We do not presume
To come to this thy table, O merciful Lord,
Trusting in our own righteousness
But in thy manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
So much as to gather up the crumbs under they table.
But thou art the same Lord
Whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
So to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ
And to drink his blood
That we may evermore dwell in him
And he in us. Amen.
- Alternative Service Book Rite B, 1980
People have many reasons for not going to church. Obviously, some are atheists. In others, the flame of faith burns too dimly to get them up early on a Sunday morning. For a third group, church is an irrelevance; faith is personal and does not require embarrassing public declaration, accompanied by off-key singing or out-of-tune guitars, or worse still, the clapping of hands.
All these excuses suggest that there is something seriously wrong with services. Worshipping God should be a joy, not a duty. It's something we should look forward to, something worth getting up for on a Sunday. So what's the problem? The music? True, this is very much a matter of taste, but the C of E at least has experimented boldly with a variety of musical forms, so most preferences are catered for. Likewise for the style of worship, whether breezy and informal or solemn and reverent. It's just a matter of finding the right church. No, the problem must reside with the aspect of the service which doesn't change, whichever type you go to; the words, the liturgy. Yes, I know that there are different rites in the ASB, but the differences between them are purely cosmetic. Changing "thee" and "thy" to "you" and "your" does not affect the meaning, and it's the meaning that's the problem.
Take a look at the prayer above. If you are a regular church goer, you've probably said it thousands of times. It's beautiful to speak out loud; the words have a wonderful rhythm and flow to them, each line carrying you into the next. But now stand back a bit, look at its meaning, and try to view it without the eye of faith. The first eight lines are fine, if rather more self-abasing than we humans are used to. But did you feel a cold shudder when you read the last five? You should have done, because without the eye of faith, the images in them are repulsive. Nothing more nor less than ritual cannibalism, like the tribes in New Guinea who believe that consuming the brains of their ancestors will pass on their strength and wisdom. To a Westerner, the ideas of eating human flesh and drinking human blood should be deeply disturbing, and yet we calmly enunciate them every Sunday.
Now I am perfectly aware that the correct interpretation of this prayer does not reside in this superficial, top-level reading. The idea of Jesus as a perfect sacrifice to replace forever the animal sacrifices common in the Jewish religion at the time is one of Christianity's central images and the lines above merely state this, albeit in a particularly uncompromising form. But imagine someone without much knowledge of the history and precepts of the religion - someone who lacks the eye of faith - coming into church and being expected to speak this prayer. Out loud. In public. What are they going to think? Is it any surprise that so many of them don't come back?
Some may argue that this doesn't matter. Services are intended for believers, after all, and a bit of exclusivity reminds us that we are expected to live differently from the rest of society. But the clash between top-level and second-level meaning creates problems for believers as well. One solution - I'll call it the Poet's solution - is not to think about the meanings of the words you are speaking at all, but to say them simply for their grace and elegance, an offering of beauty to God. There is nothing wrong with this, other than a) it renders the service literally meaningless (at least at a linguistic level), and b) some people, particularly those with an intellectual bent, simply can't do it. Such unfortunates - and I am one of them - still feel and respond to the beauty of the liturgy, but also require that the words that they are expected to say bear some resemblance to what they actually believe. For us, the only possible solution is to do a running translation on the liturgy, translating its top-level meaning to one we are comfortable with by hedging the words with mental ifs, buts and expansions. To illustrate the mental contortions that this involves, here is the Nicene Creed, the central statement of Christian faith, with annotations describing the sorts of thoughts that go through my head as I am saying it.
We believe in one God
All right so far...
The Father almighty,
Well, not a father as such since to give the Supreme Being a sex is absurd. Is s/he supposed to have genitalia? "Father/Mother" is still too anthropomorphic, but gets across the creative and human-friendly nature of God. "Almighty" is a courtesy title; if God were all-powerful (which is what I take almighty to mean), then, being perfectly good (why is this not stated as one of our fundamental beliefs anywhere in the Creed?), there could be no evil anywhere in the universe, including in human hearts; we could not journey towards the Kingdom of Heaven, since we would be already there.
Maker of heaven and earth,
Except the bits that are evil - s/he's perfectly good, remember? In any case, my overwhelming experience of the physical world is that it is morally neutral - witness the success of science, a morally neutral philosophy, in describing it. I do not believe that a morally good God could be sole creator of a morally neutral universe. Maker of everything in heaven and earth that's worthwhile and important, yes.
