That's not relevant to the response I was making and I'm sure you know it.
Yes and no. It isn't to the point that one doesn't, in the eastern or the older Western tradition, need really to have that visibly of the altar that seems important to people these days in many cases.
But OTOH I really am not a fan of bringing in one aspect of the Eastern or ancient practice while ignoring others, which seems to happen all to often. These are not a series of discrete unrelated items - they represent a particular understanding of the liturgy.
Yes, in the East they do not typically see the altar, and often do not hear the priest all that well. They also don''t have a screen, or a text, and may be doing very much their own thing during the liturgy. they do not have this idea that they need to be participating in the liturgy in the same way modern Anglicans often seem to - although they are undoubtedly participating in another sense.
The reason that even an open minded Orthodox Christian would object to a big screen is that it is simply not in line with the way they understand we are to relate to or experience the liturgy. So it seems very strange to bring in something from that tradition - the iconostasis - which is diametrically opposed to the kind of accesibility and participation where people have things to do during the liturgy. You are taking a particular of Eastern practise to support an Anglican practise which is actually opposed to the whole Eastern focus.
The peripherals to how we work the liturgy have always adapted to use fresh technology and always will. And there is nothing wrong with that unless one is more interested in making time stand still than in what the liturgy encompases - God incarnate in our time.
I don't disagree in the sense that technology has always changed, and that is not a problem per se. Technology is fine if it is in accord with the purposes of the liturgy. I like the furnace. I like electric lights. I think amplification has had mixed results generally. I don't like big screens in church. I think they encourage a kind of text based approach that is not particularly desirable. I can think of cases where they might be helpful, but on balance I think they are more likely to be negative. I tend to think that people make accessibility too much of a focus - it has a place, which is often over-emphasized (and sometimes under-emphasized.) I think Scripture and the text of the liturgy are meant to be essentially aural, and oral, and the liturgy accounts for the visual in other ways.
I am not totally in agreement that the liturgy is about making God incarnate in our time. That is true, but only partly, and it is our natural inclination to think that way. We almost always see things through our own experience. But the Eucharist is just as much about taking us out of time - we participate alongside not only the man in the next pew, but also the woman who sat there in a previous century, and the early Christians hiding in the catacombs, and the family worshiping three hundred years in the future, and the angels and saints worshiping endlessly in heaven. So it is as much about taking us out of time, so that when we come back and go out into the world, we have brought God with us.
As humans we are in a special place - unlike the angels, we can see things in their particularity and individuality in space and time. That is a part of our animal nature. But unlike animals, we can also see things in their relation to eternity and God. But that is almost always harder for us, and that is a big part of why we have the Eucharist, and why we need to set aside time for daily prayer.
Most people find it easy to relate to their own time and place. Moving beyond that to place ourselves in eternity is more difficult, and one of the ways we can accomplish that is by paying attention to making the liturgy as timeless as we can.
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