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in”.
That might be in practice an ineffective way to follow the Jesus prayer that “they might all be one”. But at least it’s a try. Our divisions damage credibility that we might have something to say about global divisions.
(Written as a dissenter).
I do think beauty can help us see beyond the mundane sometimes.
And it's not restricted to Christianity of course. Not that I'm advocating 'salvation by aesthetics' but ...
I may start a new thread about what we admire within our own traditions but I've more to say on this one first.
The Quakers and 'Peace Churches': their individual and corporate commitment to peace and social justice
I'd also agree with @Lamb Chopped that there can be a particularly impressive 'charism' for spiritual companionship and 'soul-physician'-ship within the RCC.
I come from a “plain” tradition (to quote the Amish) and it was suspicious that beauty and appreciation of it were forms of idolatry. I never related to that, Smelled that it was pride disguised as modesty. “We’re proud of being humble”.
I love beauty in the natural world, in art, buildings, music. So far as the last is concerned, I do not know how anyone can listen to Allegri’s Miserere without being moved, having some sense of “the Other”. I know why the young Mozart was so moved that he had to write it down.
Beauty really matters.
Methodists. Its the wonderful Wesley hymns. I have included Love Divine for my funeral. Its an ecstatic view of salvation.
URC. Well the local church is amazing. They are serious about outreach so they run coffee mornings that regularly get 80=90 people, Mums and toddlers etc. They are not afraid to have a prayer during them. Totally admirable. Oh, and they KNOW their bible.
Anglicans. It's Choral Evensong - done cathedral style - and the associated heritage of superb choral music. I wish them well through their present difficulties.
Orthodox. Well I love the churches. We travelled down the Danube through the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania a couple of years ago. The churches blew me away. I knew about icons of course, but was totally unprepared for the wall to ceiling frescoes against a vivid blue background. As our eyes went up from the saints to the angels and Christ Pantocrator it was like a glimpse into heaven. Sunday Liturgies well attended with plenty of young people - churches that had come through great suffering. It was deeply moving. There is a kinship that I feel there that I don't feel with Churches of the Reformation. Natural, I suppose.
Like @Barnabas I am affected by beauty. It speaks to me of God and our ultimate destiny.
I do like the community church I preach at monthly. I like developing the worship service. I usually follow a Methodist worship planning page. Gives me a chance to experiment a bit.
The other church I have visited is UCC. Moderately formal liturgy. The preacher was a woman. I liked her perspective on the gospel she was preaching on.
In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love
Don’t know how accurate that is, but if so they sure have a point.
I like that too but it still begs the question as to how we decide what the 'essentials' are.
But 'in all things love' should cover that even if there is no consensus on what the essentials are or should be.
For a variety of reasons, I’ve always felt a sort of affinity toward or connection with the Episcopal Church. I would probably be an Episcopalian if being Presbyterian/Reformed weren’t so deeply embedded in my DNA. 😆
I appreciate the Episcopal/Anglican approach to things—beauty in worship and the space for worship, and the Anglican approach to the spiritual life.
I could say the same about the Orthodox, though I’m less familiar with them “in the wild.” Most of what I know about Orthofoxy is book-learning, and while that’s a start, it’s only a start.
I appreciate the Lutheran approach to liturgy—an appreciation for the traditional, shared forms coupled with a sense of freedom.
That’s a start.
Fixed broken link. BroJames, Purgatory Host
This is quoted from the article In Essentials, Unity: Understanding the essential things.
Try this link.
Thanks for letting me know.
I’ve fixed the broken link. BroJames, Purgatory Host
And the way that the Orthodox Church has managed to get on without a Papacy is appealing, perhaps closer to my understanding of the Gospel.
Also, my cousin got married into a Greek Orthodox family, and it felt very quietly fitting that there were no vows at their marriage. It's just not a thing you do. I've always felt it strange that we include vows in marriages since it's something Jesus pretty explicitly warned us about. And of course, theosis, seems healthier to have something to aspire for than the traditional trend to obsess over your own guilt that comes out of the Augustinian tradition (as I understand it.)
I'm quite aware that it's easier to have this admiration when you don't have a lot of direct experience. Heck, I've been told as much by a woman who grew up Orthodox and said "Meh, it's just like Catholicism." But I can appreciate the beauty of it. And the icons. I think Protestants went a little overboard with our historical hatred for imagery or religious artifacts that aren't The Bible.
I can understand cradle Orthodox who become Protestant going 'Meh! It's just like Catholicism' but that's only because I think 'folk-Orthodoxy' and 'folk-Catholicism' in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean tend to overlap. 'Folk-Pentecostalism' isn't that dissimilar if you ask me. It's just the 'symptoms' that differ.
I've never been RC but have been on an Ignatian retreat and various RC Lenten studies and my impression is that it's very different, although there are overlaps and parallels of course.
