I can’t think of a more foolish attitude I harbor at times than when I look back on previous generations and assume they were ignorant, unenlightened, unaware and totally outside of what I’m thinking and experiencing today. I was reminded of something the British writer G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy (Chapter 4):
“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” Chesterton goes on to say: “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
And here’s the rub. While it is absolutely true that previous generations did not have the same technologies or understanding of “how things work” in their world, is there such a vast difference between 21st century people and those of previous centuries? Are we so far removed we think we can not possibly learn anything from our fathers, grandfathers and ancestors in the past. I’m particularly struck by this when I consider, as I grow older, how my own parents appear ever increasingly wise. The tradition in Asian culture of revering elders has much to commend it. Today, we regard those older than us as people who, obviously, are not as “in touch” with “reality” as we are. And even more so do we view our ancestors as hopelessly irrelevant.
Here’s some concrete examples of where I see the arrogant oligarchy in action over against those who have come before. Christian worship: Why is it that in the past twenty-five years the worship forms that have been used for thousands of years, have come to be regarded as wholly inadequate and must be replaced with forms that have little in common with the historic worship forms of the past? Why do I sometimes assume that nobody can possibly understand how I’m feeling when faced with a difficult situation who is a member of a generation far removed from mine? Why did I, for example, the other day when looking at Starck’s Prayer Book, smile at the fact that there were prayers there to be prayed as a thunderstorm approached and to be prayed after it was over? “Oh, how quaint,” I thought. Then I felt shame, as I considered the fact that dangerous thunderstorms back when there were no safe buildings, or emergency services, or advanced warning, were devastating.
Do you have some examples from your life where you see yourself as part of the arrogant oligarchy? Would you share some by way of comments?
December 19th, 2009 | 8:47 am | #1
Well, aren’t many of the worship forms employed in the Protestant church tradition merely older human inventions? It is hard to make the case that a New Testament Christian would have any idea what was going on in the most traditional, conservative Protestant church meeting (not to mention being completely bewildered in a Roman Catholic church).
December 19th, 2009 | 10:33 am | #2
Often with me this “arrogant oligarchy” syndrome is connected with attitudes toward sexuality. Older writers seem so fanatical on this subject and on related subjects such as modesty of dress and deportment.
Then I realize, “No, they are not the ones with the problem–I am the one who is immodest and sensual.” It is too easy to become infected (not altogether unwillingly) with the modern “sexuality disease.”
December 19th, 2009 | 10:50 am | #3
Tradition, at its best, is simply a record of what the Holy Spirit has been teaching for the past 2,000+ years. We are fools and, perhaps, risk blaspheming the Holy Spirit when we ignore or reject out of hand the voice and example of Tradition.
December 19th, 2009 | 10:54 am | #4
Mr. Sido, I think you would actually be rather surprised at how ancient the essential core form of the New Testament worship service of the Sacrament is. We have records of it dating all the way back into the first century itself and there are clearly recognizeable core elements that have been continued through the millennia. See the Didache, for instance, and the writings of Justin Martyr.
December 19th, 2009 | 12:32 pm | #5
Sure. Where do we see it in the Scriptures though? Just because something is old doesn’t mean it is right. We know that there was error creeping into the church from the very beginning, so shouldn’t we be more concerned with what the Scriptures describe than what the Didache or Justin Martyr have to say?
December 19th, 2009 | 2:07 pm | #6
Round & round & round we go! Gosh it’s tough being a protestant.
December 19th, 2009 | 2:16 pm | #7
Paul, yup, ’tis.
Mr. Sido is doing a nice job of proving the point of this post. There are lots of things “not in the Scriptures” … does this mean the Church can not, should not, use them? Organs, hymnbooks, for that matter, trains, planes and automobiles.
I am catching the feint, and unpleasant, odor of the “regulative principle” of worship in Mr. Sido’s remarks. But I may be wrong.
December 19th, 2009 | 2:22 pm | #8
Ah, yes. The regulative principle: if scripture does not command us to wear shoes to worship, then we are forbidden to do so.
December 19th, 2009 | 2:35 pm | #9
The grain of truth in Mr. Sido’s remarks is that not all traditions are equally normative and indeed cannot be given that they conflict with each other. Nevertheless, as Jaroslav Pelikan reminds us, those who dispute a particular tradition inevitably do so on the basis of some other tradition, often unacknowledged. The revolutionary plugs himself into a larger tradition of revolutionary agitation, rather like the herd of independent minds to whom the late Fr. Neuhaus often referred.
