The climbing rose needs the wires to go up, or it will be eaten by slugs on the ground. But on the other hand, it is the rose, not the wires, which is alive, and if we hack the rose to the ground to focus instead on the wire, we have completely missed the point!
Climbing rose flowering by a station of the cross, Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, England.
From the point of view of the philosophy of religion as I studied it in a Roman Catholic institution, what is meant by the “spiritual” is the “I-Thou” relationship with God. That is, it is the things which relate to experience and the living out of the relationship. So a theory of atonement belongs to academic theology – it is a matter of theorizing about what happened and what is – while participating in the Eucharist is, properly, a matter of spiritual life – a matter of prayer and being with God and receiving from Him. However, the theory of atonement may help orientate someone to understand the Eucharist and their Redemption more deeply, in much the same way as a picture can.
In which case, to be spiritual but not religious is like trying to relate to someone of whom you are utterly determined to have no knowledge.
Christian doctrine ought to give us the means to relate to God to understand and enter into the real relationship he desired for us. To be spiritual and not religious is to condemn yourself to seek and not to find. But it seems to me that this is almost entirely our fault, in making academic theology the master and not the servant.
That is, the truth about God is essential to our relationship with Him, and the true expression of love for Him and others is found in His commands and not in our fallen ideas and desires, but ultimately, if these things are made means in themselves, we are prioritising something which isn’t God.
On the “Religious but not Spiritual” side, which I don’t think anyone would try to claim, but is sadly often a correct criticism of Christianity in practice, a relationship also has an emotional content. Certainly it seems to me that most traditional Anglo-Catholicism now does everything it can to deny and shut personal response and relationship out of things, probably in overreaction to the substantial body of people in the Church of England who assume that feeling is everything, and refuse any sort of discernment as to whether this or that feeling should be acted on. It is natural enough, but we are in desperate need of correcting it.
I would draw a clear distinction between the fact that if a relationship never gives any emotional satisifaction or feedback, there is something wrong with it, and the notion that relationships are about this feedback, and that any commitment can be abandoned if it is not giving such satisfaction at this moment.
Both these things deny the full personhood of the parties to the relationship. To say that it is all right if a relationship never gives any emotional satisfaction is to reduce the person from a delighting, giving, receiving, living person, to a tool for an end. To say that a relationship should always and only give satisfaction, and can be ended the second it does not, is to do exactly that to the other party – plus, in all probability, reducing the engagement of both parties from real love and compassion to animal pleasure alone*.
That is, we will find that we pray in dryness, we will go through darkness, many suffer from emotional doubts and bouts of intellectual questioning, we will go to services which don’t really work for us in the sense of comprehending God’s presence, for all sorts of reasons, from the fact someone had a heart attack to the fact that someone was digging up the road outside with a pnematic drill, to the fact we were distracted because we had a bad night’s sleep, or that we were present on that occasion more because the service helped someone else, than because it was any use to us.
Most marriages go through bad patches. But there is a difference between accepting that this is likely to happen, and marrying someone to whom you are totally indifferent and going through all the motions of relationship completely disengaged from them.
It seems important to be clear that I am not criticising people for being inherently “Myers-Briggs Thinkers” and acting, even in close relationships, from a sense of what they ought to do rather than directly from an emotional preference. This has different advantages and challenges from those of us who are Feelers and are motivated primarily by emotion. I do not act on my logic, my logic acts upon my emotions and I act upon those. However, to have no capacity for relational feeling at all seems to be extremely rare and does seem to be a serious medical disorder: human relationships do by their nature involve feeling, even when not “touchy-feely”.
I am, ironically, much more inclined to see how the academic side of this problem can be corrected – chiefly, by learning to see tradition not as “doing what was done before” but as “consistent with the Christian world view as laid down by scripture and the reflections of Christians over the centuries on scripture”. This returns our judging to a standard resting in faith on the belief that God is active in all that is happening, rather than merely on a set of human propositions.
I would also suggest that we need to understanding properly that worship can neither violate theology, nor be reduced to it. The climbing rose needs the wires to go up, or it will be eaten by slugs on the ground. But on the other hand, it is the rose, not the wires, which is alive, and if we hack the rose to the ground to focus instead on the wire, we have completely missed the point!
On the one hand, we have the only “spiritual” determined to seek the emotion of a relationship without any content of an actual, known person to whom we might relate. On the other, we have the only “religious,” stating doctrines and facts and actions, but refusing to allow us to relate to the person about whom they are said, because room for personal response and personal practice is so determinedly downplayed.
