Wanted: An Adult Faith in a Youth Culture
Friday, April 26, 2013 at 12:02AM
Embryo Parson in Anglican Spiritual Life, Book of Common Prayer, Contemporary Christian Worship, Eastern Orthodoxy, English Reformation, Eucharist, Evangelical and Catholic, Liturgy, Traditional Anglicanism, Why Anglicanism?

Great article.

Here's a related one from The Moody (!) Standard:  Students and professor discuss liturgical churches and worship.  As I noted in the combox, however:

A good article, though I would take issue with Liftin’s statement:

“If you plopped an ancient Christian down in modern times and eliminated the language barrier, he would most easily recognize the Eastern Orthodox service. If he entered a contemporary Evangelical church he’d probably think he had visited a service of Gnostic heretics.”

I seriously doubt that a second-century Christian would “easily recognize” the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy. The Orthodox liturgy has centuries of liturgical accretions that the Christian from the 2nd century would find not only odd, but likely off-putting and even inappropriate. On the other side of it, the 2nd century Christian would likely recognize the reading of Scripture, the preaching and the prayers of the Evangelical service, though he would wonder where the weekly Eucharist is and why all those damned electric instruments are blaring. If the account of the liturgy from St. Justin Martyr is any indication, I’d say the 2nd-century Christian would be most at home in a modern Anglican low church service.

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