In my last entry of this present series, I mainly dealt with the “High Church” challenge to the Baptist tradition. Now I will offer my responses to arguments I hear in favour of High Church worship and traditions. For the sake of this post, I shall merely focus on the general thoughts I have in response to real conversations with real people (as opposed to the deep theological debates of the ivory tower). In particular, I will reserve my thoughts on the RPW.

Here are paraphrases of the three most comment statements I hear in support of high church worship and my thoughts in response:

“High church liturgy instills a reverence in corporate worship and helps remind worshippers of the awe, majesty, and transcendence of the God they have gathered to worship.”

I am very much sympathetic to statements like these. Yet, after hearing a statement such as this, I am often left struggling to communicate its subjective nature: While the high, painted ceilings of an Anglo-Catholic church might create a sense of awe in some, for others the booming drums and flashing lights of a Charismatic service yields the same effect. From my perspective, these statements seem to reduce the issue of “awe” to merely a matter of preference and interest. For example, a dear friend of mine, who happens to be Anglican, once reflected honestly on the issue and stated,

“You do make good low church arguments. I hate [that] everything has so many points of views and that there’s so many good arguments for anything. How does one pick? Although I’m only high church for the aesthetics really, I consider all forms of worship to be pleasing to the Lord. Whether it’s hillsong worship or high solemn mass.”

Based on other conversations, I know that this friend and I share interests in history and high fantasy that result in both of us feeling a strong draw to high church aesthetics. Given our particular background, high church worship rather than contemporary, charismatic worship would draw us into a sense of awe and God’s majesty. In addition to this subjectivity, I believe there are other issues at stake with this line of reasoning: Namely, what should be our source of awe in worship? What should drive us to appreciate and meditate upon God’s majesty and transcendence? When thinking about these questions, I believe both high church and charismatic worship seek to add to and even distract from the wholly sufficient answer: the word of God. The word of God read, preached, sung, prayed, and made visible in the ordinances is entirely and uniquely sufficient to draw believers into awe of God’s nature and work. A church’s liturgy and worship space should not seek to add to or enhance what the word of God institutes and does, rather, they should merely do everything possible to provide a clear, uninhibited, and orderly reception of God’s word and gifts in corporate worship.

“High church liturgy reflects (or continues) the liturgical practices of found throughout the Old Testament. God wanted his temple filled with ritual and beauty then, our churches should be filled with ritual and beauty now.”

I would challenge those who make these statements or find them compelling to mediate deeply upon what separates the Old from the New Covenant. Yes, Solomon’s temple was grand, filled with many beautiful furnishings, and yes, Old Covenant religion was ruled by extensive liturgical rites and rituals. Yet, I believe the necessary question to ask is: what was the purpose of these things? When returning to the Old Covenant as the guiding principle for our New Covenant worship, I believe we neglect what makes the New Covenant new: we make mysterious what has been made clear, we make distant what has been made intimate, and we make external what has been made internal. Old Covenant worship was rife with a needed sense of anticipation and it was defined by a necessary sense of longing. Yet all this has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the one who walked among us, who tore the veil, and who now seeks after those who will worship in spirit and in truth. I believe we wade in dangerous waters when we seek to restore practices that have been fulfilled.

“High church liturgy is what the Church has always practiced, and we should continue to practice it!”

While I certainly affirm the importance of historical continuity, especially within the church context, I believe this argument falls shorts in several ways: Firstly, ancient liturgies and worship practices were not developed in a vacuum. The leaders who organized those liturgies not only did so with biblical and theological motivations, they also did it with a cultural context. The liturgies they developed and the practices they embraced reflected their background as much as ours should today. While we ought to remain faithful to Scripture and what it calls for in worship, we should not shy away from our cultural and societal realities when thinking about liturgy and the accidents (circumstances) of worship. Secondly, the leaders who developed high church worship and ancient liturgies were not infallible: Just because something has been done for a very long time, it does not mean it is automatically correct. If you disagree with that statement, there is a much larger and different conversation to be had. Finally, arguments like these assume a uniformity that cannot be demonstrated and argue a position that can hardly be proven. Instead of asking what the Church has always practiced, a line of questioning rarely worth pursuing, we should be asking what did the Church originally practice? Instead of seeking absolute models in early medieval forms of worship, we should be seeking to live out the principles presented and described in apostolic worship (see Acts and the Epistles). While we should learn from and appreciate our many forebearers throughout church history, our ultimate guide and final standard is the word of God alone.

While many Baptists are tempted to abandon the Baptist tradition for high church traditions with noble intentions, I believe they need to slow down and ask the important theological questions that shape the why and the how of our worship as Christians. In my experience, many soon to be former Evangelicals on this path are quick to critique charismatics of “chasing a feeling” in worship without realizing they are often guilty of the same.