What do we most admire and most deplore about our own faith tradition?
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Here's a thread I promised to start following on from the one in which we discussed what we admire most about Christian traditions other than our own.
I'd be up for doing the same with faith traditions outwith Christianity too.
But here I'm wondering about those issues we appreciate most about our own traditions as well as those we would like to adjust or find difficult.
I'll start.
With Orthodoxy I appreciate the holistic quality of it, the Orthodox Way. And how we can pick ourselves up when we stumble and carry on.
I like the way that the calendar, the services, the iconography and hymnody all integrate - the 'seamless robe.'
I like the emphasis on the Communion of Saints - past, present and future.
I like the way we don't rush to batten everything down and allow space for Mystery.
What I don't like is:
- Ethnocentricism and triumphalism.
- Superior attitudes.
- Hyperdoxy and the Orthobro thing.
- Church or Patristic fundamentalism.
It can also be hard-work at times. Lo-ooo-ong services. Fasts.
But no pain no gain.
I'd be up for doing the same with faith traditions outwith Christianity too.
But here I'm wondering about those issues we appreciate most about our own traditions as well as those we would like to adjust or find difficult.
I'll start.
With Orthodoxy I appreciate the holistic quality of it, the Orthodox Way. And how we can pick ourselves up when we stumble and carry on.
I like the way that the calendar, the services, the iconography and hymnody all integrate - the 'seamless robe.'
I like the emphasis on the Communion of Saints - past, present and future.
I like the way we don't rush to batten everything down and allow space for Mystery.
What I don't like is:
- Ethnocentricism and triumphalism.
- Superior attitudes.
- Hyperdoxy and the Orthobro thing.
- Church or Patristic fundamentalism.
It can also be hard-work at times. Lo-ooo-ong services. Fasts.
But no pain no gain.
Comments
But at least I know where the services are going these days.
Thinking about it, I knew that back then too, for all the apparent spontaneity.
Anyhow, this thread has got off to a poor start. Just me sounding off.
I struggle with Luther’s well-known antisemitism.
What I don't like
Pragmatism
Celebrity/success culture or even fetishism
Simplistic and selective reading of scripture
Ignorance of tradition and history (think what blessed clive says about chronological snobbery)
Though this goes along with how as I've gotten older I've developed more appreciation for Orthodox iconography and Episcopalian ritual. This is also why I tend to self-ID as "Freelance Protestant." Personally, in the way of many postmodern protestants, I'm an honest mutt.
What is deplore most in our tradition is the Church Meeting, when it degenerates into discussion about trivialities, is rife with personal animosities and alliances, becomes an arena for opinionated people to "have their say", and is rarely IME anything like as spiritual and prayerful as it should be.
I s'pose my equivalent of @Baptist Trainfan's example would be:
I admire Tradition.
I deplore Traditionalism.
'Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.' Jaroslav Pelikan.
I admire the freedom to structure the worship as we please.
I deplore the way that this freedom degenerates into informal sloppiness or uninspired routine.
(I might add that "starting with a blank sheet of paper" and seeking to successfully structure a service that "leads people on a fresh spiritual journey" isn't easy and can be very time-consuming. I've been trying to do that for the last 38 years!).
I deplore the lack of resource and assistance to the rural church, when as a percentage of local population worshipping we do quite well, and as a percentage of giving (last time I looked) is disproportionate when compared to urban parishes. And yet we get the Cinderella service of multichurch benefices but stagger on where many an urban church has closed. Restore the glebe!
As an Anglican of the US Episcopal variety, I love what I understand to be Apostolic Succession, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Sacraments, the traditional liturgy, and such. (If I did not believe the supernatural elements listed above were there in Anglicanism, I’d have to go to the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church—I understand them to be definitively present in all three.)
I love our commitment to social justice.
I like that we are not monitored about what and how much we believe, as some churches do.
