California -- less godless than New England

The Los Angeles Times (our state’s largest paper) has reported that California (20%) is less godless than New England (22%). Based on the American Religious Identification Survey, California is increasingly Catholic (37%). One factor is that nearly half the country’s Latinos live in either California or Texas.

Anglicans need doctrine AND outreach

I’ve been catching up on my Issues Etc. podcasts. I don’t listen to all of them, but try to pick the meatier ones plus those from guests that I generally enjoy (such as GetReligionistas Mollie Hemingway and Terry Mattingly).

One podcast I listened to over the weekend was called, “The Future of American Evangelicalism,” an interview with Michael Spencer of InternetMonk.Com. The main focus was to play off his Christian Science Monitor column called “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” and also his (more detailed) blog postings on the same theme.

Whether or not one agrees with his predictions, I would commend the interview (if not the written words) to any thinking Christian.

I was particularly struck by his dissection of the pros and cons of the megachurch movement:

• Some churches are going to be better than others at leveraging new media opportunities, and many of the megachurches have done an admirable job of adapting to the new media.
• Many evangelical churches have grown by being good at welcoming and outreach (i.e. evangelism), at the expense of doctrine.
• Often, standing firm for a specific doctrine inherently requires making choices at odds with church growth.

All of these points seem applicable to 21st century Christians beyond the evangelical movement. My sense is that the Schism II Anglican evangelicals (such as the new St. James San Jose) are trying to engage contemporary technology, welcoming and reaching out to new members — but, by leaving TEC, have made it clear that doctrine still matters.

Spencer noted that Pope Benedict XVI has said that he expects the 21st century to bring a smaller but more faithful Catholic church. (I have not found the exact quote, but it is alluded to by a 2005 New York Times story and an Australian blog.) The early Christian church was a small minority of society, but was quite clear about its beliefs, and Benedict is not the only theologian who sees parallels between today’s post-Christian Western society and the early pre-Christian Roman times.

Still, I think there is a clear lesson here for Anglo-Catholics. All of the Schism I and Schism II Anglo-Catholic parishes that I’ve visited are solid on doctrine. However, they generally seem quite set in their ways, not reaching out or integrating new members into the fold. While the Bob Duncan-style Schism II Rite II Anglicans see such outreach and welcoming as an integral responsibility of laity, the Anglo-Catholics seem to delegate (elevate) the task to the priest and don’t even follow through systematically when a new parishioner walks through the door.

So we need to be less smug in our doctrine and more evangelical (small e) in our view of the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations.”

Bay Area Anglicans: Unite!

David Virtue of Virtue Online has written up his interview with Fr. Ed McNeill, rector of the Bay Area’s new St. James Anglican. Regular Anglican Music readers already read about it here first. From what I heard, the parishioners thought that my March 8th posting captured the essence of their transition from ECUSA to the planned ACNA.

The new article also mentions NewAnglicanChurch.com, a website that St. James has created in hopes of rallying Continuing Anglicans in the Bay Area. Today it lists four parishes in the region, but Fr. McNeill is seeking other congregants and congregations to join the effort to reconnect the community lost as Episcopalians fled the church since the heresies begun by San Francisco’s own Bishop Pike.

Something worse than praise music

I have been mercilessly lampooning praise music in this blog, to the point that regular readers might think that the sole purpose of starting the blog was to eradicate it from Anglican worship.

The excesses of CCM are certainly a major focus of this blog. I also argue (as has Episcopalian-gone-East Terry Mattingly) that most “contemporary” music has a transitory quality that will not be passed down through the generations — let alone through the centuries — the way that (say) a hymn by Thomas Aquinas has.

However, by studying praise music in its anthropological context, I realize that there is a variation in the quality of music, lyrics and performance. Most of it is sappy drek, and some of it event perpetuates millennially ancient heresies, but it is possible to see that some small subset might survive 20, 50, even 200 years hence.

Driving around today, I happened to tune to one of the Immaculate Heart Radio stations that dot the Western US. I caught a Catholic morning mass which gave me new respect (if only by comparison) for the Anglican praise bands.

From what I recall of occasional visits to Catholic services, this liturgical form seemed fairly representative for a California post-Vatican II parish. Services in English, modernized words that seem more Rite II than 1549 (or 1928) BCP, and late 20th century songs rather than hymns by the 19th century (or 16th century) masters.

