US News Article: A Return to Ritual

Some quotes from the article-

"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 than with what they believe, though people caught up in this change often find that their beliefs are influenced, if not subtly altered, by the changes in their practice. Put simply, the development is a return to tradition and orthodoxy, to past practices, observances, and customary ways of worshiping. "

"Carl Anderson, the senior pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church, and you get an idea. "Seven or eight years ago, there was a sense of disconnectedness and loneliness in our church life," he says. The entrepreneurial model adopted by so many evangelical churches, with its emphasis on seeker-friendly nontraditional services and programs, had been successful in helping Trinity build its congregation, Anderson explains. But it was less successful in holding on to church members and deepening their faith or their ties with fellow congregants. Searching for more rootedness, Anderson sought to reconnect with the historical church.
Connections. Not surprisingly, that move was threatening to church members who strongly identify with the Reformation and the Protestant rejection of Catholic practices, including most liturgy. But Anderson and others tried to emphasize the power of liturgy to direct worship toward God and "not be all about me," he says. Anderson also stressed how liturgy "is about us—and not just this church but the connection with other Christians." Adopting the weekly Eucharist, saying the Nicene Creed every two or three weeks, following the church calendar, Trinity reshaped its worship practices in ways that drove some congregants away. But Anderson remains committed, arguing that traditional practices will help evangelical churches grow beyond the dependence on 'celebrity-status pastors.'"

The article also quotes Brian McLaren, the popular author and a founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md. "Protestantism has been in a centrifugal pattern for so long, with each group spinning away from others," McLaren says. "But now there is some kind of pull back to the center."

Apologetics/Cult Humor

John Williamson Nevin

This is a scan of John Williamson Nevin taken from th Historic Manual of the Reformed Church in the United States by Joseph Dubbs, Published in 1885.

Lock up the Christians

Chris Hedges, a rabid anti-evangelical and the author of American Fascists openly proclaims what I have been telling people for years. His view of what should be done with Evangelicals is summed up by this quote he uses from Karl Popper-

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

One of many things in which I would disagree with Chris Hedges is that he claims the left is too timid to enforce the oppression of those they percieve as intolerant. Obviously he hasn't encountered the liberals in the mainline denominations.