On the negative side, one side effect of the last one is, erm, tolerance of outright heresy or apostasy from some in the clergy, even bishops. Spong (RIP) comes to mind as the poster child for that.
Similarly, the willingness to experiment with the Eucharistic liturgy is not something I like, and in some cases, it will affect whether I stay in a given church. When you have to read ahead to decide if you can actually give assent to the words of the service or the prayers, that’s not a good sign. (The matter of the words of hymns has already been discussed elsewhere.)
Well done for trying!
A very well respected URC minister I knew used to say and enjoyed the 'pulpit-swap' with the Anglicans as the services were laid out for her and she didn't have to prepare the service from scratch!
I've got used to a set Liturgy and Calendar and even with that it takes effort to get things 'right'.
That doesn't mean I don’t appreciate the work that goes into crafting or 'curating' a non-conformist style service. I s'pose the proof of the pudding is in the eating and is often hidden - or most often hidden.
I do like the systematic expository approach to preaching that used to be the hallmark of many 'Free Churches'. I've heard some excellent sermons in Baptist settings, thoughtful, engaging and with scholarship lightly worn. Of course it ain't always like that but at its best it can be highly uplifting indeed.
That reminds me of a very observant lesson from my Methodist seminary, that even the zaniest Pentecostal snake handling service has an order of worship. There's always a liturgy. They may not want to call it that, they may resent the idea of someone organizing anything, but if people gather to do a thing, they will develop a regular way of doing the thing that they do.
I think I appreciate the Piskies that I've been adopted into because they are really transparent about "this is how we do this and why."
But I find that the further out I go from our local parish into the structure of the church the less I like it. I see the need for a central bureaucracy to coordinate such a vast organisation, but I dislike the way it imagines that it IS the RCC. Francis is trying to change that by appointing people from the peripheries but there are centuries of entrenched attitudes. I carry in my head something that an archbishop once said to me "It is a mistake to imagine that the Vatican is Christ's Church. It isn't."
It presumes an infinite timeline within which to balance heal and discharge all emotional and spiritual imbalances, and to right all wrongs. "Everything will be All Right in the end, and if it's not All Right it's not the end." There's no rush and every new decision is an opportunity for a do-over.
What I dislike and disagree with, as I have encountered in some faith traditions and "new age" type viewpoints:
That karma is some kind of cosmic "gotcha!" and that people who are living through the balancing of the energies they put in motion, because they are responsible for their own causes, somehow "deserve" their illnesses, traumas and difficulties and do not deserve compassion or help or forgiveness.
That forgiveness, which is absolutely central to Christianity, is not valued or practiced as a matter of fact as the ultimate "karma eraser" for both the wrongdoer and the wronged party. Because if you're going to insist that the person who wronged you balances their energy "the hard way" by reincarnating and feeling your pain, you also get to do things "the hard way" by reincarnating to receive the repayment. Cumbersome, inefficient and unnecessary since Christ showed us how it's done "the easy way".
AFF
Which has been repudiated by the ELCA and the World Federation of Lutherans.
Like you, I appreciate the community centered activism of the ELCA. On the other hand, I sometimes think the bureaucracy of the organization acts like an antiChrist.
Quite rightly (obviously). It’s still there in his written works, though. And still worth remembering.
How so?
That said, I'm fairly disillusioned by all the traditions I've been part of at this point, and probably many of those I haven't been.
'Healthy institutional reproduction'?
Now that would be a fine thing!
Where have you seen that happen?
I was under the impression the thread was intended to be at least partially laudatory. So to the extent it happens it gives rise to the kinds of things I admire, to the extent it does happen is why I'm disillusioned.
I was being tongue in cheek to some extent with my question as to where 'healthy institutional reproduction' actually occurs.
I suspect it does in all honesty and is to be applauded wherever it occurs.
I suspect also that it doesn't occur as often as any of us might wish, irrespective of what Christian tradition or Tradition we are involved with.