The attitude to ritual in Protestant churches?

[komeeks18]

Most Protestant churches have some sort of ritual. They do the same things in the same order, but they vary from church to church. They’re aren’t special or from tradition. Each church does what they want to. At the Baptist church I’ve most recently attended, the order of the service is always the same: Music, Praying, Offering, Sermon, Praying, Altar Call, Music, Praying, Explanation of current church events. It’s not the same sort of ritual as in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church’s rituals are sacred and from Tradition. Protestant church services are meant to make you feel good & teach you how to live your life. The only time there is something out of the normal is the (maybe) 4-times-a-year communion. This is a little harsh, but trust me after studying Catholicism for a while, I will never look at Protestantism the same.

 

[mab23]

what is a chick tract??

 

[Georgia]

Chic tracts are fundamentalist publications that are in the form of cartoons. They are very much against the Church.

Pretty much any activity has its rituals. My former church had a set format for Sunday mornings. The service would normally be as follows: song (standing), prayer (everyone with eyes closed and heads bowed), sit for announcements, another song, welcome to visitors announcement, stand for shaking hands and a welcome chorus, special music, song with the collection, another prayer, sermon, prayer, invitation with singing, and closing prayer. No one would call it a ritual, but it followed an exact pattern.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

I don’t think it’s very helpful to the discussion when some Catholics equivocate with the term ‘ritual’, such that the ‘ritual’ we have is equivalent to the ‘ritual’ of low-church Protestants. Ritual usually connotes a rather specific, even scripted religious practice. The sign of the cross is a ritual. Eucharistic Prayer 1 is a ritual. That a particular Protestant church always has an opening prayer followed by a hymn, followed by an altar call is not a ritual. It’s the format. Save for maybe the hymns, the content of the parts are either impromptu or extemporaneous. We Catholics have a format to the Mass as well: first, the Introductory Rites, then the liturgy of the word, which is constituted of two readings and a psalm chant in between.

 

[Cat]

I’m a convert from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism.

We must keep in mind that everything that evangelical Protestants do and say is based on the Bible, or more accurately, on their interpretation of the Bible. There is no other authority. There is no “sacred tradition.” And history doesn’t matter much–if the evangelical Protestant pastors discover something in the Bible that seems to be opposed to something that is historically done in their churches, then the historically-done action will be eliminated.

An example of this would be contraception. Even though up until the 1960s, contraception was considered wrong by Protestants (same as Catholic teaching), it’s now OK, because it’s not specifically forbidden in the Bible.

Another example would be masturbation. Again, historically this practice was considered
“wrong” by evangelical Protestants (same as Catholic teaching), but now it is not considered wrong because it’s not specifically condemned in the Bible.

Even though there is no human authority in the evangelical Protestant churches, many of the denominational evangelical Protestant churches have a human organization that is appointed by the members of the denomination, and is charged with caring for the flock and maintaining orthodox doctrine (according to that denomination). Evangelical Protestants voluntarily commit to submitting to this authority (which means that they can also break away from that authority). If a teaching is generally accepted among a majority consensus of the pastors and teachers in the denomination, it will become doctrine. There is no “Chair of Peter” or any kind of “Magisterium” that makes decisions. The reason why contraception is now “OK” is because a majority of the pastors and teachers came to believe, based on the Bible, that it’s OK.

Now as to what that has to do with “ritual”–the reason why evangelical Protestants do not have a positive attitude about ritual is that it is not in the Bible, or at least, not in the New Testament.

Some posters have pointed out that Jesus followed rituals. Yes, but He also eliminated ritual Judaism. No more Temple or sacrifices, because HE is the Temple, and HE is the sacrificed Lamb. So this would seem to indicate that Jesus Himself elimated ritualistic religion.

One of the Bible passages that comes to mind is Colossians 2: 16-23. I won’t try to quote it entirely here, but it talks about various rituals and why they are not necessary. There are other New Testament verses that seem to indicate that a “ritual” isn’t necessary.

Again, it’s not so much that the liturgy is condemned by the New Testament, but rather, that it is not specifically spelled out and listed. Generally speaking, when the Bible is silent about something, evangelical Protestants believe that this thing is not necessary, and that it can’t be “required.”

Finally, a lot of evangelical Protestants believe that rituals, including rituals in the Catholic Church, are based on various pagan practices. Some of these pagan rites had associations with the occult, demonism, and Satanism. Evangelical Protestants are often very careful to stay away from anything that could be demonic; e.g., I know evangelical Protestants who cut the horoscope out of the newspaper before they bring it into their house. I think a lot of evangelical Protestants find Catholic rituals troubling because they think that these might be based on some of the old occult rituals. E.g., we were taught to avoid Marianism of any kind because, according to the evangelical Protestant teachings, it was based on the Babylonian goddess worship, which often involved various occult practices and witchcraft. (Again, remember that history isn’t usually very influential to evangelical Protestants.)