The Orthodox find some RCC stuff quite 'creepy', in the same way as many Protestants do - and many RCs truth be told.
A lot depends on the level of catechesis and who we happen to be dealing with. The Jesuits seem almost Protestant to me ...
I'm struggling to get rid of Augustinian guilt. The Orthodox don't tend to 'do guilt' and I find that difficult ... 😉
There's RC guilt then there's Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal guilt.
More seriously, @Bullfrog yes, the Orthodox Church doesn't have the traditional bicker with Rome that the Protestants have, but it has its own beefs with Rome of course.
I bored everyone to death with one of them on the filioque thread ...
But we share Protestant concerns about the Papacy and Magisterium.
I'd suggest that the sort of things @Nick Tamen admires about the Episcopalian Church (the Anglicans) can be found in Orthodoxy but equally there is much with us he'd find alien from a Reformed background.
I used to think that Orthodoxy was just a form of Catholicism without the Pope but now think it's not as simple as that.
It's not as if it's a completely different religion to what you guys who are Protestants have but it does come at things from a different direction. It takes a lot of adjustment and getting used to.
Perhaps it's time I started that thread about what we both admire and find difficult about our own traditions...
That doesn't mean there aren't professional or academic Orthodox theologians but all theology is meant to be done in a faith context - as I'm sure it is where you are.
I think it's a broad generalisation to say that Western theologians are 'in awe of the crystalline purity of their theological structures' but I do know what you mean.
I would say this, wouldn't I, but I do think there is a more holistic approach in the Christian East.
But this isn't a purely RC thing - there have been plenty of Protestant systematic theologians too. It's a Western thing. I always like to think of Aquinas who erected a vast cathedral of theology where everything from the existence of God to the Second Coming, is minutely and logically thought through in his Summa Theologica. At the end of his life he had a vision of God which led him to describe his life's work as "It's all straw."
Not that all of us think that there is no value in Aquinas whatsoever, of course.
But 'Scholasticism' gets a bad rap in the Christian East, whether in RC or Protestant forms.
From an Eastern Orthodox perspective the RCs and Protestants, for all their differences, are two sides of the same coin and both coming at things in an overly 'Scholastic' way at times.
Even the Pentecostals do it their lists of 'spiritual gifts' and convoluted eschatological schemas taken from forms of 19th and early century fundamentalist Protestantism.
I could be cheeky and say that this is how the 'West' operates. Trying to pin everything down. Angels dancing on the head of a pin.
But my own Tradition has its equivalents of that too, of course.
That sounds healthier than what I encountered in 'neo-pentecostal' non-denominational circles. Things were put across as ifvwe knew what we were doing when clearly we didn't...
That said, there was a genuine sense of close fellowship and also of unfeigned joy and the grace of God.
Somehow that can co-exist with less positive aspects. We are all work in progress.
See also the average preserved railway, Masonic lodge, etc!
Re “Angels dancing on the head of a pin,” I believe the traditional (and, I believe, correct) answer is an infinite number, since as spirits they don’t take up space.
Beware that apparent nice exterior. We all know that Masons are disguised Lizard-men from Planet Zarg ...
The ship and reading seem to be most of my exposure at present.
Which is thought provoking in and of itself.
You should be especially wary of the latter ... an intolerant Railway Fundamentalism definitely exists!
Interesting and a very honest and open observation.
I s'pose I was always in a position where I hob-nobbed to a certain extent with people from other churches as well as my own, although I tended to restrict myself to the evangelical and/or charismatic spectrum for many years.
My wife taught at a CofE primary school with a very Anglo-Catholic parish adjacent so that exposed me to that tradition. The vicar from there played the organ at our wedding. We were involved with a restorationist 'new church' but got married at a low-church evangelical parish church at the end of my wife's street. We visited it from time to time and got on well with the clergy and people there.
I sometimes visited an independent conservative evangelical mission close-by and even preached there occasionally even though I only did so once at my own church.
They knew I was charismatic but trusted me sufficiently.
The advent of the Internet opened things up for me and I found myself encountering RCs, Anglo-Catholics, Orthodox, all flavours of Protestant, Quakers etc.
That process accelerated when I boarded the Ship.
I'm involved with a particular ecumenical society and with an ecumenical magazine, so that keeps me in touch with a broad range of people and outlooks.
I've largely lost touch with charismatic and conservative evangelicalism, though although I do encounter it from time to time.
I think it depends on what we are involved with.
One I remember is covenantal theology. When I was an intern, we had an intern group made up of Lutheran and Presbyterian students. Once, we Lutherans were trying to decide if a saying was law or gospel. A Presbyterian spoke up saying he and his collogues would look at the same saying through a covenantal lens. @Nick Tamen can explain that and give you more catch phrases.
Knock them d,,,, Well, you know.
And yes, happy to help with favorite terms, concepts and shibboleths. (@Gramps49 is right—covenant is big.)