First, the singing was dreadful. This seems so shallow, but clearly someone near the mike couldn’t sing in tune and this really dragged down the effectiveness of this nominally uplifting music. By comparison, the music selection for my first visit to St. Edwards (now St. James) was like fingernails on chalkboards, but it was clear that the band leader and his musicians know their stuff.

Trying to get beyond the musical performance, I realized what was also awful was the choice of songs. No, there wasn’t anything sappy like “On Eagles’ Wings,” that notorious contemporary Catholic composition.

But, overall, the hymn choices seemed to alternate between lounge singer and bad campfire music. So not timeless (as in the centuries of Catholic heritage), not chosen from the best of the past 50 years of modern Christian music, and not even the sort of professionally composed CCM that might be heard on a praise music radio station.

This gave me some new insights as to what makes effective liturgical music.

First, I realized that the problem of a weak choir is not specific to contemporary music parishes. However, when I go to a hymn church with a off-key choir I just belt out the hymns so I can’t hear them. If I had to sit and listen to them, it would certainly detract from even the most inspired choices.

Conversely, the choice of hymns — even from within a genre — are certainly important. When we were last church shopping, there was a very friendly 1928 BCP parish with a great rector, but the organists’ choice of hymns was so haphazard that I never knew what to expect and some obvious choices (e.g. on Easter Sunday) were completely overlooked.

I don’t know the CCM genre well enough yet (perhaps ever) to know which are the classics. However, within Hymnal 1982 are a few new hymns that I am convinced will survive to the 22nd century, including my all-time favorite, the 1966 “I Am the Bread of Life” by Sister Suzanne Toolan. So I have a newly-found respect for the importance of a music director (or musically literate pastor) who not only selects hymns appropriate for the season, but also chooses the best hymns, bypassing the weak offerings that will deservedly be forgotten.

Music has the potential to stir the soul, and to reinforce the message being conveyed by the readings, liturgy and sermon. However, it takes knowledge, skill and (frankly) good taste to do it right, and many parishes fall short in one or more areas.

New hymn blog

Via the Catholic website Hymnography Unbound, I found out about a new hymn blog, Catholic Musicians.

The post I found most amusing was the one lamenting a particularly awful piece of schmalz that (as it turns out) was foisted on parishes everywhere by a contemporary Catholic composer:

Sometimes composers set music to sacred texts that become so well-known that one can hardly read the words without hearing the tune. Who can ponder Isaiah 9 without hearing Haendel's "For Unto Us a Child is Born," or who can help but to think of Brahms' Requiem when St. Paul taunts, "Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?" These "ear worms" stay with us and heighten our appreciation of these Scriptural passages.

Alas, not all such situations are to be celebrated. Take Psalm 90, for instance. It is quite possible that many cringe at the mere reading of that text, for it immediately conjures up the sounds of one of the most popular--and one of the most poorly-written--pieces of music in the history of the Catholic Church. I speak, of course, of "On Eagles' Wings," or, as a friend of mine--no ideologue, she--calls it, "that yoohoo song." ("Excuse me!!!" she once said, approaching Michael Joncas, "aren't you the guy who wrote that yoohoo song?" Joncas, once he figured out what she was talking about, just laughed and admitted that he really should have revised the piece.)

The author is a big fan of Gregorian Chant. In many ways it seems to be my counterpart in the Roman Catholic Church — except that in his church, the doctrinally devout do not also have to worry about an unfolding schism and property fight.

In another post, Lawrence praises the Anglo-Catholic worship at a Philadelphia parish:

S. Clement's uses a Mass that is essentially the Traditional Mass said in a sacral vernacular, translated by someone who was clearly literate and aesthetically sensible. It offers perhaps the solution that Rome should have pursued in the mid 20th century. Alas, I need hardly comment on how far afield we've gone from that.

Alas, the St. Clement parish is in the diocese of Philadelphia, the same diocese until recently headed by the corrupt Charles Bennison, and the diocese determined to snatch the Good Shepherd Rosemont property from the most devout Anglo-Catholic parish in Eastern Pennsylvania.

The St. Clement website does not indicate where the clergy stand on the great theological and cultural issues dividing the Anglican Communion. So it’s hard to tell whether they’re Anglo-Catholic (as defined 150 years ago) or merely High Church Progressives.