Seekers and Inquirers’ class 3: An Instructed Eucharist

photo by Mikki Black

 

photo by Lyn Rockwell

   

This month the topic is the Eucharist. Rather than reinvent the wheel I decided to share with you a wonderful resource put out by LEAP [Liturgy, Education, and Action in the Parish]. I found this through http://www.myfaithmylife.org/tools.html  another  wonderful resource for Teens as well as adults. In addition to the Instructed Eucharist there are some study questions at the end. Please comment on these questions.   

    

An Instructed Eucharist
As Anglicans, one of the things that we believe is that our common prayer together shapes our believing, and in a characteristically Anglican way of thinking about it, what we believe shapes how we pray. While most every pew in our Episcopal Church contains a few copies of the Book of Common Prayer, we don’t always know why we do the things we do. Sure, we understand the basic origins of the Mass, but do we know the theology that shapes it?    

    

What follows is the basic outline of a Holy Eucharist.   

    

Liturgy Of the Holy Eucharist   

    

The Entrance Rite
The Congregation Gathers–our services are at 8 am and 10:15 am except the months of July and August when we hold one service at 9 am.   

    

Prelude–the organist plays a piece of music indicating to the congregation that it is time to get centered and prepare to worship.  At St. Christopher’s I find that people are often taking their children into Sunday School or involved in set up for one thing or another so I offer a gathering prayer before the Processional Hymn.   

    

• About the People of God:  It is important to remember that the whole congregation worships together and that includes the liturgical ministers [Lay Eucharistic Ministers, Acolytes, and Clergy] that we have appointed to various tasks as leaders for our
  worship. We select them because we recognize certain skills that they possess, yet we do not separate them from us as we offer the liturgy to God. The Presider [Priest], the acolytes, LEMs, choir and the people in the pews all serve integrally related and equally
  important roles in our liturgical life together. Because the body of Christ is composed of these many members, and because each is equally important, whenever one person is missing, the dynamics of the liturgy change. This is why we make it a point to remember those present and those absent, those on earth and those in heaven. We are all people of liturgy, liturgy is the people’s work.

• On Processions: We do a lot of processions in our liturgical life together. On a regular Sunday, we participate in: the Procession “In;” the Procession of the gifts to the altar during the Offertory; the Procession of the Congregation to the communion rail; and the Procession “Out.” Add to those standards additional layers for other services – censing the altar [during the Easter Vigil and the late service on Christmas Eve],  the Procession of the Candidates during Baptism, the Processions of the Bride and Groom, the Procession of the Cortege at a funeral, the Triumphant Procession on Palm Sunday, the Processions of Light at  Great Easter Vigil. And then there’s all the processing that happens when the Bishop visits!  The Procession “In” is the last step in the call to prayer, as the congregation gathers. Cross, acolytes, LEMs, Priests all make their way down the aisle, representing the beginning of our worship together.  Some sacramental theologians remind us that this procession is not made up of single elements, but represents the congregation gathered. The ministers who will later be celebrating the Eucharist, healing the sick, and absolving us of our sin are approachable – among the congregation. It’s almost as if you could reach out and touch them–and you can.

• The procession during the Gospel [in our parish this usually involves only the priest] is a particularly holy and powerful time when the Good News is proclaimed to God’s people from their midst. It brings us back to the days of Christ, when we would have gathered in a close circle around the bearer of the Good News to hear the stories told again. While read from a book, it reminds us of the oral tradition from whence we have come.  The processions at the Offertory and at the Eucharist are two very important processions.  They represent two moments when the People of God come forward to give and to receive their gifts. They rëemphasize the fact that processions are events which involve, or attempt to involve the whole congregation. We’ll speak more about the Offertory later in the service.  Finally, our last procession is the missional procession of our common life together. The same people and elements which gathered the congregation in prayer now lead the charge to go out into the world, proclaiming the good news, bearing the gifts of God, and telling our story to those we meet.

   

The Opening Hymn
The Opening Acclamation
The Gloria
The Collect of the Day   

    

• The Collect of the Day concludes the entrance rite, and brings us into the Liturgy of the Word. Introducing the theme of the day either in the Gospel or in the life of Christ, the collect frames the conversation we will have in our readings and our response to the
  readings.