I myself wonder whether the commandment to honour our parents does not have relevance here. If we are constantly out to debunk our ancestors as unenlightened, out-of-date or irrelevant, we come dangerously close to the sin of pride. I think this is what Pastor McCain is getting at.
The notion that we can reinvent the liturgy with every generation is a shortsighted one. Much of what passes for worship in many evangelical churches will prove to be ephemeral and will be abandoned by the next generation. (Who sings We Are One in the Spirit anymore? Yet we sang it constantly when I was in high school.) By then who will still be around who recalls Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, John Mason Neale and the like? They will have to be deliberately recovered for a future generation that will have forgotten them.
December 19th, 2009 | 3:14 pm | #10
In my own church, those clamoring for the most stereotypically “contemporary worship” services are baby boomers, whereas, younger folks hunger for something more authentic and connected to the broad and deep history of the Church, which is…[insert drum roll here]…the ancient Western Mass form of worship, which lives on in the thoroughly evangelically reformed Lutheran Divine Service of Word and Sacrament.
The post really was not about the liturgy. This was and is but merely an example of the “oligarchy” of the living.
If we are to believe Mr. Sido’s vision of church history, things went horribly wrong immediately in the first century and we are not to regard the Didache’s witness to early church practice as helpful, but rather as a witness to the corruption into which the church fell rather immediately.
I’d be curious to learn from Mr. Sido when the “faithful” Church emerged again, and where.
December 19th, 2009 | 3:25 pm | #11
Rev. McCain,
As per your question at the end of your post, I’ve felt most like a member of the “arrogant oligarchy” in my dismissal of rote memorization. I used to think that memorizing something, be it a Bible passage or Luther’s explanation of Baptism, cheapened it somehow. For example, it is sometimes hard for me to sit through a reading of Luke 2 without skipping ahead in my mind through all those years as a child ‘learning my lines’ and the correct way to pronounce Kwi-REE-nee-us. Instead of focusing on God sending his Son, I tune out and my eyes glaze over because I’ve heard this all before a thousand times and I just want my brown paper bag filled with oranges and peanuts. (Did you Missouri kids get those, or was it just Wisconsin?)
But then a funny thing happened. I was in a discussion with someone about holy water and baptism, with nary a Bible, concordance, or laptop to be found. From somewhere deep in my brain I remembered, “It is certainly not the water that does such things, but God’s Word which is in and with the water, and faith which trusts this Word used with the water. For without God’s Word the water is just plain water and not baptism.” I was very glad that I had memorized that, and could see the usefulness of it.
I think it is still very useful for children (and yes, even adults) to memorize scripture so that we might “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”
December 19th, 2009 | 4:22 pm | #12
“Just because something is old doesn’t mean it is right.”
But the problem today is that people think something is true because it is new.
In some ways, our ancestors had a better grasp of “how things work,” if you mean by “things” human beings. Because we are so enamored by technology, we see the “natural” as an impediment to our desires (which we equate with our good). For this reason, everything, including our bodies, becomes an artifice that may be manipulated by our wills for the fulfillment of our desires.
We’ve not reached the point where people who are geniuses may believe that they are morons trapped with a high IQ and thus require transintelligence surgery (i.e., moderate lobotomy). But we’re getting there. If people can have no false beliefs about their own inner life (the great dogma of our age), what is true of gender may be extended to other things. (We’ve already seen the macabre life of a white middle aged woman–Michael Johson–who believed he was trapped in a black man’s body).
December 19th, 2009 | 5:01 pm | #13
“We’ve not reached the point where people who are geniuses may believe that they are morons trapped with a high IQ and thus require transintelligence surgery (i.e., moderate lobotomy). But we’re getting there.”
I don’t think I’ve read anything on this blog that has caused me to laugh quite as hard.
“In my own church, those clamoring for the most stereotypically ‘contemporary worship’ services are baby boomers, whereas, younger folks hunger for something more authentic and connected to the broad and deep history of the Church, which is…[insert drum roll here]…the ancient Western Mass form of worship, which lives on in the thoroughly evangelically reformed Lutheran Divine Service of Word and Sacrament.”
