Paul & Diane N. share this From U.S. News & World Report:
A Return to Traditions: A new interest in old ways takes root in Catholicism and many other faiths
The December 24, 2007 edition of U.S. News and World Report magazine has a cover story that is titled "A Return to Ritual: Why many modern worshipers, including Catholics, Jews, and evangelicals, are embracing tradition"
The cover shows a photo of a Tridentine Catholic mass being celebrated at St. Mary, Mother of God Church in Washington, D.C. (photo credit on page 4 of the magazine) with the priest lifting the host and chalice up before the altar.
The author of the article, Jay Tolson, is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report who covers religion, culture and ideas. He is also the author of Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Brian McClaren also had an avid interest in the works of Walker Percy (see McClaren's bio here): http://www.brianmclaren.net/biography.html. Maybe this is just a coincidence...maybe not. (Walker Percy is an American author who was born into a southern Protestant family, but later converted to Catholicism. He was influenced by the Danish existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard and although Walker Percy passed away in 1990, his books and philosophy continue to be popular.)
Link to entire article: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2007/12/13/a-return-to-tradition.html
Here are a few quotes from this article:
"But this shift extends beyond the Roman Catholic Church. In Richardson, Texas, the congregation of Trinity Fellowship Church participates in something that would have been considered almost heretical in most evangelical Protestant churches five or 10 years ago: a weekly Communion service. An independent, nondenominational church of some 600 members, Trinity Fellowship is not the only evangelical congregation that is offering a weekly Eucharist, saying the Nicene or Apostles' creeds, reading the early Church Fathers, or doing other things that seem downright Roman Catholic or at least high Episcopalian. Daniel Wallace, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, which trains pastors for interdenominational or nondenominational churched, says there is a growing appetite for something more than "worship that is a glorified Bible class in some ways."
"Something curious is happening in the wide world of faith, something that defies easy explanation or quantification. More substantial than a trend but less organized than a movement, it has to do more with how people practice their religion that with what they believe, though people caught up in the change often find that their beliefs are influenced, if not subtly altered, by the changes in their practice."
The article then goes on to describe the emergent movement and describes "returns to traditionalism" as not only occurring in Christianity, but also in Judaism with "the Jewish equivalent of the Christian emergent communities, the independent minyanim". It also mentions Islam, to complete the picture that this is a big trend in all religions, but states "The state of traditionalism in Islam is more difficult to capture."
The article continues: "In all faiths, the return to tradition has different meanings for different people. To some it is a return to reassuring authority and absolutes; it is a buttress to conservative theological, social, and even political commitments. To others, it is a means of moving beyond fundamentalist literalism, troubling authority figures, and highly politicized religious positions (say on gay marriage and contraception or abortion) while retaining a hold on spiritual truths. In short, the new traditionalism is anything but straightforward."
After quotes from Catholic religious leaders, including one which references a group that "would like to take things back to the [16th century Counter-Reformation] Council of Trent", the article continues with information from George Barna and his ubiquitous polling.
Then the article continues the story of Pastor Carl Anderson of Trinity Fellowship Church, which appears to have been in the "seeker-friendly" model, which he says was "less successful in holding on to church members and deepening their faith". "Searching for more rootedness, Anderson sought to reconnect with the historical church". "Not surprisingly, that move was threatening to church members who strongly identify with the Reformation and the Protestant rejection of Catholic practices". "...Trinity reshaped its worship practices in ways that drove some congregants away"...
At this point in the article Brian McClaren and Tony Jones are introduced and give their input along with a mention of Tony Jone's book, The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier. This section of the article ends with the following paragraph:
"The young neotraditionalists also have an almost intuitive attraction to liturgy, ritual, and symbol as forms of knowledge that complement the dominant rational, scientific one. "There is a certain kind of postmodern sensibility that loses confidence in the rational explanation of everything," McLaren says. For him, Jones, and others, "doing church" in traditional and innovative ways is a form of theological reflection that leaves behind the fundamendalists' need to make all religious propositions into pseudoscientific statements, to turn Genesis, for example, into a geology textbook."
The article closes with an interview of a rabbi who is the founder of a "new rabbinical school that trains Jewish leaders in the approach of what he calls Open Orthodoxy". "I would argue that people are looking for a dialectic," says Avi Weiss, senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Bronx, N.Y. "People are looking for a commitment that is grounded but not one that is stagnant", Weiss says. "The other part of the dialectic is an openness but not without limits."
"In all corners of Judaism, as in all parts of Christianity, traditions are being adapted in strangely innovative ways."
