worship

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Why Christians in today's marketplace need Advent music playlists

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Why Christians in today's marketplace need Advent music playlists

"O Lord, How Shall I Meet You" is a perfect Lutheran hymn for the weeks before Christmas, but shoppers will never hear it between Muzak versions of "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas" in their local malls.

The key is that "O Lord, How Shall I Meet You" is from the penitential season of Advent, said Pastor Will Weedon. That's the four weeks preceding Christmas in liturgical calendars for Catholics, Lutherans and others in Western Christianity.

The Christmas connection is clear, stressed Weedon, with lines such as: "O Lord, how shall I meet You / How welcome You aright? /Your people long to greet You / My hope, my heart's delight! / O kindle, Lord most holy / Your lamp within my breast / To do in spirit lowly / All that may please You best."

The hymn contains this confession: "I lay in fetters, groaning / You came to set me free / I stood, my shame bemoaning / You came to honor me."

"We need to hear this as we prepare for Christmas," said Weedon, former director of worship and chaplain for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. "Advent hymns have about them a sense of dissatisfaction with our lives in this world. …

"We have a mess on our hands, some of it of our own making, and we're praying for Christ to come and save us," he said, reached by telephone. That message "doesn't work at Walmart, where Christmas starts at Halloween. Our culture doesn't understand the idea of fasting before feasting. We are urged to party and feast all the time."

Collections of Christmas music often include a few popular Advent hymns sung in Protestant services and even in Christmas parties, such as "Joy to the World," "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and, especially, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." Many Catholic Advent hymns focus on the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, such as "Rorate Caeli (Drop down, ye Heavens."

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The convert era: What will Orthodox America look like in 2040 (Part II)

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The convert era: What will Orthodox America look like in 2040 (Part II)

The Orthodox baptism rite includes a three-stage exorcism that is extremely detailed about the spiritual warfare that surrounds new Christians.

Finally, there is this appeal to God: "Redeeming this Your creature from the yoke of the Enemy, receive him (her) into Your heavenly Kingdom. … Yoke unto his (her) life a shining Angel to deliver him (her) from every plot directed against him (her) by the Adversary, from encounter with evil, from the noon-day demon, and from evil dreams. Drive out from him (her) every evil and unclean spirit, hiding and lurking in his (her) heart."

The "Enemy" is Satan. Catechumens are asked, three times: "Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his worship, and all his angels, and all his pomp?" They respond: "I do renounce him."

After several years of conversations while travelling nationwide, Father Andrew Stephen Damick is convinced these ancient prayers are painfully relevant to many converts surging into the small, but now growing, "Eastern Church" in America. It is no longer unusual to meet converts who have worshipped other gods and spirits.

"There's a sense of disenchantment, both in the sense of people feeling disillusioned and sort of bummed by the culture in general, but also disenchantment in the sense of a disconnection from the unseen spiritual world," said Damick, of the online Ancient Faith Ministries.

The converts want stability and guidance. Damick, via Zoom, stressed that many have "experienced the darkness of the unseen spiritual world and want to know what to do about that."

During a recent online forum -- "American Orthodoxy in 2040" -- Seraphim Rohlin, a data scientist who is also a deacon in the Orthodox Church in America, described a survey of converts in the Dallas area. As expected, 50% were former evangelicals, but 25% were former Catholics and 25% were truly "unchurched," including some neopagans. After a surge of young male converts, Orthodox leaders are now tracking a larger wave of young families.

As with many faith groups, some Orthodox parishes declined during the coronavirus pandemic. Other parishes stalled. Still, there have been pockets of Orthodox growth across the nation, even in areas with plateaued or declining population numbers. The biggest surge is in the Sun Belt and West, with numerous parishes doubling and tripling in size.

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Ancient churches of Orthodoxy are being flooded with American converts (Part I)

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Ancient churches of Orthodoxy are being flooded with American converts (Part I)

For Orthodox Christians in America, the 20th century was shaped by waves of believers fleeing wars, revolutions and persecution in lands such as Greece, Syria, Russia and Romania.

