“America is going to become increasingly secular and hostile to the church. But what will build the bridge to whatever authentic Christianity emerges next is going to be a serious practiced Christianity. I think there’s going to be a revival of religion.” -Todd Hunter in “The Accidental Anglican”
In the doomsday, apocalyptic scenario of post-modern, post-Christian society, where beliefs and truth becomes meaningless, what is never lost on us is practice. I don’t believe anyone has ever discussed a post-practice era, where people don’t do anything (I guess someone could make a case for The Matrix, with us sitting around in embryonic fluid living out our lives as batteries, but I digress). Something that has never been really solved by the skeptics or the despairing existentialists is that even if life becomes meaningless we still do things.
So it only makes sense that Todd Hunter is giving true foresight when he suggests that the next authentic Christianity amongst evangelicals will be one that does not have to be rotely believed as a set of moral platitudes, but is instead one practiced.
I think it is worth noting here that this is a serious correction to the arc of evangelicalism, and one that is welcome as seriously practiced Christianity becomes a liturgical Christianity that is the public work. But as history testifies, we must be cautious to always retain the manifold gospel witness of Christianity within our public work and not just switch from “don’t have sex” platitudes to “just love everyone” platitudes. For every fault of conservative Christianity is an equal fault of the social gospel waiting to be reinvigorated. We are fall so quickly into error.
Not that I mean Hunter is bringing this about in anyway. He wants to bring back liturgy to the “de-churched,” those that are in a post-Christian society and have no symbolic association or cultural ties to the church or Christendom at all. Church to them is a blank slate. So Hunter proposes that liturgy must be slowly cultivated in a congregation full of de-churched people:
In one public service, I didn’t wear all the vestments. I wanted to
give parishioners just a taste of liturgy. So when I went behind the
table, I put on my stole. I said, “This is a stole. On the same night
that Jesus said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ he put a towel around
himself, washed the disciples’ feet, and said, ‘See, I’ve set the
example.’ This stole is symbolic of me as a servant and us together as
a community taking up the towel of Jesus.”
It is encouraging to see someone who has been a part of such a dynamic church planting ministry, the Vineyard movement, to be leading the planting of 200 Anglican churches in the Western United States. I sincerely hope this type of liturgical, seriously practiced way of church planting catches on. It would serve us all well as we seek to live out the gospel.