The article ends with this closing sentence: "Limits and openness: Welcome to the new, and sometimes bewildering, world of religious traditionalism."
The cover shows a photo of a Tridentine Catholic mass being celebrated at St. Mary, Mother of God Church in Washington, D.C. (photo credit on page 4 of the magazine) with the priest lifting the host and chalice up before the altar.
The author of the article, Jay Tolson, is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report who covers religion, culture and ideas. He is also the author of Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Brian McClaren also had an avid interest in the works of Walker Percy (see McClaren's bio here): http://www.brianmclaren.net/biography.html. Maybe this is just a coincidence...maybe not. (Walker Percy is an American author who was born into a southern Protestant family, but later converted to Catholicism. He was influenced by the Danish existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard and although Walker Percy passed away in 1990, his books and philosophy continue to be popular.)
Link to entire article: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2007/12/13/a-return-to-tradition.html
Here are a few quotes from this article:
"But this shift extends beyond the Roman Catholic Church. In Richardson, Texas, the congregation of Trinity Fellowship Church participates in something that would have been considered almost heretical in most evangelical Protestant churches five or 10 years ago: a weekly Communion service. An independent, nondenominational church of some 600 members, Trinity Fellowship is not the only evangelical congregation that is offering a weekly Eucharist, saying the Nicene or Apostles' creeds, reading the early Church Fathers, or doing other things that seem downright Roman Catholic or at least high Episcopalian. Daniel Wallace, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, which trains pastors for interdenominational or nondenominational churched, says there is a growing appetite for something more than "worship that is a glorified Bible class in some ways."
"Something curious is happening in the wide world of faith, something that defies easy explanation or quantification. More substantial than a trend but less organized than a movement, it has to do more with how people practice their religion that with what they believe, though people caught up in the change often find that their beliefs are influenced, if not subtly altered, by the changes in their practice."
The article then goes on to describe the emergent movement and describes "returns to traditionalism" as not only occurring in Christianity, but also in Judaism with "the Jewish equivalent of the Christian emergent communities, the independent minyanim". It also mentions Islam, to complete the picture that this is a big trend in all religions, but states "The state of traditionalism in Islam is more difficult to capture."
The article continues: "In all faiths, the return to tradition has different meanings for different people. To some it is a return to reassuring authority and absolutes; it is a buttress to conservative theological, social, and even political commitments. To others, it is a means of moving beyond fundamentalist literalism, troubling authority figures, and highly politicized religious positions (say on gay marriage and contraception or abortion) while retaining a hold on spiritual truths. In short, the new traditionalism is anything but straightforward."
After quotes from Catholic religious leaders, including one which references a group that "would like to take things back to the [16th century Counter-Reformation] Council of Trent", the article continues with information from George Barna and his ubiquitous polling.
Then the article continues the story of Pastor Carl Anderson of Trinity Fellowship Church, which appears to have been in the "seeker-friendly" model, which he says was "less successful in holding on to church members and deepening their faith". "Searching for more rootedness, Anderson sought to reconnect with the historical church". "Not surprisingly, that move was threatening to church members who strongly identify with the Reformation and the Protestant rejection of Catholic practices". "...Trinity reshaped its worship practices in ways that drove some congregants away"...
At this point in the article Brian McClaren and Tony Jones are introduced and give their input along with a mention of Tony Jone's book, The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier. This section of the article ends with the following paragraph:
"The young neotraditionalists also have an almost intuitive attraction to liturgy, ritual, and symbol as forms of knowledge that complement the dominant rational, scientific one. "There is a certain kind of postmodern sensibility that loses confidence in the rational explanation of everything," McLaren says. For him, Jones, and others, "doing church" in traditional and innovative ways is a form of theological reflection that leaves behind the fundamendalists' need to make all religious propositions into pseudoscientific statements, to turn Genesis, for example, into a geology textbook."
The article closes with an interview of a rabbi who is the founder of a "new rabbinical school that trains Jewish leaders in the approach of what he calls Open Orthodoxy". "I would argue that people are looking for a dialectic," says Avi Weiss, senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Bronx, N.Y. "People are looking for a commitment that is grounded but not one that is stagnant", Weiss says. "The other part of the dialectic is an openness but not without limits."
"In all corners of Judaism, as in all parts of Christianity, traditions are being adapted in strangely innovative ways."
The article ends with this closing sentence: "Limits and openness: Welcome to the new, and sometimes bewildering, world of religious traditionalism."
Thank you Paul & Diane for your work. Photo credit Jim Lo Scalzo for USN&WR.
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