Worship and Culture by Vasconcelos Wilkey Glaucia;

Author:Vasconcelos Wilkey, Glaucia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2015-01-19T19:32:55+00:00

Developments within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — Through the Mid-­Twentieth Century

Thus, by about 1840 or so, were the main outlines of this “populist sacramental” church established, its most distinctive feature being the observance each Lord’s Day of the Lord’s Supper, presided over by elders, who used extemporaneous prayers at the Lord’s Table.10 But my topic is finally the encounter of the Disciples with the movement for liturgical renewal, and the early nineteenth-­century Disciples of Christ church that I have just described was not, of course, the same as the one that encountered the liturgical movement in the mid-­twentieth century. To understand that church, and thus the significance of that encounter, we must see how the Disciples developed over the hundred years or so from about the 1840s to 1940 or 1950.

In some areas of the church’s faith and life, there was growth and development; in other areas, there was simply growth. The “Restorationist” movement stemming from the Campbells, Barton Stone, Walter Scott, and others had brought together diverse persons and viewpoints; as these leaders died and the movement moved into its second and third generations, a fault line became apparent between more “progressive” and more “conservative” wings of the church body.

One fundamental problem was the interpretation of Scripture, particularly on the question of how to order the life of the church on matters not resolved by the first generation of leaders, and about which the New Testament was inconveniently silent. This came to a head on the question of how far musical instruments could be used in worship, since such use was not recorded in the New Testament. A second problem was the relationship of local congregations to church structures beyond the local level, with some refusing to join cooperative institutions — even for reasons of mission — which were seen as threatening local autonomy. A third problem was the relationship of the church to the state, with some pastors or congregations refusing to take actions that might be interpreted as seeking “recognition” by the state. By the early twentieth century, the most conservative forces had left, coalescing to form separate churches that carried a different (and from a Disciples of Christ perspective, more limited) form of the Campbell-­Stone “Restoration” vision. Meanwhile, the Disciples of Christ, through a series of specific decisions (all tending in a progressive direction) about the issues named above, had defined itself as a recognizably “mainline” denomination.

But the pattern was different in different areas of the church’s life, and we need to consider a number of factors in more detail, beginning, inevitably, with the Lord’s Supper. The conviction remained that since the table was Christ’s, the church had no authority to exclude anyone from the table who had been claimed by Christ, that is, who had been baptized. The practice of elders offering prayers — usually one elder praying over the bread and one over the wine — continued. I say “wine,” but in fact (reflecting the founders’ aversion to alcohol, based on their experience on the frontier) the use of unfermented grape juice continued as the norm.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.