   

The Liturgy of the Word   

    

• About the Liturgy of the Word:  The Prayer Book indicates that the full title of the principal Sunday worship service is The Holy Eucharist: The Liturgy for the Proclamation of the Word of God and Celebration of the Holy Communion. For our purposes, what is important to note is that the Eucharist is comprised of two major components: in the first part, the Liturgy of the Word, the central action is the reading and exposition of Scripture. In the second part, the Holy Communion, the central action is the taking, blessing, breaking, and giving of the Sacrament of bread and wine. Word and Sacrament together are the essential components of Christian liturgy, for we believe that Christ is present both as the Living Word of God proclaimed in the assembly
  and as the Bread of Life received in the Sacrament. Christ is therefore present in us who feed on the Word of God and the Holy Sacrament. When we stand for the Gospel reading and reverently surround the Gospel Book  we give tangible witness to our trust that Christ is present in the Word.  The Liturgy of the Word begins with the entrance rite as we gather and prepare to hear the Word of God proclaimed. Gathering for the public reading of Scripture is rooted in the practice of the Synagogue and was quickly adapted for use in the early Church. Of course, initially, the readings were from the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament).  Later, as Christian writings began to appear, these, too, were read aloud during gatherings for worship. In fact, most of what came to be included in the New Testament canon of Scripture was selected on the basis of its widespread acceptance and usefulness in worship. These writings were meant to be read in public for the Church’s instruction and edification.  Although the number and choice of readings varied greatly in the early Church, over time the practice of reading one lesson from the Old Testament, a psalm, a lesson from a New Testament epistle, and a selection from one of the four Gospels became normative. Thus, the four Scripture lessons we read each Sunday.  This four-fold reading is prescribed as a three-year cycle of readings called a lectionary. The lessons for Major Feasts are selected as appropriate to the occasion. In year A we read the Gospel according to Matthew; year B, the Gospel according to Mark; year C [this is our current year], the Gospel according to Luke; the Gospel according to John is read during Lent and Easter and on certain other occasions each year. The New Testament Epistles are read in sequence over the three-year cycle, with Old Testament lessons chosen to complement the Gospel or Epistle reading appointed for the day.  This choice of readings is important for several reasons. First, it provides exposure to almost the entire New Testament and a large part of the Old Testament over a three-year period, challenging us to understand our faith in light of the breadth of the Biblical witness and not simply our favorite verses. Second, the lectionary requires us to read Scripture in light of Scripture, not in isolation. We have to come to grips with the
  diversity, indeed the contradictions, within Scripture in the process of interpreting its significance for our own time and place. Such a reading of Scripture reminds us that this diversity was constitutive of both Israel and the Church right from the very beginning –there is nothing new about that! If Scripture isn’t always in agreement, then we need not worry too much if we aren’t always in agreement either! Finally by including an Old Testament lesson and psalm we affirm our continuity with Judaism and insist that we can only understand Christian faith in light of Jewish faith. Christianity without Judaism is simply impossible and our incorporation of Hebrew Scripture in our worship serves to caution against any anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic readings of New Testament Scripture.

   

The First Reading from Scripture   

The Psalm
    

• About the Role of the Psalm:  Between the first reading from the Old Testament and the second reading from the Christian scriptures we read from one of the Psalms, which were the hymns of both the Jews and the early Christians.

• About the Role of Music and Choir:  The role of the choir is to provide musical leadership for the congregation. It is a role of liturgical ministry, not musical entertainment. In addition to this primary role, the choir is also sings anthems, that is to say, songs sung by the choir alone, as the choir’s own offering of praise and glory to our Lord. The choir hopes that the music we share in this place serves to draw you closer to God.

   

The Second Reading from Scripture
The Gospel Hymn
The Gospel
The Sermon
The Affirmation of Faith
   

• About the Role of the Sermon:  It is significant to note that following the reading of the Gospel there is silence until the sermon – no other readings, prayers, or music. The sermon is of a piece with the readings and is a continuation of the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The purpose of the sermon is to interpret the readings and apply them to the life of the congregation. It is not a pep talk, lecture, or piece of performance art; rather, it is a breaking open of the Word of God we have heard so that we can feed on it. Sometimes that feeding may refresh us; sometimes it may give us indigestion! Whatever the case may be, it should provoke a response in us – a response that will take shape in the remainder of the liturgy and overflow into our daily lives where we bear witness to the Good News we have heard for the sake of the world, and not simply our own edification.

