Tradition, Pageantry, and New Additions to the Christ Church Nave

Dear People of Christ Church,
Blessings on the first days of fall!
I’m excited to share the news that on Monday the Christ Church vestry took a vote, based on parishioner feedback, to adopt the Stations of the Cross from St John the Evangelist, Boston. Marjorie Hartman told me that her father had attended church there when he first came to the United States and that he had always loved the pageantry of the Episcopal Church, eventually leading him to our own Christ Church. That’s the same thing that I loved about St John the Evangelist, too, when I interned in the year 2000/01 before I went to seminary. I was sad to hear that the space was closing as a parish (it’ll become condos, most likely), but I’m so delighted to have a little piece of that sacred place here.

There was a time when the Anglican tradition made a huge fuss about rejecting anything that seemed more in line with the Roman Catholic side of the church. Not politely, such things were dismissed as “popish” idolatry. In the mid 1800s, a group based at Oxford began a revival of heretofore “Catholic” practices, like incense, candles, and more formal ritual, coupled with a commitment to ministry in the city. The response? In 1874 the ‘Public Worship Regulation Act” sent clergy to jail for wearing chasubles (that’s the big tent-like garment worn by the priest at the Eucharist in some churches). Using wafers at communion and water in the wine—all pretty non controversial now—were also suspect.

Kneeling at communion had long been a political question. In 1552 a text was written that came to be known as the “black rubric” because it was pasted in afterwards clarifying that worshippers were to receive communion kneeling, but not to get any ideas about the traditional (Roman Catholic) understanding of transubstantiation: For as concernynge the Sacramentall bread and wyne, they remayne styll in theyr verye naturall substaunces, and therefore may not be adored, for that were Idolatrye to be abhorred of all faythfull christians.

The black rubric has come out of there since then and our Anglican view of what the sacraments mean has broadened, somewhat, and become a little depoliticized. Every church still has their own traditions about their practices, but the wider world just doesn’t view things in those categories quite the same way. Are you “low” church or “high” church? The distinction seems pointless. I hope to lead our worship into good church, to be able to pull out all the stops with incense and bells and all the rest once in a while, but also to be comfortable enough that we understand that our prayer is to help us to give glory to God, not our own performance.

Blessings,
Sara+