Abstract
Evangelical versus Liturgical? Defying a Dichotomy (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship)
Melanie C. Ross
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. 137 pp. $17.00
As Graham Hughes argues, “one enters an unmapped (possibly hazardous) territory in attempting to include evangelical Christianity in an account of liturgical theology” (Worship as Meaning, Cambridge, 2003, 234). Yet it is this unmapped and hazardous territory into which Melanie Ross ventures, seeking a way to explain “‘low church’ evangelical practices to those from more ‘high church’ liturgical traditions” as well as a conversation between ecumenical liturgical scholarship and American evangelicalism (4). It is a venture for which Ross is well suited. Now assistant professor of liturgical studies at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Ross has been living this conversation as a “low-church evangelical” who completed her doctoral work at the University of Notre Dame.
Ross begins her venture with a critical review of the ways in which the history of worship in the evangelical churches has been portrayed, especially portrayals that emphasize evangelicalism’s discontinuities from “historic” Christianity rather than its contributions to ecumenism. In her review, and in the first of two case studies that follow, she describes the theological and liturgical tensions between churches that have come to focus on unity through order, doctrine, and rite, and those for whom unity comes from an emphasis on spiritual regeneration and evangelical piety. The tendency, she notes, has been to claim that one can operate under one or the other, but not both. Moreover, the questions answered by the ecumenical convergence of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry concerning theology, polity, and ordination are not the questions most pressing for the evangelical churches, where questions about the “historicity of Scripture, the authority of science, and the nature of God’s action in the world” remain central (52).
In the central two chapters, Ross explores, first, the differences the two traditions reflect in their approaches to the authority and interpretation of Scripture and its relationship to liturgical tradition and practice. She then explores the primary interpretive paradigms used in assessing liturgical practice, often expressed as differences concerning the theological priority of tradition or Scripture and consequent differences in the interpretation of Scripture, or as differences of emphasis between objectivism and subjectivism, between communal sacramental practice and personal faith, or even as an expression of some perceived “gnosticism” rather than historic Christianity.
In her penultimate chapter, Ross provides a second case study in which she fruitfully explores potential common theological ground between the two traditions. Here she notes that more careful attention to the deep theological structure of the liturgical practices of the two traditions would reveal shared commitments that are explicitly trinitarian and whose core content is christological, incarnational, and eschatological in scope (117). It is such exploration, she argues in her conclusion, which will enable a dialogue that “celebrates common ground, allows honest and genuine disagreement, and seeks a local middle ground” (127).
Ross provides a much-needed entry into this conversation and contribution to the field of liturgical theology. Her two case studies are helpful in identifying and exploring some of the differences between the two traditions. Nevertheless, there are four concerns that warrant fuller exploration in support of her argument. First, her argument about the ecumenical contributions of evangelicalism would have been strengthened by clearer articulation of the two traditions’ different understandings of ecumenism and the implications these different understandings have for where, how, and by whom the standards for ecumenical agreement are set. This would help support her claim that the normativity of Word and Table for the church’s primary gathering on the Lord’s Day is “too high a minimum standard” (80). Second, fuller theological exploration of the prayers she reports in her two case studies could support—as well as challenge—her claim that the deep theological structure within the two traditions provides a liturgical meeting point. Third, her conversation partners from the “liturgical” side are primarily Roman Catholic; some conversation with traditions that have historically provided more of a middle ground between the objective and subjective, the sacramental and evangelical, would have been useful to her argument. Finally, given the antipathy to Gordon Lathrop’s understanding of an ecumenical liturgical ordo that seems to drive much of her discussion, her concluding chapter would have been strengthened by some consideration of Lathrop’s notion of “strong center open door” as a meeting place, as I think this is what she is seeking when she speaks of a common deep theological structure.
E. Byron Anderson
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary