From the Vertical to the Horizontal - From the Communion of Saints to the "Community of Faith"

It is amazing to me ( a European) that many Americans, not only in the older rural areas and small towns but and especially in the new suburbia, go to one or another church (or "community of faith"). Apart from children taken against their will, most of this church going is voluntary. In fact the empirical evidence from the varied churches in the suburbia of big cities like Dallas and Atlanta is that people enjoy going.

Presumably those who go must feel a need to go and/or they must feel that they get something out of going.

So let us suppose that in one way or another all who freely attend have some sense of desiring to worship the One whom they call "God." Certainly for all the varied churches what is called "the worship service" (or similar names) appears to be the central activity of Sunday and here God is sometimes named and addressed and described.

However, when one examines this "worship service" it can vary from being primarily "vertical" in ethos and content (pointing away and beyond the everyday to a transcendent Deity above and beyond all) to being primarily "horizontal" in ethos and content (affirming the presence of the Deity in, around and with the gathered people). Further, the order of service, the dress of the people (casual or formal), the music (traditional using organ or contemporary using guitar or electronic keyboard with loudspeakers), the seating arrangements (in the round or in the oblong and with or without kneelers [hassocks]), the position of the choir (facing the people as if giving a concert or behind the people as assisting the congregation), the dress and deportment of the ministers leading the "event," the type of moral character and social responsibility urged in the sermons, the character of the building (with or without holy pictures and traditional symbolism), the use of "the passing of the peace" (with a walkabout) and the general body language and amount of talking in the congregation - all these things give some insight into how people understand what is this activity in which they engage.

Based on their own research (observation & interviews etc.) sociologists have suggested that the primary purpose of the varied "communities of faith", especially in suburban America, is to build community - thus the increasing use of this expression. That is, it is to bring individual persons and isolated families together under a common sense of religious observance and to make them into a voluntary but meaningful community, wherein is mutual help and support. From the standpoint of some psychologists the local church is also a sphere in which good "relationships" can be forged which help to create healthy self-esteem.

In his most readable and stimulating book, The Great Disruption (1999), Francis Fukuyama predicts that religion in America will become more a means to an end, rather than an end in itself and the desired end will be "community.

"Instead of community arising as a by-product of rigid belief, people will come to belief because of their desire for community. People will return to religious tradition not necessarily because they accept the truth of revelation, but precisely because the absence of community and the transience of social ties in the secular world make them hungry for ritual and cultural tradition." [p 278]

Here we see the prediction (which is I think already well fulfilled in much suburban piety) that religion [church and synagogue] becomes a source of ritual in a society which has been stripped bare of ceremony and thus a reasonable extension of the natural desire for social relatedness that all human beings seem to be born with. Further, parents see the value of the use of old prayers (the Lord's Prayer) and rituals (baptism & the breaking of bread) and God-language (having a "personal relationship with God") not primarily in religious terms but rather in terms of helping to create proper values. In this sense the practice of religion tends to be like the recovery of ethnicity where in search of meaning and values people dress up in ethnic garb, eat ethnic food and engage in old-time activities.

This modern religious context (which I take very seriously for I am surrounded by it) has caused me to use expressions like "generic religion" to describe the prevelance of the same type of "horizontally inclined" worship services, using much the same musical instruments and songs that one finds in a vast array of suburban churches including often the old main-line ones (which in competition with the new adopt the methods of the new).

Church growth is relatively easy to achieve in suburbia in these circumstances especially if you have a good building and provision on Sundays and weekdays for infants and young people, together with counseling facilities. In fact the competition causes individual 'communities of faith" to work hard at providing what they believe people want in their "church of choice." To have a charismatic-type pastor and leaders with an entrepenuerial spirit helps!

If a specific church [whatever name be on the outside of its holy building and whether it uses "thee" or "you" language] desires to conform itself to biblical principles of faith, morality and order, to preach a Gospel of repentance unto life and the daily taking up the cross of Jesus and to seek to ensure that its worship service is primarily a holy offering of praise and thanksgiving, intercession and confession to the Father almighty through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit, then it will not grow quickly or easily in suburbia. For the obvious reason that it is running against the tide by making participation less user-friendly and membership more demanding.

The fact is that it is all too easy to become a participant or church member in most of these varied "communities of faith" with their primarily horizontal religion. It is much like going into the modern supermarket and choosing this or that brand of cereal or sauce or margarine or frozen vegetables. In one you pay at the till in the other you put your money on the plate at the offering.

What we need to ask is: Who or what is the "God" of these new community-type religion? Who is the Jesus who is named and proclaimed? What is the salvation being offered therein? What type of character and morality and piety are being formed? It would be a mistake to assume that because old religious language is used old meaning [from the Fathers and Reformers for example] is its content.

Belonging to a community is important and advisable. However, being in the communion of saints is more important - indeed it is eternally important.

We need to plant churches or adapt existing ones to a model where the creation of genuine fellowship/mutual caring and thus "community" flows from and is the result of the genuine worship of Almighty God our heavenly Father. For the chief end of human beings is to enjoy and glorify God the Father, together with His Son, Jesus Christ for ever and ever. Salvation comes through union with the Son of God and in Him with the Father, all by the operation of the Holy Spirit and within the mystical Body of Christ, and living by faith in faithfulness.

Peter Toon ptoon@OnlineToday.com Trinity XV, 1999