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Stories of Resurrection: Traces of God in New CommunityCAROL WADEThe United States has been one of the most religiously observant countries in the contemporary world, but of the seventy million people born between 1946 and 1964 almost fifty million left the church, rejecting not God, but rather "lifeless religion and "stale churches."1 With two to three generations of unchurched people in America, the United States along with most of the Western world has re-entered a rank once typically reserved for Third World countries, that of "mission." Exploring new ways to speak of God in a post-Christian world is imperative. Robert D. Putnam reports in his best-selling work Bowling Alone that in America between 1986 and 1998, while museum attendance was up ten percent and movie-going was up by twenty-five percent, church attendance in the United States was down ten percent.2 Contemporary urbanites hungering for an inchoate spiritual experience stand in line for hours waiting to see the latest Picasso or Matisse exhibit, or one of the film installments in the Tolkein trilogy, but such spiritual seekers scarcely consider the church as an option in their quest. Why museums or films but not the church? Cultural studies and everyday experience show that as we oscillate between late- and post-modernity we are moving into a post-literate age, with thought forms shifting from linear to non-linear as intuition and imagination counter rational discovery made solely through scientific method. Beginning roughly with people born in the late 1940s, and continuing in every subsequent generation with ever-increasing speed, visual images are supplanting print as the metaphor of choice, with story and symbol as our chief means to receive and process information, to experience and construct meaning, to convey emotion and communicate. The prescient dictum of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message," still holds, as Pierre Babin writes a quarter-century later: "The medium is not just a limited technical prop, but the totality of the infrastructures and conditions necessary for a medium to function."3 If mainline churches with liturgies of printed texts rooted in the Enlightenment and modern linear thought forms, who lament the loss of the post-baby-boom generations, believe that such people must be converted from the effects of digital age alienation and passivity if they are to return to the church, then the church is not properly reading its context. "Electronic culture," writes Leonard Sweet, "creates interactive, not passive people."4 Interactive people of the digital age who seek a transcendent experience of God and authentic encounter with neighbor are bypassing the mainline churches in favor of creating their own "do-it-yourself religion" characterized by non-linear thought forms situated within a social model of interconnectivity.5 Finding new ways to speak of God in worship, ways that preserve the historic witness of a church secured in faith, entails not simply finding new ways to speak about God, but rather finding imaginative ways to experience God through story, image, and symbol—the language of the digital age. To this end I created "Stories of Resurrection: Traces of God in New Community," an experimental liturgical event drawn from religious dramatic forms, both contemporary and medieval, which celebrates the faith stories of newly baptized Christian adults. Striving to integrate worship, teaching, and evangelism, the project seeks to connect mainline worship that adheres to set liturgical forms and texts with digital image, symbol, and dramatic storytelling as a form of alternate proclamation of the Gospel. Bridging theory and practice, the project tackles the serious challenge facing the twenty-first century church: how to uphold tradition and yet remain open to innovation, how to be seeker-sensitive within the renewed missional context of secular Western culture and deeply rooted in the historic witness of the church. The Church SettingThe use of drama, image, and electronic media as conversation partners for proclamation of the Gospel is a prominent feature of the contemporary worship genre, by which I mean Protestant North American megachurch worship, not typically part of the mainline worship tradition. My first challenge then was to determine in what type of parish, and in what context within parish life, I might introduce such a venture to an assembly accustomed to a long history of mostly fixed liturgies following set texts and rubrics. I chose to work within the context of a large urban Episcopal parish with highly intentional, well-planned traditional worship, accompanied by a large music program, along with strong preaching and catechetical programs. This type of parish draws many seekers and converts roughly aged twenty to forty. This type of parish is, however, open to pushing the limits of traditional rubrics through the use of innovative ceremonial and symbol in an effort to create liturgical variety while marking sacred time; as such it might be more closely aligned with the postmodern, non-linear intuitional approach than one might at first suspect. Therefore, we can see some similarities with mostly suburban Protestant megachurches in terms of mission, and yet we know there are also discontinuities in terms of worship style, traditions, theologies, and urban setting.
I determined that working in the context of the post-baptismal phase of the catechumenate, the period following the Easter Vigil, could be advantageous for liturgical experimentation. The catechumenate is a process of preparing adult converts for baptism; it finds its inspiration in the historic catechumenate of the fourth century with the sermons and teachings of Cyril, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Theodore. The contemporary catechumenate is a process of spiritual journey involving staged rites and regular gatherings in small groups to study and reflect on Scripture. The catechumens make vivid connections with Scripture by developing and sharing stories in the form of spiritual autobiographies. The catechumenate, which can typically span the course of a year, was reclaimed following Vatican II, and has been adapted in various ways by most mainline denominations. Its final stage, known as post-baptismal catechesis, or mystagogy, begins in the Easter Octave and continues through Pentecost. The mystagogical phase is a time of continued conversion, spiritual growth, meditation on the meaning of the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and incorporation into community and discernment of ministries. My liturgy is intended to take place at a midweek Easter service following the Easter Vigil. In seeking to explore the challenge of incorporating newly baptized adult converts into community in the days following the Easter Vigil, I believe I found both a pastorally and strategically appropriate time to introduce a new form of worship, an alternate proclamation of the Gospel within a multi-media context. Introducing this in the context of a one-off celebratory event seemed to be less confrontational, and a good pastoral solution. The post-baptismal phase of the catechumenate has typically been problematic: neophytes often experience a marked emotional letdown following the intense preparation culminating in the Vigil, and difficulty in integrating into normal parish life. Another way to view the setting is to employ a set of classifying labels for North American Worship developed by Lester Ruth.6 This is based upon James F. White's assessment of the ethos of a tradition. Ruth believes that the way in which a community plans its liturgies may be classified as "congregational," operating as an independent congregation, or "connectional," using resources common to its tradition. When churches face the issue of inculturation, Ruth believes they respond in one of these two ways. |
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