 

[GaryTaylor]

If you become to much like the Apostolic Churchs than in essense you are upholding a few very scary values, such as “Tradition” and “Creed” which then places your belief equal to the Apostolic Churchs in theory, thus Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, which equate to the specific Church. Ritual being just another term.

I see “some” seriously try to avoid this in preaching by focus on, for example Calvery. Yet there really is no way around it as you observe the service closely.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I’m a convert from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism.

We must keep in mind that everything that evangelical Protestants do and say is based on the Bible, or more accurately, on their interpretation of the Bible. There is no other authority. There is no “sacred tradition.” And history doesn’t matter much–if the evangelical Protestant pastors discover something in the Bible that seems to be opposed to something that is historically done in their churches, then the historically-done action will be eliminated.

An example of this would be contraception. Even though up until the 1960s, contraception was considered wrong by Protestants (same as Catholic teaching), it’s now OK, because it’s not specifically forbidden in the Bible.

Another example would be masturbation. Again, historically this practice was considered
“wrong” by evangelical Protestants (same as Catholic teaching), but now it is not considered wrong because it’s not specifically condemned in the Bible.

Even though there is no human authority in the evangelical Protestant churches, many of the denominational evangelical Protestant churches have a human organization that is appointed by the members of the denomination, and is charged with caring for the flock and maintaining orthodox doctrine (according to that denomination). Evangelical Protestants voluntarily commit to submitting to this authority (which means that they can also break away from that authority). If a teaching is generally accepted among a majority consensus of the pastors and teachers in the denomination, it will become doctrine. There is no “Chair of Peter” or any kind of “Magisterium” that makes decisions. The reason why contraception is now “OK” is because a majority of the pastors and teachers came to believe, based on the Bible, that it’s OK.

Now as to what that has to do with “ritual”–the reason why evangelical Protestants do not have a positive attitude about ritual is that it is not in the Bible, or at least, not in the New Testament.

Some posters have pointed out that Jesus followed rituals. Yes, but He also eliminated ritual Judaism. No more Temple or sacrifices, because HE is the Temple, and HE is the sacrificed Lamb. So this would seem to indicate that Jesus Himself elimated ritualistic religion.

One of the Bible passages that comes to mind is Colossians 2: 16-23. I won’t try to quote it entirely here, but it talks about various rituals and why they are not necessary. There are other New Testament verses that seem to indicate that a “ritual” isn’t necessary.

Again, it’s not so much that the liturgy is condemned by the New Testament, but rather, that it is not specifically spelled out and listed. Generally speaking, when the Bible is silent about something, evangelical Protestants believe that this thing is not necessary, and that it can’t be “required.”

Finally, a lot of evangelical Protestants believe that rituals, including rituals in the Catholic Church, are based on various pagan practices. Some of these pagan rites had associations with the occult, demonism, and Satanism. Evangelical Protestants are often very careful to stay away from anything that could be demonic; e.g., I know evangelical Protestants who cut the horoscope out of the newspaper before they bring it into their house. I think a lot of evangelical Protestants find Catholic rituals troubling because they think that these might be based on some of the old occult rituals. E.g., we were taught to avoid Marianism of any kind because, according to the evangelical Protestant teachings, it was based on the Babylonian goddess worship, which often involved various occult practices and witchcraft. (Again, remember that history isn’t usually very influential to evangelical Protestants.)

Cat doesn’t this itself become a Creed.

For example if I say the Bible doesn’t specifically state Mary was free of all stain or spot. Then we begin the new Creed by stating …

1. “I believe Mary was just a normal Jewish female who had much Faith”

Or some believe in the Trinity which isn’t specifically stated Biblically. So this too becomes a declaration of Faith.

2] Father/Son/Holy Sprirt

Or I believe Bapism is done such and such a way.

3] We believe in Baptism by (whatever)

Many believe in the Rapture

1. We believe in the Rapture

I just don’t see anyway around this. Even if its reduced to for example the Quakers.

1. We believe where 2 or 3 are gathered the HS resides.
2. We believe in Non Resist to evil.

And then this Tradition/Creed could also indicate many ideas which a specific group doesn’t believe.