The Orthodox did everything they could to preserve their faith and cultural traditions. When bishops visited these small flocks, it was rare to see converts.

Then, in the late 1980s, flocks of evangelical Protestants swept into the Antiochian Orthodox church and then the Orthodox Church in America, which has Slavic roots. These converts began reaching out to others. Then came the seeker-friendly Internet. Then came COVID. Suddenly, streams of young families began exploring what was often called the mysterious, ancient "Eastern Church."

"Some observers liken this influx to a flood, and the comparison is accurate. I do not visit a parish without meeting catechumens there. In some parishes, they number more than 100," said Metropolitan Saba, leader of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, in a recent Denver address.

"While many long-standing believers see in the converts a source of renewal and vitality -- and a spur to discover their own Orthodoxy personally and deeply, not merely as a social religious tradition -- many also feel somewhat threatened by the cultural changes occurring in their parish."

In a survey of his priests, Saba said, one wrote: "The century of the 'church of immigrants' has ended; the century of evangelization has begun. Orthodoxy's mission is no longer primarily geographical … but existential."

Orthodox Christianity remains a small flock in America, with 2-3 million believers in 2,000 parishes. The Pew Research Center has estimated that, globally, there are 260 million Orthodox Christians, the next largest communion after the Catholic Church with 1.4 billion.

The bottom line: The catechumenate class numbers are staggering.

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Guitarist Phil Keaggy is still trying to blend his faith with serious rock music

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Guitarist Phil Keaggy is still trying to blend his faith with serious rock music

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- On the day he became a Christian in 1970, guitarist Phil Keaggy returned home seeking the perfect song to help him wrestle with the changes in his life.

With his rock trio Glass Harp, he was already a rising star in mainstream music, touring across America and recording a Carnegie Hall live album. He was also in a "tender place" after losing his mother a week earlier. Flipping through his records, he found Eric Clapton's soaring "Presence of the Lord" from the "Blind Faith" album.

"I have finally found a place to live just like I never could before," sang Keaggy, performing this week at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. "I know I don't have much to give, but soon I'll open any door. Everybody knows the secret. Everybody knows the score. I have finally found a place to live, in the presence of the Lord."

This was a symbolic choice, since "I bought that album because I loved Cream," said Keaggy, referring to the blues-rock trio that made Clapton a superstar. "There was so much yearning in that song, for God, for a sense of peace. I found it comforting and I listened to it over and over, at least a dozen times."

But trying to combine Christian faith with serious rock music created a dilemma, when Keaggy entered what record-industry pros have long called CCM -- Contemporary Christian Music. Most of his 55 albums were first sold in Christian bookstores, instead of mainstream music chains. In recent decades, he recorded his influential acoustic-guitar albums, such as "Beyond Nature" in 1991, on his own, in a home studio.

"CCM never really understood me," said Keaggy, the day after his concert drew fans from 35 different states to the Cove auditorium. "I'm not sure that CCM understands what I'm trying to do today. It doesn't matter anymore."

With his digital home studio and links to musicians nationwide, Keaggy has made a variety of solo and collaborative instrumental, as well as vocal, recordings with colleagues blending pop, rock, jazz, ambient electronics and what CCM leaders call "worship" music. But his latest project represents another attempt to mix Christian content with mainstream rock.

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Parsing Pope Leo XIV: Journalists, Catholic insiders trying to read between the lines

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Parsing Pope Leo XIV: Journalists, Catholic insiders trying to read between the lines

Early in the Mass, the priest -- chanting in Latin -- leads the congregation into a prayer of repentance.

The faithful respond: "Confíteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omission," which in English is, "I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do."

Then everyone adds: "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" -- "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

This Mass is in Latin, but it's the basic Latin text for the Vatican II Novus Ordo (.pdf here), noted Pope Leo XIV, in lengthy interviews with Elise Ann Allen of Crux.