• About the Nicene Creed:  Let me quote from the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor concerning the Nicene Creed, the Affirmation of Faith that we recite each Sunday: “When I say, ‘We believe…’ I count on that to cover what I cannot believe on my own right now. When my faith limps, I lean on the faith of the church, letting ‘our’ faith suffice until mine returns. Later, when I am able to say, ‘We believe…’ with renewed confidence, I know that I am filling in for others who are indisposed for the time being, as they filled in for me. My decision to say the creed at all is a decision to trust those who have gone before me, embracing the faith they have commended to me.” 

   

The Prayers of the People   

The Confession and Absolution
The Peace   

• About the Prayers of the People:  All the pieces of the service fit together, they make sense as we get ready to come to the table to encounter God and then go out into the world. Each part leads logically to the next part to get that done. The Prayers of the People happen after the Sermon, where you are challenged about what you believe and right after the creed, where we say that what we believe, on the important things, is still the same. It’s our first response to what we have heard, our response to the Gospel and the profession of our faith. That response says we care about people, about people hurting, about people in power, and that we want change in the world. We translate into prayer the needs of the world. We say we are part of the church universal, the big church. It comes before confession because we are about to recognize our limitations – that we don’t always do the things we want to do or believe we should do. And that comes before absolution because that’s where we get the garbage out of the way as we prepare to come to the table and open ourselves to receive the peace.

• About Confession and Absolution:  Just as we intercede on behalf of the whole world in the Prayers of the People, so we confess our sins. For we confess not just as individuals, but as the body of Christ. We confess the ways in which all humanity, ourselves included, have missed the mark, failing to love God with our whole hearts and failing to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the words we are about to say, we confess on behalf of all God’s children and ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness. We are about to hear in response that we are absolved and granted the grace of forgiveness not just once, but regularly, for we need the renewing power of God’s forgiveness just as we need either food or water. 

• About the Peace:  Having just exercised in our prayers our shared ministry of reconciliation, we now express and celebrate the peace to be found in hearing God’s Word, and in responding to it.  At the same time we prepare to offer our gifts at the altar by being reconciled to each other. Whether by words, a handshake, or an embrace, we greet in each other the Risen Christ who brought and still brings, the blessing of his peace.
  
    

The Liturgy of the Table   

    

The Offertory and Offertory Hymn
   

• About the Offertory:  The Offertory serves as a reminder that God has formed us and given us all that we need – and now we have a chance to give back. Whenever we say Prayer D of the Great Thanksgiving we say: “From the gifts you have given us, this bread and this cup, we praise you and we bless you.” Our gifts represent our life, our labor, and our love for each other – the fruits of our spirit shared in the community of the faithful. Notice the gifts that are being offered. The plates come forward, bearing our financial gift to sustain our mission and worship. On some Sundays the choir offers its gift in the form of an anthem. The congregation lifts its voice in song as a hymn of praise and mission is sung. The elements of the Eucharist, the gifts from the people, are brought down the aisle and given to the Priest for use in the Holy Meal.  Each Sunday the children bring present offerings of canned goods, and paper products for the local food pantry at St. Anne’s Church.   All our gifts are both recognized and welcomed in the place where we share our most powerful story – the Eucharistic Feast.

• Notice the other things that happen as a part of Gathering the Gifts at the altar:  The ushers taking up the offerings of the people, the priest preparing the table for the gifts to come forward; the “Oblation Bearers” standing ready to bring the bread and wine forward.