And of all things visible and invisible;
Not "all things" - see above. "Invisible" things don't necessarily include souls and angels and spirits and so forth, of whose existence outside human minds I am doubtful. Anything that exists purely in human minds cannot be created solely by God, since some human thoughts, as we all know, are evil.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
Yes, in the sense that I believe Jesus to be the most remarkable man who ever lived, and the man whose teachings have most influenced the way in which I run my life. "Lord" in the traditional feudal sense implies a hierarchy which I don't think exists.
The only-begotten Son of God,
In a sense we are all sons and daughters of God, in that we have the capacity for goodness. God was Jesus' father in a metaphorical sense; I don't believe that God magicked half of Jesus' chromosomes out of thin air.
Begotten of his Father before all worlds,
The "idea" of Jesus has indeed been around since creation, in that the universe has always had the potential for creatures that could appreciate goodness and choose it, as our existence proves.
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance of the Father,
This section was added at the Council of Nicea to state the Orthodox position against a number of heresies which were of tremendous importance in the fourth and fifth centuries but are not so relevant now. In fact I think that the Church Fathers overstated the case; if Jesus was not fully human and did not go through every experience that human beings go through, the shining example of his life is meaningless and not worth following. The "substance" must be spiritual; I interpret it to mean that Jesus perfectly expressed the spirit of goodness (God) in his life and works.
By whom all things were made;
All things that are worthwhile; see above.
Who for us men and for our salvation
And women!
Came down from heaven,
That is, the "perfect" idea of God entered into the mind of Jesus and became less "perfect" as a result of being filtered through his perception of reality.
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost
Of the Virgin Mary,
"Virgin" is an honorary title intended to express Mary's purity and innocence. Jesus must have been born as a result of normal sexual intercourse or he wasn't fully human.
And was made man,
And was crucified also for us
Under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried,
Can't disagree with that, except for the words "for us". Jesus' crucifixion was a tragic consequence of his challenge to the authorities of the day. It is too anthropomorphic to consider it as part of a "plan" of God's - God, being the spirit of goodness, does not "think" in any human sense.
And the third day he rose again
Not in the physical sense, though I do think that the body disappeared. What happened was that Jesus' teaching and life came alive in the minds of his disciples. A man's ideas can rise again after he is physically dead.
According to the scriptures,
When I was young I took this as a slightly disparaging "Jesus rose again, according to these writings here", rather than the intended meaning, which was almost certainly that in rising again, Jesus fulfilled prophecies contained in the Old Testament. On the whole I think my younger self may have been right.
And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
Another bizarre image; Jesus perched on a giant right hand. Probably intended to mean "sitting in the position of the honoured guest". Refers to Jesus' spirit achieving oneness with God, not his physical body.
And he shall come again with glory,
To judge both the quick and the dead:
Well, yes, if you allow Jesus' coming to be a continuous thing rather than occurring at a fixed point in time. We are constantly making judgements about the morality of living and dead people; since this is by reference to our shared sense of what is good (which is what God, at the very least, is), God (or the spirit of Jesus, if you prefer) does in a sense "judge". Comparison with high court judges is however misleading - God is the repository of the ethical principles we call good, not an arbitrator of them.
Whose kingdom shall have no end.
We humans shall continue to make judgements about each other for as long as humanity endures, so the concept of good that humans possess - the kingdom of God - will never end while human consciousness endures.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost,
The Lord, the Giver of life,
The Holy Ghost is the spirit of God within us; it is our emotional and intellectual response to it. Since we are most human, most alive, when we do good, the Holy Spirit does indeed "give life".
Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
This follows from the above.
Who spake by the prophets.
Which ones? The prophets (presumably Old Testament) said very different things. None of them fully understood goodness in the way that Jesus defined it, though hints of the teachings that were to follow were of course present. In that sense, the Holy Spirit spoke through them.
And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
I am still convinced that there is an "in" missing from the above phrase; certainly it needs one for those of us who are sceptical of some of the Church's teachings. I certainly think that in an ideal world there should be one universal Christian church and I have no objection to apostles, providing that one can take some of things they are reported to have said with a pinch of salt. Some of St. Paul's comments on women and on homosexuality, for example.
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.