Maybe its me, I just see no-way around it. I see it as an illusion.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I think this captures a good portion of the anti-Catholic source of the avoidance of ritual. Publisher’s post demonstrates a common misunderstanding about the Apostolic faith, that we believe God’s grace is dependent upon rituals. In fact, the opposite is true, and the Church teaches that God has given us rituals because human nature needs them, but that He is not bound by them.

The resistance to ritual began during the Reformation, especially with Calvin and Zwingli, who wanted to “cleanse” the church of anything that appealed to the human senses. And since they denied that God could act in grace through the ritual, these were separated from the traditional practices. The roots of this are deep in the factors precipitating the Reformation, but it boils down to the rampant practice of practicing rituals without faith. Anyone can go through the motions, but if it is don’e without faith, they are not transforming. At the time of the Reformation, even the clergy appeared to be lacking in transformation through sacramental grace. Many of the monasteries were fraught with various sins and excesses, and although they practiced rituals practically all day long, they left their rituals and engaged in sins until the next hourly prayer. This faithless practice of rituals caused people to lose hope and trust in them as containing transformational grace.

Right, this is another view also. Yet with Wesley for example was a firm believer in the Real Presence and Luther also who carried his beliefs here and with many aspects of Mary not Biblical.

Even if we reduce this to say…You must have a daily Prayer life. Then you are teaching, preaching a ritual. And certainly we must conclude you “must” have a daily prayer life? Its Biblical and a correct path.

Interesting.

 

[Publisher]

In whose opinion is a ritual “empty form” and not a source of grace? Whose ritual? Which ritual? Is the opinion infallible? There are thousands upon thousands of “opinions” in Protestantism that claim to be the truth and nothing but ther truth but are merely man-made opinion.

ANY ritual that takes the place of a life of holiness and faith is a problem AND THAT is the reason rituals are not embraced as whole heartedly among some Protestants as they are among other liturgical faith communities. It’s not “who’s ritual”…“what ritual” or “who’s opinion” that is in question…it is when the “ritual of the day” takes the place of commitment and faithful living as the “dispenser of Grace” in our lives that many Protestants do not engage in them.

When ritual is combined with holy living and faithful stewardship of resources…that the best of both worlds embrace.

You seem to feel it’s the “ritual” itself…when that is not the case at all…and we all have our opinions on the matter…some of us call it “opinion” others “revealed truth”…but…it’s still individual opinion…you may chose to embrace the “opinion” of your faith community…but it is…at least for most Protestants…one voice among many.

 

[Publisher]

I think this captures a good portion of the anti-Catholic source of the avoidance of ritual. Publisher’s post demonstrates a common misunderstanding about the Apostolic faith, that we believe God’s grace is dependent upon rituals. In fact, the opposite is true, and the Church teaches that God has given us rituals because human nature needs them, but that He is not bound by them.

The resistance to ritual began during the Reformation, especially with Calvin and Zwingli, who wanted to “cleanse” the church of anything that appealed to the human senses. And since they denied that God could act in grace through the ritual, these were separated from the traditional practices. ** The roots of this are deep in the factors precipitating the Reformation, but it boils down to the rampant practice of practicing rituals without faith. Anyone can go through the motions, but if it is don’e without faith, they are not transforming.** At the time of the Reformation, even the clergy appeared to be lacking in transformation through sacramental grace. Many of the monasteries were fraught with various sins and excesses, and although they practiced rituals practically all day long, they left their rituals and engaged in sins until the next hourly prayer. This faithless practice of rituals caused people to lose hope and trust in them as containing transformational grace.

Thank you friend, you speak my mind on this matter.

 

[O.S.Luke]

So what I’m trying to understand is why in Protestant churches, the idea of ritual is such a strange and often openly hated concept. The likes of Chick tracts often openly mock the Catholic Mass and Islamic prayers, both of which are ritual in practice.

So, why this huge and often violently hateful attitude? Why did the Christian way of thinking move away from what is seemingly (to my reading of the Bible at least) a Biblical practice? Even Jesus performed the Jewish rituals.

It is posts like these that moved me to quit posting on CAF. In my own United Methodist tradition, worship is both ritual and experience (to quote Martin Thielen):

The pattern of Word and Table was firmly established by the second century. For example, in his First Apology, written around 150 A.D., Justin Martyr describes services of Word and Table as normative experiences of Christian worship. Later, the church added to this basic order of worship a gathering and a dismissal, thus providing a fourfold order of worship:
· the gathering
· the service of Word
· the service of the Table
· the dismissal

That four-fold order of worship holds true today in both the United Methodist Book of Worship and the United Methodist Hymnal as normative for worship.