The Great Thanksgiving
The Lord’s Prayer   

• About “The Great Thanksgiving:”  Now that the gifts of bread and wine, the fruits of our lives, our labor, have been gathered upon the altar in offering to God, we begin the Great Thanksgiving. More, however, than just giving thanks, there is also a Great Remembering that takes place. Beginning with  the Sursum Corda [Lift up your hearts], the Priest asks the presence of God to be with the people, and bids the community to lift up their hearts into that presence. The people respond in kind by bidding the priest to do the same. Then, the worshipping community accepts its place among the whole company of heaven and earth to sing God’s praises in the Sanctus, or the hymn we call “Holy, Holy, Holy”. Then begins the remembering of the great offering that Jesus made on our behalf [On the night he was betrayed he took bread...].  It is important to keep in mind that this remembering is not a re-enactment of the Last Supper with the Priest “standing in” for Jesus. The Great Thanksgiving is a prayer – pay close attention – it is all addressed to God. And it is a prayer that we are ALL offering, and it is being led by the Priest that we have chosen from among God’s people for that purpose.  In this remembering that we do, we take up the bread and wine – simple, ordinary elements that are somehow not so ordinary anymore. Based on the Opening Grace from the Jewish Seder, this blessing of bread and wine roots us to our long heritage as a people of God.  But Jesus, in his ministry, changed the meaning of these simple elements, and equated them with his body and blood that was soon to be broken. We recall Jesus’ command to remember him each time we partake of the bread and the wine. More importantly, we remember the greatest mystery of our faith… the mystery of Christ died, resurrected, and the promise of Christ’s return to us.  Once the remembering is done, we offer to God those gifts we have and ask him to make them and us holy so that not only may we be fed by those gifts, but so that we might feed others. The Bread in the Jewish Seder is referred to as the Bread of Affliction and once it is broken the charge is given, “let all who are hungry come and eat.” Remember this – after the bread is blessed and broken, God offers his own brokenness to us in the ordinary elements of bread and wine in order to strengthen us for the work we have ahead of us, to be Christ’s body in the world, to feed others as he has fed us.

• About The Lord’s Prayer:  Affirming our heritage as daughters and sons of God we complete our  Eucharistic prayer by reciting Christ’s prayer.

The Breaking of the Bread
The Invitation to the Table
The Communion Anthem or Communion Hymn
The Post Communion Prayer
The Benediction
The Dismissal Rite
The Final Hymn
The Postlude
   

• About the Post Communion Prayer & Dismissal:  The post communion prayer is the first prayer where we are not asking God to do something for us or for somebody else. Not to help those who are sick or to cleanse us so we come into God’s presence at the table. It is the prayer that comes after that, where we just ask for power to do what we believe in the world. It says we have been made whole, it acknowledges who we are, now let us do what we need to in the world, not just in this church. We move out to be God’s hands and heart in the world.

Questions to Ponder:
1) How is the Holy made accessible through the liturgy?
2) How do you find God differently in corporate (public worship) and individual prayer?
3)Do you feel that liturgy connects you to your daily life, or to the life outside the Church?
5) When you are in a Sunday worship service do you feel like you are participating in it, or is it happening around you?
6) How has your understanding of liturgy changed with some of the explanation you heard in the Instructed Eucharist?
7) As interpretations of theology change, and new theologies are developed, should liturgy be changed or modernized? What are acceptable changes to liturgy, and what is “deep structure” that cannot be altered?
8) How is liturgy related to justice?
9) What other questions do you have about the way we worship together that have not been answered?

Biblical Study

Greek Bible Study

Greek Septuagint Online

Gospel Parallels

Early Church Fathers

Apostolic Bible Polyglot

The Synoptic Problem

Documentary Hypothesis

New Testament tools

Textual Criticism Sourcebook

Ancient History Sourcebook

Greek New Testament

Haiti Relief and Episcopal Church

Here is a link to find out what our denomination is doing and how you can help. 

http://www.e4gr.org/haiti.html

Renewal of Baptismal Covenant

 

On January 10, 2010 members of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church renewed their Baptism promises and witnessed the Baptism of our youngest member.  This service was a reminder to parents that they promised to nurture their children’s spiritual lives in Christ.    Mime and parish member Flutterby joined us to help me speak to the children about the importance of Baptism. 

 

 

For Teens and Others

My Faith My Life is a great resource for the basics of the Episcopal Church and our faith. The website is a wonderful place for teens and others.
http://www.myfaithmylife.org/

Seekers/Inquirers Class Part 2: The Kingdom of God

“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news
of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come
near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14-15

“We without God cannot, and God without us will not.” St. Augustine

I once had occasion to preach at a weekday service at Episcopal Divinity School. It was in early December around the time of my birthday and when I did a little research I realized that I was going to preach near the anniversary [December 1, 1955] of Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested, finger printed, jailed and charged a fine of $14. The rest as you know is history. I don’t remember what the lessons were that I was supposed to preach on [had to do with the Kingdom of God though] but in end I said, “the kingdom of God is like a bus where we all have seats and not just any seat but the best seat.”

Most of us have not been subjected to racism [perhaps other "isms"] in the way that Mrs. Parks was back “in those days.” For us the experience of being able to sit anywhere on a bus is no big deal. But here is the thing, there have been many in our North American history who were not allowed seats–whether on buses, in certain schools, in certain homes, in hotels, government offices, institutions such as the church, restaurants, etc. And why?! Why were they or are they denied what is easily taken for granted by others? They are denied seats because they are born a certain color, into a certain class, they are born a girl or a boy, or their sexual orientation isn’t what some call “normal” and on and on.

I think Jesus lived among us to open the doors of the kingdom–giving seats to his guests, preparing an incredible banquet, bringing in people from the streets or beyond the city gates. Everyone has a seat in Jesus’ kingdom of God, and not only that but each has the best seat. Back in 1955 White Christians in Alabama had no problem claiming their seats when others could not. Yet I can’t seem to find the place in scripture where it says that only a certain color of men can enter. I can’t find where it says that only a certain class of people are allowed into the kingdom, or that only a certain age group is allowed in. You might remember that Jesus once put a child in the midst of his disciples–even the little child has a seat.

In the Gospels the kingdom of God is described many times and in many ways with stories or parables–it is a pearl of great price such that one would sell everything to have it, it is like a mustard seed, it is as if a sower scatters seed on the ground, it is like yeast that a woman mixes with flour, it is like a treasure hidden in a field. Clearly the writers of the Gospels placed a lot of emphasis on the Kingdom of God and they sought to get that point across.

And so where is this Kingdom? It is near, within, in our midst, here, and yet to come. Forget the clouds, feathered wings, harps and all that–there is something about the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks that requires of us tangible action, repentance or a turnaround when we look seriously at ourselves and how we live. Bummer for my generation also called in the 1970s the Me Generation defined as “the generation, originally in the 1970s, characterized by self-absorption; in the 1980s, characterized by material greed.” As I see it the Kingdom of God is very much about justice, a new world order, a new creation–Marcus Borg and John Crossan in their book The Last Week talk about the Kingdom as what life would be if God reigned.

How close are we to anything that might look like the Kingdom? Let me tell you about an experience I had just a few minutes ago. There are a couple of young guys working on a roof across the street. I stepped out to walk my dog and it is pretty cold out there so I hoped Georgia would do her thing quickly. Now I’d chatted with one of the roof guys last week so I called up and asked if they wanted a cup of coffee. They came down from the roof with read faces–they were numb they said and came into my house shyly. One of the fellows was talkative or at least making conversation, the other was very quiet. I noticed the quiet one had tattoos all over his arms and I asked what they meant. He said something about being rebellious–I wondered if the tattoos were symbols of a gang or cult. I don’t really think he wanted to talk but finally he said he didn’t like our society, the corruption and greed. He thought that perhaps someday he might go off by himself. He wasn’t about to say much more and I taking him in–he’s angry I think, perhaps he’s been abused, obviously had a hard life. I’m a priest shouldn’t I have something to say–here I am writing about the Kingdom of God. I take a deep mental breath and come to my senses I don’t know him from Adam, I’m trying to come up with a diagnosis on this fellow based on what?! I think about Donna Hicks from Harvard who writes about the Dignity Model and I know I want to honor his dignity and that the last thing I should say is something like–relax, you are young, things will get better and don’t you know the Kingdom of God is a) here, b) near, c) within you. The Kingdom of Heaven is nowhere close in this young man’s thinking and sometimes it is nowhere close to mine. This is when the psalms and prophets come in handy, they say things we dare not say or ask.

