- Dec 4, 2012
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I was wondering if anyone knows if bizarre or very unattractive liturgies are common in some places in the ECUSA? I ask about this because I have personally not seen anything like that but I have in another denominations. I know there are controversies over the new prayer book and Rite II and so on, but I have personally never witnessed anything in the Episcopal Church that simply made my skin crawl. My priest did tell me about a clown mass in an ECUSA parish near him in San Francisco but I don't know how common stuff like that is. It's something I would like to be aware of for my own good.
I am hoping that strange liturgies like this will simply die out and go away because I don't see what good they're doing anyone. I don't mean contemporary liturgies in general, just the really weird out there stuff. I was visiting a chapel in another denomination I had been a frequent attender at for a weekly Wednesday Eucharist and the interim just decided she was going to jettison the entire liturgy and create her own. It was so chaotic no one knew what to do during the service including the minister at some points and it all became so out there I started hysterically laughing through the service and couldn't stop. It was more neo-pagan than Christian. I'm not sure it was actually a Eucharist -- it was more about the body of the earth than Jesus. And for all this none of those poor parishioners wanted any of this. They were all senior citizens and at least one of them was openly upset.
The whole point of going to the service that week was that my parish wasn't having a Wednesday Eucharist that day. My grandmother had just died and I wanted to pray for her during the intercessions. But since the whole service was abandoned there were no such prayers. I thought this was all just a terrible fluke and came back next week and she had made up a whole new liturgy for that day too! It was almost as terrible as the first one! Eventually I heard they obtained a new minister so I visited again and she had gone back to the usual liturgy everyone had wanted to begin with.
I get extremely upset with priests or ministers who come into parishes and want to do away with their liturgy and culture to impose their own arbitrary preferences. My parish's new priest has these tendencies but he hasn't been able to go too far with it. Still he wouldn't have invented a whole new liturgy of his own.
Have you ever seen anything bizarre like this? Do you think this will just die out? I think these kinds of experiments must have started in the '60s and '70s. It's just really hard for me to believe anyone wants a service like this. It seems to me like clergy simply impose it.
I am hoping that strange liturgies like this will simply die out and go away because I don't see what good they're doing anyone. I don't mean contemporary liturgies in general, just the really weird out there stuff. I was visiting a chapel in another denomination I had been a frequent attender at for a weekly Wednesday Eucharist and the interim just decided she was going to jettison the entire liturgy and create her own. It was so chaotic no one knew what to do during the service including the minister at some points and it all became so out there I started hysterically laughing through the service and couldn't stop. It was more neo-pagan than Christian. I'm not sure it was actually a Eucharist -- it was more about the body of the earth than Jesus. And for all this none of those poor parishioners wanted any of this. They were all senior citizens and at least one of them was openly upset.
The whole point of going to the service that week was that my parish wasn't having a Wednesday Eucharist that day. My grandmother had just died and I wanted to pray for her during the intercessions. But since the whole service was abandoned there were no such prayers. I thought this was all just a terrible fluke and came back next week and she had made up a whole new liturgy for that day too! It was almost as terrible as the first one! Eventually I heard they obtained a new minister so I visited again and she had gone back to the usual liturgy everyone had wanted to begin with.
I get extremely upset with priests or ministers who come into parishes and want to do away with their liturgy and culture to impose their own arbitrary preferences. My parish's new priest has these tendencies but he hasn't been able to go too far with it. Still he wouldn't have invented a whole new liturgy of his own.
Have you ever seen anything bizarre like this? Do you think this will just die out? I think these kinds of experiments must have started in the '60s and '70s. It's just really hard for me to believe anyone wants a service like this. It seems to me like clergy simply impose it.