Another bit of heretic-bashing, this time (I suspect) of the Anabaptists. Since remission of sins is an ongoing process (taking responsibility for one's less desirable actions and attempting to put things right), baptism, which marks the start of it, does indeed only need to be done once.
And I look for the resurrection of the dead,
Not in any literal sense; once you're physically dead, you're physically dead (see my essay on life after death). This fact is what makes life infinitely precious and hence gives importance to our moral choices, and therefore to God. It is why we must be good; to do evil, which is to harm others, is to reduce the quality of a short and precious existence. Of course, ideas and memories can live on and be revived, and the atoms of our physical bodies can be incorporated into new living creatures and will continue to be so for as long as life endures. In this sense we are immortal and can be "resurrected".
And the life of the world to come. Amen.
Yes, in the sense of looking for the future continuance of life on this planet. Since my constituent atoms will continue to be part of it, I will have a life after death, but not as the independent being I am now.
Now if you detect more than a hint of sophistry in the above, you're dead right. It's a form of hypocrisy to say one thing and believe another, particularly when one's beliefs are so much at odds with the intended meaning, and I utterly hate doing it. The mental contortions required also knock the fun out of the service, so much so that I am no longer a regular church-goer. I find it more honest, and true to my beliefs, to stay at home and try to live the good life without the support that the church could give me. And I suspect that many who have "lost their faith", or who don't believe enough to go to church, have in fact had similar crises of conscience; faith is there, but cannot be expressed in the form that the Church provides. If I am right, you can experiment with ritual and music all you like, but things won't change until the words - and the beliefs which they express - do.
So what could the Church do to encourage people like me back into the fold? The most obvious answer is to re-write the liturgy so that it does express clearly what we actually believe. Unfortunately, this is next to impossible. For one thing, many members of the church (the majority, I suspect) would rightly point out that the words used are a) beautiful in themselves, b) the products of centuries of careful thought and discussion that we jettison at our peril, and c) the one linking factor that unites all church-goers, regardless of the types of services that they attend. They would also point to the numerous and heated arguments over the form of words that have occurred down the years and ask "do we want to go through that again?" In any case, even if a form of words could be worked out that would be acceptable to me, they would almost certainly be unacceptable to someone who, for example, literally believes the surface meanings of the Bible.
Given that a re-write is out of the question, I have three proposals for solving the problem of liturgy, though I think it's only fair to warn the faint-hearted that they are somewhat radical.
Solution one is to do for the liturgy what has been done for music and ritual and allow "a la carte" liturgies catering for different groups of believers. Thus people like me would have a form of words expressing the sorts of ideas described in my annotations to the creed rather than the creed itself. Liturgies could be approved by the Synod of the Church of England before they could be used, ensuring that at least some adherence to traditional Christian values was achieved. Traditionalists could continue to use the old form of words. The advantages of this solution are that it follows the tradition of tolerance in the Church of England and allows everyone to express what they actually believe without mental translation. The major disadvantage is that there would no longer be anything uniting church-goers in different communities except a shared ritual of bread and wine and a general belief in doing good things. And, of course, it reopens the old arguments about forms of words in every church in the land. I like the honesty of this solution; if there really are so many conflicting belief-sets in the Church, perhaps we should be expressing them openly rather than trying to shoe-horn them into a form of words that satisfies no-one. I don't think that it's likely to happen, however.
Solution two is to take a leaf out of the Quakers' book and do away with liturgy altogether. Sunday services would become opportunities for quiet contemplation of one's life and beliefs, and for comparing notes, finding agreed definitions of what is good and right behaviour. We can keep the ritual of the shared bread and wine to express our solidarity with one another, and the music (though watch the words - the English Hymnal has as many problems with its words as the liturgy). The Taize service moves some way towards this quiet, contemplative, informal style, though I personally do not like repetitive chants. Nor, I suspect, would it appeal to those who like more ritualistic, formal modes of worship.
My third proposal is to take the "Poet's solution" mentioned above to its logical extreme. In this case, we do away with the sermon, the bible readings and the intercessions altogether and concentrate on creating something beautiful for God (the parts removed could happen at separate gatherings, say discussion groups after the service). In order to avoid the problems of meaning, we need to find a form of words that sounds beautiful to say but which is meaningless to most people participating. Fortunately, such a liturgy exists, and it is one that will please the traditionalists - the original Latin Mass...
Mark Tolley
8th December 1996