How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry
out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Habakkuk 1:2

Somewhere I read and I wish I could remember where that the Kingdom of God is a movement. What I understand from this is that the Kingdom is a process and not a static state of being. This process puts certain demands on those of us who claim to be a people of faith. Here are what I see as some of these demands: the Kingdom cannot be solely about my relationship with God so that as long as I feel ok then life is ok; unlike the Gospel of Prosperity in the Kingdom I don’t get rewarded with wealth so I can rest easy and slide through; the Kingdom calls me to obedience and commitment of life to the Gospel that embraces the personal but pushes me beyond; the Kingdom of God does not promise me my own cloud with a deck and swimming pool, it does not promise me great health, it does not promise me that I will always have my loved ones with me, etc.. It does promise that when bad things happen I will have substance enough to walk through anything.

The subject of the Kingdom of God is extensive and all I’ve wanted to do is give you some things to consider. Below are some links and an article you might wish to read. I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

• Christian America and the Kingdom of God by Richard T. Hughes. This is a book review that brings in the notion of America as the Kingdom of God. http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57tmm5cy9780252032851.html
• The Kingdom of God is a Party by Tony Campolo
  http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/Campolo_3315.htm
• The Diane Rehm Show interview with Bruce Feiler discussing his new book America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story
  Go to http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/12/22.php#29258from there go to Archives, 2009, December 22.

Has the Kingdom of God Come to America? By Don E. Peavy, Sr. Last edited: Thursday, May 07, 2009; Posted: Tuesday, May 05, 2009

An incisive exploration of the continuing debate of whether the United States of America is, or have ever been, a Christian nation.
Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Kingdom of God in America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1988.

