skip to main content

Cambridge Scholar Argues Liturgy’s Relevance

0

In an era where religious experiences often take place at venues and where concerts have replaced ritual, Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Fordham University Church to make an argument for the relevance of the liturgy in today’s world.

Archbishop Williams made his case in a lecture, “Liturgical Humanism: Orthodoxy and the Transformation of Culture,” which he delivered after accepting an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

The Sept. 30th event was part of the Orthodoxy in America Lecture Series, sponsored by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center.

Archbishop Williams, who served as senior bishop of the worldwide Anglican Communion from 2002 to 2012 and is Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, is a noted scholar of Orthodox Christianity. His particular interest in Russian Orthodoxy focused on Vladimir Lossky, the influential 20th-century theologian. His dissertation on Lossky, done at Oxford, set him on a path to become one of today’s leading experts in contemporary Orthodox Christian thinking.

In introducing Archbishop Williams, Father McShane called him “the greatest theologian in the English speaking world.”

“With word and action, you have sought—with telling results—to convince the world that the encounter with God is transforming, life-giving, and exhilarating. As you have done so, you have become Pontifex Anglicanus: the Anglican bridge builder.”

In his talk, Archibishop Williams built yet another bridge by focusing on a religious experience shared by Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians: the liturgy.

Archbishop Williams delivers the Orthodoxy in America Lecture.

Archbishop Williams delivers the Orthodoxy in America Lecture.

“In every era, the Divine Liturgy is a way for humans to experience [God] in reality, not in theoretical principle,” he said.

The liturgy, he said, maps out an alternative reality and must remain relevant to contemporary culture— lest it become perceived as an “enclosed in a world of ritualized code.” He added that the liturgy should not become an alternative to other kinds of engagement, social or otherwise.

“We need to keep liturgical action at the center of our vision,” he said. “The question isn’t whether it’s instructive or entertaining, but it’s whether it looks as though it’s credibly changing the vision of those participating.”

He said that as a “Christian interruption,” liturgy should also not be expected to offer solutions to complex problems, but rather it should pose questions. As a general heritage, the ritualized activity in the liturgy “specifies and incarnates a culture, a culture that asks serious questions of our own culture.” And sometimes those are the most culturally uncomfortable questions, such as concern for the unborn or “the power of death in the world we occupy—and trying to understand a world [heaven]where that doesn’t exist.”

“Our popular culture refuses or trivializes our location in time,” he said. “It has a very limited understating of past and future.”

Conversely, the liturgical act exists in the past, present, and future, he said. It also explores how the period of time from one world can be connected to that of another world, namely the Kingdom of God.

Today’s trivialization of time has led to all sorts of short-term gain behavior that has affected the planet’s future, he said.

“If we do want to live in the future Kingdom, we must be aware of how short term comforts . . . affect the health of the natural world.”

In addition, Archbishop Williams warned against politics that “fail to protect the vulnerable, add to the degradation of the material world, or shore up inequalities.”

“Any and all of these deserve a critique in the liturgy,” he said.

“The believer is one who takes seriously an openness in art, science, and politics. Approaching this through liturgical practice, he or she physically enacts this in a straightforward act. Here, in this space and time, it is enacted in a charismatic event.”

Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to more than 15,100 students in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. It has residential campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan, a campus in West Harrison, N.Y., the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y., and the London Centre in the United Kingdom.

Share.

Comments are closed.