[Marquart on contemporary worship] We must think in broad vistas here. It is no good snatching up some piece of detail and saying No harm in that, is there? Liturgical gestures, practices, customs, and styles are not items in a cupboard full of interchangeable bric-a-brac. They are part and parcel rather of larger complexes of meaning and must be seen in that light. Superficially it might seem, for instance, that folding hands, clapping, kneeling and foot-tapping are all pretty much the same thing. They are all neither commanded nor forbidden in Holy Scripture, and so are indifferent things or adiaphora. Its all just a matter of what people are used to, right? Wrong! Folding hands and kneeling are really very much unlike clapping and foot-tapping. They and other traditional gestures, like bowing or making the sign of the cross, are deliberate acts, in which the body obediently follows the direction of the mind and spirit. Even if they have become thoughtless and mechanical, they were once adopted quite intentionally. It is otherwise with rhythmic clapping and foot-tapping. Here the body and the senses are in the lead, with the mind and soul in tow, drifting who knows where. Kneeling and folding hands, therefore, are appropriate to the sobriety of the churchs worship, while the more involuntary, instinctual foot-tapping and hand-clapping, typical of atavistic nature-cults, fits the emotionalism of anti-sacramental sects. It is useless to object that clapping is, after all, scriptural, since Ps. 47:1 says: O clap your hands, all ye people. This biblicism forgets that we have no feel for the ancient Hebrew sacral culture. Clapping today does not convey, as in the Psalm, that the Lord most high is terrible (v. 2). On the contrary, in our culture such behavior evokes the folksy self-indulgence of a karaoke singalong, and of a sectarianism which apes such popular pastimes. Prof Kurt Marquart, Church Growth as Mission Paradigm, p. 104
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 12:30:00 +0000
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