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) is considered one of the foremost thinkers in American religion. His The Kingdom of God in America is without a doubt a “classic,” as no serious attempt to reflect upon America’s religious history can be undertaken without reference to Niebuhr, according to the introduction penned by one of the foremost American religious historians of our day, Martin E. Marty, (vii).
Niebuhr was Sterling Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at Yale University who, in 1938, in the midst of an all encompassing liberalism, sounded the alarm for the neo-orthodoxy movement and challenged America to recover the vision that had so inflamed the hearts and minds — even the very souls, of America’s early settlers. Niebuhr, however, does not just lament the past, though part of what he does is to play a verbal “Taps” to the passing of the white (male?) “Protestant world whose hegemony Niebuhr could take for granted … no more,” (viii) and to sound the trumpets to proclaim the arrival of pluralist America or at least the recognition of America as such.
What Niebuhr does then, is to speak in a prophetic voice to a nation on the brink of World War II and to remind Americans of a heritage that most of them had abandoned and which all of them needed to reclaim if America was ever to truly become a “City of God,” (xiv).
Niebuhr makes no mystery of the task he is undertaking which is “to interpret the meaning and spirit of American Christianity as a movement which finds its center in the faith in the kingdom of God,” (xix). Niebuhr sees the American religious landscape as primarily Protestant as opposed to Catholic and the book is written from the Protestant perspective.
It is critical to an understanding of Niebuhr’s The Kingdom of God that Christianity in America “must be understood as a movement rather than as an institution or series of institutions. It is gospel rather than law; it is more dynamic than static,” (xxiv). It is also vital to the task that the reader of history understands this movement to be dialectical which “is expressed in worship and in work, in the direction toward God and the direction toward the world which is loved in God, in the pilgrimage toward the eternal kingdom and in the desire to make his will real on earth,” (xxiv-xxv). And finally, to truly understand America’s religious history and particularly Niebuhr’s magnum opus, one must have “faith in a sovereign, living, loving God,” (xxvi).
Just as he makes no mystery of his task, Niebuhr speaks with crystal clarity on the theme of his work that “Christianity, it appeared, could follow its grand line, avoiding the perils to right and left, if it remembered not only its goal but also its starting point and the middle of its course, the sovereignty of God and the revelation of his rule in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead,” (xxiii).
What Niebuhr hopes to do then, is to reinterpret Puritanism and evangelicalism of the nineteenth century and to weigh it against the liberalism of his day, to find them all wanting, and then to call for a new orthodoxy. In saying this, it is necessary to emphasize that Niebuhr did not find them equally wanting for he was to sentence liberalism to a historical reference from which it would never be able to break free. For in the end, Niebuhr could find something in Puritanism and evangelicalism which could be dusted off, reclaimed and relieved anew. But for liberalism, Niebuhr said that it professed “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross,” (193).
When he looked at Puritanism, Niebuhr saw a rich and vibrant heritage of American religion. However, in liberalism he could see only the loss of religious heritage, (195). Niebuhr noted that “The coming kingdom of late liberalism, like heaven and senile orthodoxy, came to be a place not of liberty and glory but of material delights, the modern counterparts of those pleasures which it had laughed to scorn when it spoke of ancient superstitions,” (196). Notice the use of the term “late” in speaking of liberalism. It is as if Niebuhr finds this movement already dead.
If so, Niebuhr’s prophetic view of the present and future may not be as bright as his view of the past for liberalism would continue to limp along even through the present age. Thus, as Ronald Reagan was apt to say during his presidency, talk about his death, like the talk of the death of liberalism, is premature indeed! Conversely, that liberalism continues to limp along does not lessen the sharpness of Niebuhr’s attack of it nor the fact that Niebuhr’s critique of liberalism is more realistic than caricature.
We turn now to consider just what it is that Niebuhr means by the kingdom of God. Niebuhr rejects the Catholic notion of a “church-governed society,” in favor of the Protestant ideal of “God’s direct rule,” (23). Here, God “governed all things immediately by the word of his mouth, and to him all political organizations, churches and individuals were directly responsible,” (23). And yet, Niebuhr is quick to point out that the kingdom of God is not an ideal but a movement, (166-67). In this kingdom, God took and maintained the initiative. Humanity moved towards God only because God had already commenced to move towards humanity. It is no wonder then that even as denominations began to evolve that congregational integrity and independence also emerged. There would be no room for a pope in America or a “mother church.”
The kingdom of God meant that the sovereignty of God was a fundamental starting point and from there one moved on to three further convictions: “Christian constitutionalism, the independence of the church, and the limitation or relativization of human sovereignty,” (58). The last of which would challenge the deep engrained idea of individualism — one of the founding principles of the United States. It was in “these ways then, through insistence upon constitutionalism, upon the primacy and independence of the church and upon the limitation of all human power, the faith in the kingdom of God became a constructive thing in early America,” (86-87).
Americans are known for their propensity for signs. A short trip down any American road would so attest for our highways and byways are littered with signs of all shapes and sizes and containing various messages. It is in this vein that we could put a sign on Niebuhr’s work under study here, “Caution, genius at work.” For truly Niebuhr has performed a marvelous work and a wonder. His book is revisionist history at its best. Niebuhr looks at Puritanism which most Americans can also see through lenses of ridicule and loathing as portrayed in the movie “The Scarlet Letter,” and finds there a vision of “The Kingdom of God.” Niebuhr sees beyond the many countervailing forces in American society and lifts up a movement that is common to all — that no matter what Protestants called themselves, each of them had in mind bringing the kingdom of God to earth.
Niebuhr says that the Puritans were not as legalistic and narrow minded as we have thought them to be and as novelists and others have portrayed them. The burning of witches and the excesses of Cotton Matter and others were more aberrations than manifestations of Puritanism. The Puritans had in clear view a common notion of the kingdom of God that was more than a “cover story.” These were not capitalists in religious clothing or imperialists in evangelist clothes. These people truly believed that God had brought them to America and they set about the task of erecting here a new nation under the sovereignty of God and dedicated to the proposition that the “kingdom of God is not a reign of terror but one of love, not of law but of liberty,” (95). They also “believed that the new life, the establishment of God’s law in the heart by love, was of such a sort that Christ lived in the Christian,” (93).
Unfortunately, Niebuhr does not say what happened in the transmission of this love to Native Americans and the African slaves. He fails to explain the terror which the Puritans inflicted upon both these people. Nor does he explain satisfactorily, although he does attempt it, why the kingdom of God should be so decimated by liberalism. What Niebuhr does, however, is to point to Puritanism as a movement whose waves can still be mounted and surfed to the shores of God’s kingdom. Niebuhr calls us to be quiet and in doing so to listen to the symphony begun by the Puritans and which still resounds through the ages. He calls us to take down our harps from the willow trees of discontent and play Zion’s songs again. For God is here — even in this technological age, God reigns if only we would look anew and sing “thou kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”