LESS ELABORATE TRADITIONS: WHERE HAVE THEY GONE?
Missy Chatworth

At a social event, which included a retired Episcopal priest, I asked what he thought has brought about the apparent demise of simpler worship, vestments, and traditions in recent decades. He proposed that beginning with the 1960s, in the public mind the authority and significance of clergy have declined enormously. Consequently, Episcopal clergy (and perhaps some others), in order to bolster their sense of power and worth (at least in their own minds), tend to vest more elaborately and hold longer services that are choreographed more splendidly. “If I am entitled to wear these grand vestments with all of these symbols and if I can control the longer duration of services, I must be important.” Impressive form has become a major priority. In brief, the current situation is meeting psychological needs of clergy, a self-anointing of sorts.

Another case in point cited in our discussion was the recent addition of a “+” after many priests’ names. It has been a longstanding Christian tradition for bishops to place a “+” before their names, but now many priests are affecting something similar. An additional instance of an “I am significant” mentality is the wearing of eye-catching pectoral crosses by priests – a customary prerogative of bishops. It appears that self-promotion wins again!

During a different conversation, another priest commented that the current liturgical-ceremonial state of affairs is probably quite different from the elaborate yet thoughtful Anglo-Catholic usages of prior eras. In those days substance as well as form were linked to Anglo-Catholic rationale and practice. In the current era, overstated form seems to be lacking substance. The prettiness of it all is apparently sufficient.

The Episcopal Church presently seems to provide little opportunity for today’s more simply inclined laity and clergy, and this, of course, affects the membership of the Church and the types of people seeking ordination. Many of those preferring yesteryear’s less elaborate options now worship at the generally shorter early services, or stop participating, or join other Churches. We might add the sharp reduction in the variety of Anglican worship to the list of reasons for our reduced membership.

In sharp contrast to so much odd grandness are “Father Joe” and “Mother Mary” faux familiarity, prolonged announcements with failing attempts at humour, along with roving (sometimes chatty) exchanges of the Peace. For the liturgical/ceremonial plainer churchperson, these frequent pseudo-intimacies and their synthetic warmth inject elements that clash with attempted elegant styles. Worship often feels like a patchwork of formality with sudden interruptions by efforts toward chumminess. A Queen’s banquet and a clerk’s picnic are mixed with jolting results that disrupt a spirit of respectful worship. (Regarding the Peace, I do find that a calm Prayer Book greeting to those within reach very fitting.)

Even some current ecclesiastical titles are more august. For their comparatively brief terms in office, regional deans in some Episcopal dioceses are now using “The Very Rev.” – a designation in Anglicanism once reserved for cathedral and seminary deans. The regional Very Reverends often wrap a purple sash around their waists as a sign of their additional value. Years ago, in the days of Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill, “The Rt. Rev.” for all bishops, including the Presiding Bishop, was customary; now it has become “The Most Rev.” for the Presiding Bishop. I do not know when this started or who was behind it. I doubt that it was a Presiding Bishop!

However, I have been cautioned that, because one can discover precedents for virtually everything liturgical, one can justify almost any usage with historical and theological rhetoric. No one is likely to admit that his or her sense of liturgical theater is primarily rooted in his or her own needy psyche. By the way, at the risk of being sexist, it seems to me that it is the male clergy who are most caught up in liturgical fashion and dance. Sometimes I wonder whether they sought ordination to serve or to dress up!

In any case, as one former Episcopal seminary professor remarked, “We should be nurturing theological students in their fundamental baptismal identities as children of God who are primarily called to love and be loved in Jesus Christ’s name. If we were successful at that task, our ordained graduates would not need all these external validations. They would be truly free to serve rather than live so dependently on trappings. The need for elaborate forms and external affirmations would not occur to them at any level. Aesthetic practices would be designed to glorify God (who has no need of trappings), not to affirm the clergy.”

If the professor’s comments were to be taken seriously, perhaps we would have available to us laypeople the comprehensiveness of both the thoughtful Anglo-Catholic worship and what we used to call “low church” simpler worship! (And, just possibly, our membership statistics would report growth.)

Lifetime Anglican Missy Chatworth has been living in the United States for a number of decades.