“Generalizations” about Protestants are no more helpful than the often erroneous and unhelpful generalizations that are made about Catholics. We should all be above this.

O+

 

[gcnuss]

The Catholic Church has to come up in Protestantism… The Mother Church is the object of your protest. That’s how you define yourselves – as “not Catholic.”

From my perspective, “not Catholic” is not my identity. I do not spend time protesting – or arguing against – the Catholic Church. In fact, I give thanks for the Church and for all that I, as a Lutheran, have inherited from it – the Holy Scriptures, the creeds, and the liturgy that is the foundation for so much of our Lutheran worship.

 

[tabycat]

Chick isn’t just antiCatholic, The comics is just about anti everything that comes close to the Catholic church. (Just my opinion.)

 

[Cat]

Cat doesn’t this itself become a Creed.

For example if I say the Bible doesn’t specifically state Mary was free of all stain or spot. Then we begin the new Creed by stating …

1. “I believe Mary was just a normal Jewish female who had much Faith”

Or some believe in the Trinity which isn’t specifically stated Biblically. So this too becomes a declaration of Faith.

2] Father/Son/Holy Sprirt

Or I believe Bapism is done such and such a way.

3] We believe in Baptism by (whatever)

Many believe in the Rapture

1. We believe in the Rapture

I just don’t see anyway around this. Even if its reduced to for example the Quakers.

1. We believe where 2 or 3 are gathered the HS resides.
2. We believe in Non Resist to evil.

And then this Tradition/Creed could also indicate many ideas which a specific group doesn’t believe.

Maybe its me, I just see no-way around it. I see it as an illusion.

Yes, of course it becomes doctrine, and it would be written into some kind of “Statement of Faith.”

But most evangelical Protestant churches do not recite creeds or prayers, because these are “ritual.” No one memorizes the Statement of Faith or recites it. That would be a ritual.

The exception to recited prayers is the Lord’s Prayer, because He said in the Bible that we are to pray in this way. But it isn’t recited very often in evangelical Protestant churches because that would be a ritual. Instead, you will often find the pastor or teacher praying a prayer based on the Lord’s prayer, or following the same format. Unless things have changed a lot in the last 8 years, it is extremely unusual to find any kind of memorized prayers in the evangelical Protestant churches. Even children are encouraged to pray “real” prayers from their heart rather than memorize formula prayers like “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep,” or “God is Great, God is Good, let us thank Him for our food.”

 

[Cat]

I wish to add that although many evangelical Protestant denominations are opposed to “ritual,” they do believe that God is a God of ORDER, and so they are not opposed to planning out the order of the worship service in advance.

But they are also open to changing the order of the worship service should the Holy Spirit move. I’ve seen this happen. A pastor who intended to preach a sermon will not preach, but instead, encourage the people to pray for the entire hour. Or perhaps the hymns will be dropped in favor of personal testimonies from the congregation.

 

[Sixpence]

To my reading of the Bible, particularly Roman or Latin rituals do not flow directly from Scripture or even from some continuous tradition thay flowed from the apostles- what I see is an inordinately high regard for the customs and culture of a partricular segment of Europe during the early to high middle ages. I don’t get that, at least not here in America. I can understand a focus on what originates from our own country, and I can even see why people might have a particularly strong visceral connection with the earliest things of religious significance that came about in the English language. But I can’t see why Latin is such a big deal for some people. I understand that Latin was very important in certain parts of Europe during specific portions of the Middle Ages, but again, I can’t understand why those particular people fom that place and time are so important to you.

I do want to avoid belittling the rites and rituals themselves, largely because it’s really ugly when people from either side say awful things about trasitions that they feel like they’re in some kind of competition with. That goes for Jack Chick type people and Catholics who seek to diminish and belittle Protestant worship in general. I want to be clear- I don’t think European Christians during the Middle Ages were any worse than other Christians, and I think they did the best they could at the time. But I also don’t think they were any better than anyone else, and this has become more clear with the passage of time.

 

[septimine]

I appreciate ritual, I see a lot of value in simply the discipline of the practices. I attend a Lutheran church, and frankly I’m concerned about the rock-style services, not because there’s something odd about the music, but I think it’s prone to making the worship service about YOU, rather than God. These are the lyrics to a typical worship song (songlyrics.com/building-429/where-i-belong-lyrics/) – it’s about YOU, not that God isn’t involved, but the first person pronouns occur quite frequently in the song. In my church, the artists would play centerstage, in front of the alter. Now compare that to a traditional service in a traditional Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic church service in which hymns like this (mljmusic.com/Portals/0/Lyrics/Glory%20and%20Praise%20to%20Our%20God.pdf) are sung, or just as commonly a Psalm, and I think there is a difference. When the worship is for MAN, it’s about us and not God. I think some in contemporary practice tend to be into entertaining the masses rather then worship.