A big issue in current conflicts, he said, is that "people always say 'the Latin Mass.' Well, you can say Mass in Latin right now. If it's the Vatican II rite there's no problem. Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass … I'm not sure where that's going to go."

It doesn't help, the pope added, when Catholics witness "abuse" of the Novus Ordo. This offends those "looking for a deeper experience of prayer, of contact with the mystery of faith that they seemed to find in the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. Again, we've become polarized, so that instead of being able to say, well, if we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?"

Pope Leo's call for celebrating the "Vatican II liturgy in a proper way" -- including Latin -- will "strike at least some American Catholics as either pointedly ironic or frustratingly hypothetical, given the number of bishops who have restricted 'traditional' celebrations of the ordinary form, even those 'proper' according to the rubrics," noted Ed Condon, editor of The Pillar, in a recent online essay.

If the goal is to heal "polarization around the liturgy," the pope needs to describe "proper" ways to celebrate the Novus Ordo, Condon added. But it "remains to be seen if those bishops who have clamped down on ordinary liturgical practices, or taken a relaxed view of liturgical abuses, will feel moved to revisit their positions in the light of the pope's words -- or if the pope will do anything to actively encourage them to do so."

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What is "success" for modern pastors working in a stressful ministry marketplace?

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What is "success" for modern pastors working in a stressful ministry marketplace?

Every decade or so, perhaps during a global pandemic, it's common to see news reports about pastors leaving pulpits in search of less stressful work.

Consider the 2024 Hartford Institute for Religion Research poll in which more than half of pastors said they have, at some point, seriously considered quitting, with 10% admitting this often crossed their minds. According to 2022 polling by the Barna Institute, the main causes for anxiety were strong job stress (56%), feeling isolated (43%) and current political tensions (38%).

These reports are sobering, but complex, noted Ryan Burge of the Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. But it's important to note the other side of the equation, when studying how clergy view their work. Five years ago, the National Survey of Religious leaders found that, when asked if "in most ways" their lives were ideal, 21% of pastors "completely" agreed, 50% said "moderately" and 16% “slightly." Only 1% "completely" disagreed and 2% said "moderately."

"The long and short of it was this -- I can't find another population group that scores higher on this metric than clergy," noted Burge, on his Graphs about Religion website. In fact, "I'm pretty confident in saying that clergy seemed pretty content with their station in life (or at least this was the case before the pandemic)."

No one doubts that pastors face significant stress, said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. The key is whether clergy and laity have clear understandings about what is expected from pastors and their families.

For example, what does the word "success" mean? Is that defined by growth in the congregation's size, as well as its facilities, staff and budget?

Lifeway has done a number of surveys on topics related to the life of pastors and, for most, "success" means "they are seeing lives changed, people following Christ more closely, troubling sins being avoided, people serving the Lord in ways that they have not done before," said McConnell, reached by telephone. "I think most pastors see some of that every year, but they always want to see more."

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Catholic social media enters the age of digital flocks and "hot priests"

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Catholic social media enters the age of digital flocks and "hot priests"

With a nod to digital life, Merriam-Webster has expanded its "influencer" definition to include a "person who is able to generate interest in something (such as a consumer product) by posting about it on social media."

Pope Leo XIV didn't use that term in his latest remarks on faith in the Internet age, even while addressing the recent Vatican Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Influencers.

"Today, we are in a culture where the technological dimension is present in almost everything, especially as the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will mark a new era in the lives of individuals and society as a whole," the pope told more than 1,000 "content creators," from 70 nations.

"We have a duty to work together to develop a way of thinking, to develop a language, of our time, that gives voice to Love" -- with a divine uppercase "L" in his text. "It is not simply a matter of generating content, but of creating an encounter of hearts. This will entail seeking out those who suffer, those who need to know the Lord, so that they may heal their wounds, get back on their feet and find meaning in their lives."

The pope, who studied mathematics as an undergraduate, warned Catholic "influencers" about temptations they should avoid, such as the "logic of division and polarization," "individualism and egocentrism," "fake news" and "frivolity."

