One of my favourite Hauerwas quotes:
'One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.'
25 comments:
That's also my own favourite Hauerwasian moment!
Not sure about 'eventually' though - I've felt like murdering some people for leading sappy sentimental hymns
It is a great line though
And it's also directly relevant to the attack on your Dad & Uncle last week by Peter Phillips. His view regarding church music is directly related to his theology:
"Well I represent the point of view I think that God is beautiful, and can be approached - best approached - by mortal men through beauty. Any sort of beauty; I mean it could be a beautiful building, or the incense that the Catholics have. I represent music, and my experience is that good music takes people nearer to God than anything else, and quicker. It happens just like that, you feel him, right there."
It's not a one way street, either. Bad ethics leads to bad liturgy, so not only do we care about bad worship because it might corrupt us, but also because it might reveal the ways we are still/have become corrupt.
Hmmm,
Byron, how then does good liturgy lead to bad ethics?
Such as the liberal / R Catholic churches stance to continue with its rigidity towards the same liturgy that its more evangelical brothers hold, yet they ignore the truth of it...
Also I disagree with the view that art, music etc cannot lead us to a greater comprehension of Gods glory. Scripture makes it plain that He put his spirit into craftsman, musicians etc. And Scripture tells us that all of creation speaks of Gods glory.
Yet as Roger says, we need balance.
well part of the point must surely be that if it leads to bad ethics it can't be good worship...
well part of the point must surely be that if it leads to bad ethics it can't be good worship...
Michael, does that mean then that you can have good worship that leads to good ethics without the trappings of traditional liturgy?
Or put in another way. Who is truly living the ethical life.
The person who sings a sappy song with a broken heart and contrite spirit. Or the person who sings a song full of correct theology yet not have a broken heart and contrite spirit?
don;t be distracted by the word 'liturgy': that can mean anything we do in church whether in a formal and trad way or not.
But: Hauerwas might say that by singing a sappy song you are much less likely to have a contrite spirit. Correct theology and correct behaviour are linked
It's also not simply the theological accuracy of the words in songs, it is also how those truths are expressed, and the appropriateness of the music, and how the service is led, and so on.
Does that mean that no liturgy results in no ethics?
I always thought of this as a clear "Hauerwas-off-the-rails" moment. Isn't the clear Biblical witness not that bad liturgy leads to bad ethics, but that bad ethics leads to bad liturgy (or an over-compensatory focus on liturgy)?
Amos 5:21-24
I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Yes, although it might be said that they weren't worshipping properly in the first place...
I would agree that the contemporary focus ON liturgy of whatever sort has been a compensation for something seriously lacking...
I agree.
And on the link between good theology and good ethics, isn't the parable of the good Samaritan precisely a story of a person with the right theology and the right worship doing the wrong thing? (While the wrong person does what is right?)
I'm not sure that Jesus would agree that the priest and the Levite had good theology!
Sure, part of the point is that it can't be good theology if it's worked out in bad practice, though the hero of the story is still someone whose theology and worship is - to everyone in Jesus' audience - self-evidently wrong.
And whether Jesus agreed with their theology or not doesn't really come into the story does it? In terms of the role in the story, they would be understood to be the guardians of orthodoxy and worship.
Isn't the clear Biblical witness not that bad liturgy leads to bad ethics, but that bad ethics leads to bad liturgy (or an over-compensatory focus on liturgy)?
Why is this an either/or?
It certainly isn't a logical either/or – I've just never been struck by much in the Bible that suggests that bad liturgy (in the sense that Hauerwas seems to mean) leads to bad ethics, while I can't help but be bowled over by all the passages that state that liturgy is irrelevant at best, and at worst offensive to God, not because of anything intrinsic to the liturgy, but simply where corporate ethics are bad, and where justice is not done.
Help me out if I'm missing something.
Here's a couple of random thoughts.
Jesus gave his followers a particular form of prayer (known as the Our Father or Lord's Prayer) in distinction to the pagans, who babble on in order to be heard. I take it that part of Paul's argument in 1 Cor 11.17-33 is that the Corinthians were not paying close enough attention to the words and meaning of the Lord's Supper.
And more generally, one of the Hauerwas's points about the function of liturgy is that it is a training in doctrine and living. Thus, being careful about liturgy is part of watching both one's life and one's doctrine closely, particularly as a leader of God's people.
BTW, I take it that most or all corporate Christian worship follows some kind of liturgy (regular form), even if it is unwritten. Often those services that claim to be non-liturgical are the most predictable. So, being careful about our liturgy means being careful about what we do when we meet together.
Fair enough. And certainly Christian gatherings have some form of liturgy. Paul clearly does have something to say about the conduct of those meetings (especially 1 Cor 12-14), though I take the more significant point in his discussion of the Lord's Supper to be that in eating without concern for the hungry in the congregation, they have "failed to discern the body". And Paul follows up with a pretty strong statement that liturgy without justice brings judgement on the Corinthian church.
Which brings me back to where I started... :-)
Or rather, back where I started?
Haven't we agreed that it works both ways? That Paul is correcting both their communal worship and how they treat one another, since they are mutually reinforcing?
Hmmmm. I'm coming across as very argumentative here. But I still don't see that the liturgical problems have led to the ethical lapses or neglect of justice though.
On further thought, perhaps what Paul is talking about in 1 Cor 11 is even a little more direct that Hauerwas (who is not strong enough!). It is not that sub-standard liturgy has led to injustice, but that how they are running their corporate worship (i.e. liturgy) is itself unjust: by perpetuating the distinctions between the haves and the have-nots in their celebration of the Lord's Supper they are not simply on the way to injustice, but have already arrived.
hi ben...
to see both sides of connection liturgy-ethics, you may want to see this in comunity-level, not personal-level scope and acknowledge the liturgy as a "concentrate" of knowledge and action of lives of faith on one side and as a kind of "training" in knowledge and action of faith on the other side.
Then it is understendable, that liturgical problems could affect ethics - f.e. If the liturgy is filled with big words and emotions with no real impact on lives, the congregation is trainig its newcomers in the notion, that no impact is expected and "faith" could become a Sunady "social theatre." Which either is or could easily lead to problem of ethical character.
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