The Reformed churches have also followed the basic pattern, if not the entire ordinary of the mass. I personally think that the Reformed churches dispensed with too much of the western liturgical tradition in the 16th century, adopting lengthy didactic monologues in their place, yet apparently believing they were returning to the patterns of the ancient church. However, the singular contribution of the Reformed churches was to recover congregational singing of the psalms in their entirety. Sadly, many Reformed churches have not kept to this.
December 19th, 2009 | 5:05 pm | #14
David, thanks for your comment. Wow, you actually commented on topic! What a refreshing change of pace.
: )
You put your finger on a very good example of where, perhaps, we have too easily dismissed the example of our fathers, and their grandfather’s grandfathers when it comes to educational practices, content and theory.
December 19th, 2009 | 8:06 pm | #15
Uh, Paul, you didn’t answer the question yourself. You set it up then cited an example in which you felt abused by an arrogant oligarchy but you never gave an example of when you were a part of an AO. So, when was it?
December 19th, 2009 | 11:11 pm | #16
Well, he did give the “prayer book” example.
December 20th, 2009 | 6:25 am | #17
Ken, actually, I provided two examples.
December 20th, 2009 | 2:57 pm | #18
I see myself in terms of the arrogant oligarchy as far as media is used in church services and as a way to promote/market churches. I attend a Liturgical church, and we do not use media (i.e. power point presentations, that sort of thing), and I prefer it that way. My church also does not use twitter or other ways to promote it, and I prefer that as well. If you ask me, Twitter is not a good method to promote a church; there is simply no way a person can learn the richness of the church through tweets.
I also am part of the arrogant oligarchy in terms of the size of the church I attend. I could not attend any of the new megachurches. I am not in favor of that trend. My parish is very small, and I prefer it that way. In addition, I have a relationship with my priest where he actually knows me well. I think that works much better when I go to Confession..
December 20th, 2009 | 9:58 pm | #19
Actually, the evangelicals that became Orthodox back in 1986 are what can be described as older babyboomers. And there are some today who are in their 20′s and 30′s that like Joel Olstein and Rick Warren. Granted, Rick Warren’s church average age is around 42 years old, a lot of older generation x type.
December 20th, 2009 | 10:01 pm | #20
Those that converted back in 1986 were 2,000 people. And those babyboomers like Peter Gilequest and Father Wayne Wilson got those young adults today into Orthodoxy.
December 21st, 2009 | 10:29 am | #21
Why is it that in the past twenty-five years the worship forms that have been used for thousands of years, have come to be regarded as wholly inadequate and must be replaced with forms that have little in common with the historic worship forms of the past?
Amen. Modern worship is pretty much worship for the attention span challenged.
Somehow, some way, we are all sooo going to regret this someday. Well, we will suffer for it, anyway. We’ll probably be too dumb to realize we should regret it.
December 21st, 2009 | 10:37 am | #22
Much of what passes for worship in many evangelical churches will prove to be ephemeral and will be abandoned by the next generation. (Who sings We Are One in the Spirit anymore? Yet we sang it constantly when I was in high school.)
Just wanted to echo David T. Koyzis’s comment #13. I don’t ever hear anymore anyof the super-cool super-spiritual songs the singing of which was the sine qua non of the committed Christian in my college days. [Did that sentence just make sense? Oh well.]
Except that, for some reason, “It Only Takes a Spark” still shows its hoary head every so often.
We have tossed overboard a boatload of hymns that served us well for centuries, and replaced them with stuff that, in the long run, we ourselves don’t even like. Makes alot of sense.
December 21st, 2009 | 10:40 am | #23
From comment #19
Actually, the evangelicals that became Orthodox back in 1986 …
Something else I’m ignorant about, apparently. Anyone care to give a Reader’s Digest summary of what happened? Thanks.
December 21st, 2009 | 1:17 pm | #24
It Only Takes a Spark? I had completely forgotten that one. No one sings that in my neck of the woods, as far as I know.
December 21st, 2009 | 1:20 pm | #25
Bob, check out this book if you want the whole story: Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith.
December 22nd, 2009 | 10:12 pm | #26
Man, what a memory rush. “It Only Takes a Spark”?
And, of course, “Amazing Grace” sung to the Coca-Cola tune “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”
You know, God’s grace kept us Christian through all this. Yet I remember it as so sincerely meant.
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