The church, he noted, has "never remained passive" when facing cultural change, but strives to separate "good from evil and what was good from what needed to be changed, transformed and purified."

Meanwhile, journalists spotted modern trends while surfing the online work of many participants. The Daily Mail headline proclaimed: "Christianity is sexy now! How 'hot priest' influencers are drawing young people to the church in their droves." The Telegraph went further: "Vatican turns to 'hot priests' to spread faith -- Social media seen as means to ensure survival of a church suffering from declining numbers." 

Hooks for the coverage included an Italian "bodybuilder priest" on Instagram, whose bulging biceps are covered with tattoos. Other "influencer" priests offered digital followers content about their poetry, workouts, guitar skills, cycling trips and adventures with pets, as well as sermons and Bible studies. 

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Living Good Friday -- An Orthodox mother's meditation on autism

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Living Good Friday -- An Orthodox mother's meditation on autism

On many Sundays, Corey Hatfield sent her family ahead into church, while she lingered outside with her autistic son Grayson -- trying to decide if he would scream or run the second they entered the sanctuary.

Approaching the chalice during Holy Communion was another challenge.

"Some Sundays, I drew near with Grayson in a headlock, my hand clamped tightly over his mouth to silence his steady stream of cuss words," she wrote, in "The Light from a Thousand Wounds," her spiritual memoir about the impact of profound autism on her family.

Getting to St. Spyridon Orthodox Church, in Loveland, Colorado, often left her "late, tousled and out-of-breath, adorned in bite marks instead of jewelry. Often, I never even made it to church. … I lamely offered God my unproductive exasperation."

Some congregations may have the resources and space to offer ministries to help families dealing with neurodiversity, said Hatfield, reached by telephone. But everyone needs to know that no one-size-fits-all strategy exists. One professional told her, "If you've seen one autistic kid, you've seen … one autistic kid."

What clergy and their people cannot do is look away, said Metropolitan Nathanael of Chicago, during the "Gathered as One Body: Disability, Accessibility and Inclusion in the Orthodox Church" conference this past spring in Boston.

"Isolation, not disability, is the greatest wound," he said. "Today, many people living with disabilities and their caregivers and families experience the same isolation. They feel invisible in their parishes, they feel they have no one to help them draw near to the healing waters of the church's life. …This is a tragedy, and it is also a sin."

Hatfield, in an interview focusing on issues in her memoir, noted specific responses that congregations could carefully consider.

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

The year was 1976 and Jimmy Carter, a Sunday school teacher from Georgia, had shocked major newsrooms by discussing his "born again" faith.

Presidential candidates were not supposed to do things like that.

At CBS News, special correspondent Bill Moyers received a green light for a prime-time feature, "What It Means to be Born Again." After seeing the finished piece, a network executive pulled Moyers aside to chat.

The man's face was so serious, "that I thought he was about to tell me he'd been born again," Moyers told me in 1987. No, the executive said: "That was the worst show I have ever seen in my life."

The program was "cut to bits," Moyers said. Network leaders "didn't think it was news. They just didn't understand what was going on."

The broadcaster faced this disconnect many times. Moyers died on June 24 at the age of 91, after a long and complex career in which he served as speech writer and press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, followed by decades of work with CBS, NBC and PBS. However, before that, the Rev. Bill Moyers was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas towns like Brandon and Weir. He was proud of those roots and his convictions as a progressive Baptist.

"By no means is Moyers a typical Southern Baptist," I noted, in a 1993 "On Religion" column. "He is the rare Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate whose books and tapes are popular at New Age conventions. He is a hero wherever there are Baptists whose annual donations to National Public Radio are greater than their gifts to Focus on the Family."

Preaching before the first presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, another Baptist progressive, Moyers got down to basics, sharing a saying passed on by his father -- Cain and Abel were "the first Baptists because they introduced fratricide" to the biblical drama.

At the heart of Baptist life "is what we call soul competency," he explained.