Always Reforming

Honey, I didn't forget our anniversary--I celebrate it every day! Preposterous, right?  Well, that's what you sound like when you suggest that celebrating the Resurrection on Easter somehow detracts from or contradicts a weekly or daily remembrance thereof. In the Anglican Communion every Sunday is technically a feast day, and rightfully so.  The Lord's Day is the day on which we celebrate our risen Lord by gathering with His body for Word and Sacrament.  Once a year, however, we, along with the majority of Christians for nearly two millennia, set aside a special day to commemorate the Resurrection in a special way.  We choose to focus on this one doctrine, this indispensable historical event, in a special way on that particular day. There is no conflict here.  There is no contradiction here.  There is absolutely no reason that celebrating something on a specific day should detract from our continued celebration of it throughout the year.  In fact, the...

Don't worry, guys.  I'm not becoming Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. But, I do think we have much to learn from our more traditional, liturgical brethren.   The topic of worship, and how it relates to the Scriptures, has been swimming around my mind lately, so you should take this post as exploratory and not dogmatic.  At risk of sounding like a YRR  (which I am not), rethinking everything after reading a few of the Fathers, I am beginning to believe that worship as it is found in the average American Evangelical church has little to do with the historical practices of the Early Church, or really the Church at any point in Christian history before, let's say, the 19th Century.  Now, that doesn't necessarily invalidate modern worship a priori , but I think it is noteworthy and concerning. Let's talk about the Regulative Principle of Worship for a moment.  I was raised in a church that held strictly to this principle, which, to summarize it crudely,...

    Ask most evangelical Christians in America about Easter and they will recount some tale of bunnies, eggs, nice clothes, and/or church attendance.  They will all know that it's supposed to be about Jesus, but they'll be hard-pressed to remember actually talking about Jesus after the obligatory Easter-lunch prayer.  Even non-christians and nominal Christians (the "let's-go-to-church-on-Christmas-and-Easter" type) have been known to celebrate Easter, which is either the cause or the effect of the its dramatic over-commercialization.  After all, Hershey's needs to sell candy!  Easter has become so ubiquitous as to become almost nonspiritual and pointless.      In the background of this American landscape you'll find a few curmudgeons called Presbyterians. While many Presbyterians (most, really) celebrate Easter joyfully, there are some conservative ones who choose not to do so.  There are some who would probably even go so far as to s...