 

[GlobalWolf]

I would agree with the statement that evangelical services are (usually) based on a format but aren’t actually very ritualistic in their practice. Ritual in evangelical Protestantism is largely centered around a handful of events, particularly baptism and sometimes marriage.

Different branches of Protestantism have differing opinions on ritual, and therefore differing acceptance of ritualistic practices in their services. High church Anglicans, for instance, are likely to conduct their service in a way similar to that of the Catholic Church because they believe that ritual is appropriate and pleasing to God. On the opposite end of the scale, Brethren churches and a handful of the Churches of Christ are likely to not even have a specially chosen preacher. Interestingly, in the case of the CoC, this is not because they view the silence of Scripture as not specifying a ritual for the New Testament Church, but because they view the silence as prohibitive (ie., only those practices specifically laid out in the New Testament are to be conducted, although I would challenge that the Bible very clearly specifies that there are to be leaders in the Church).

Protestant challenges to ritual are normally based on a few things. First, historically, Protestantism likely saw ritual as empty and hollow. They viewed individuals as believing that doing a certain thing would get you into Heaven despite not having any genuine love for or obedience to God. While some certainly did hold beliefs like that (I can’t imagine 16th century Europeans as being generally very educated Biblically, and so superstition was almost certainly rampant), there were other reasons which complicated it. Biblically, ritual is mentioned mostly in the context of the Old Testament, and since Jesus fulfilled the Law, some Protestants carry from this that Jesus removed the concept of ritual from worship utterly. Some also view the “vain repetitions” of the heathens as referring to any ritualistic prayer, rather than simply the empty, meaningless prayers that it referred to (it should be noted that neither of these ideas, to my knowledge, were common among any Trinitarian Christian group prior to the Protestant Reformation).

 

[Cat]

To my reading of the Bible, particularly Roman or Latin rituals do not flow directly from Scripture or even from some continuous tradition thay flowed from the apostles- what I see is an inordinately high regard for the customs and culture of a partricular segment of Europe during the early to high middle ages. I don’t get that, at least not here in America. I can understand a focus on what originates from our own country, and I can even see why people might have a particularly strong visceral connection with the earliest things of religious significance that came about in the English language. But I can’t see why Latin is such a big deal for some people. I understand that Latin was very important in certain parts of Europe during specific portions of the Middle Ages, but again, I can’t understand why those particular people fom that place and time are so important to you.

I do want to avoid belittling the rites and rituals themselves, largely because it’s really ugly when people from either side say awful things about trasitions that they feel like they’re in some kind of competition with. That goes for Jack Chick type people and Catholics who seek to diminish and belittle Protestant worship in general. I want to be clear- I don’t think European Christians during the Middle Ages were any worse than other Christians, and I think they did the best they could at the time. But I also don’t think they were any better than anyone else, and this has become more clear with the passage of time.

Hi, Sixpence!

My husband and I are converts to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism (Conference Baptist, Assemblies of God, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and finally, the Evangelical Free Church in America).

I just want to say that I identify entirely with what you are saying about Latin and European Christianity, and I’m so glad to hear someone else on CAF who understands the way I and my husband think! Whew!

Even though we have been Catholic for eight years now, I still don’t understand the fascination with the Latin Mass.

According to the people on CAF, some evangelicals who convert love the Latin Mass and all the ancient traditions of the Church. I sometimes feel like I am doing something wrong because I’m not like all these evangelical Protestant converts that are held up here on CAF.

But the evangelicals I know personally who have converted are more into the more modern practices and music, and definitely the Ordinary Form of the Mass (in vernacular). We respect those who want the ancient, but it’s not something that we have any interest in at all.

 

[guanophore]

It is posts like these that moved me to quit posting on CAF. In my own United Methodist tradition, worship is both ritual and experience (to quote Martin Thielen):

That four-fold order of worship holds true today in both the United Methodist Book of Worship and the United Methodist Hymnal as normative for worship.

“Generalizations” about Protestants are no more helpful than the often erroneous and unhelpful generalizations that are made about Catholics. We should all be above this.

O+

Please hang in there, O.S. Luke. Some Catholics have no experience at all of Protestant communities and the best way to correct misunderstanding and misinformation is when patient people like yourself can provide correction and perspective. We must work for the unity for which Christ prayed, and getting over our misperceptions and prejudices is an essential part of that. CAF needs people like you!