At present, it seems to me that even the Anglican Church, once so keen on personal relationship with God, has in fact forgotten about its importance, in, for example, its attempts to replace non-ordained participation in the Precious Blood with the theory of Concomitance and an extremely narrow idea of what constitutes reverence (if it was about infection control, we’d instantly have changed the manner of reception – used separate cups or had the priest intinct the Host for the laity – we would not have refused anyone full reception). We’ve actually replaced the paradigm of the Last Supper and the whole reality of Communion with Christ with a bit of theological speculation which, though almost certainly correct in itself, is simply not relevant.
A similar theme runs through the way in which “including children” involves having everyone present at a service, with the children allowed to run about screaming and throwing their toys about. It is “worship” because we are going through the motions, not because a situation has been created which encourages everyone – or indeed anyone – to pray. When the toddlers are looking up entranced from their picture service books – showing perhaps, photos of their own priest and church – to see the Consecration, or are at least playing with Mary and Joseph dolls quietly on a carpeted floor if not in the mood or not quite ready to be following the service, that would be inclusion. I have worked with children enough not to underestimate the difficulty of achieving this. However, it seems to me that there is a serious issue in the fact that we do not seem to see the need to try to make inclusion mean joining in to their real capacity, and allowing everyone else to do so, rather than simply happening to be in the same room as a service.
I believe “spiritual but not religious” to be paradoxical in its terms, but I also think it is caused by our own misuse of theology – to reduce people’s worship, rather than to assist it. This is very dramatically seen with the Precious Blood, and, in a rather different way, with the “just let the children make whatever noise” attitude. In the first case, academic theology is used as a reason why people should be forbidden the fullness of worship, and reverence as a way of disobeying Christ’s ordinance, in the second case, the importance of including children (let the little children come unto me) becomes a reason for creating a culture of church services with an atmosphere in which almost no-one – children, parents, other members of the congregation – can engage consciously in worshiping and praying and developing their relationship with God to any significant degree.
So – and these are only two examples of a much wider manifestation – we end up with the situation where the doctrine and practice of the Christian religion, far from doing for people what it should do and giving shape and form and (in God’s time) fulfilment, to what they are seeking spiritually, actually stands in their way – which means that people cannot recognise it as the true answer to their hopes, because what we are actually offering them is genuinely not really what it should be.
The instinct to seek God is inherent, but we are placing barrier after barrier rather than helping people find Him.
I say this from the standpoint of the way my own faith has been shaken in the last few years. I haven’t gone down the “spiritual but not religious” route, and I am not going to – I have a strong commitment to doctrine as God-given – but I can see why people would.
It seems to me that this is a fault we need to correct – that we actually need to recover both doctrine and spirituality (in the I-Thou relationship that will include emotional response sense) and to see them as necessary to each other – and to put that into real practice, by trying to give people room to engage and develop rather than seeing worship and ethics as a sort of mechanical thing. There are no shortcuts. The heart itself has to be corrected: it has to come as it is into a relationship with the only one who can truly redeem and correct it, and it has to be in relationship with the only One who can truly satisfy it.
Theology should not be more important that development, nor should development be left to go in whatever false direction it likes, never able to find what it seeks, because what it seeks is being squashed out of it by the very thing which should most support it.
I think we need to see the support (religion, theology) as necessary to the survival and flourishing of the rose (the “spiritual”: the I-Thou relationship with God), and the rose as what the support is there for. I think if we tried to act on that sort of premises, rather than accepting the divide, we would soon find clearer and better guidance.
Cherry Foster
*”Animal pleasure” in the society of others is a good thing in itself – it is part of our creation – but in a person should always exist alongside its trancendence into something deeper :-S. This is a typical issue in Christian ethics: most of the time, things fall short of fulfilment, rather than being bad. The thing is good in itself, but it is bad that it is as much good as there is, because a fuller good should have been.
For those who might be concerned I want the exclusion of children – which I do not – I wrote on the practicalities of welcoming children while also keeping a meaningful space for prayer and worship here.
I also want to say to church-going parents, whom I can imagine would find this difficult reading, that I have experienced more sympathy from them, who have the real difficulty, than from those for whom it is a theory, and that I have some inkling of the incredible generosity involved in that sympathy, and am truly grateful for it.
The only hope I see for true remedy is for those of us who experience noise like this and families with young children to be mutually invested in each others’ churchgoing, and to appreciate that we suffer in the suffering and difficulties of the other, and gain from their gain. That is the restoration of the Body. In allowing the argument to be about whether it is the children who are excluded or those who find that relentless noise defeats the point of being in church who should be excluded, we are arguing about whether it is the hand or the foot that should be cut off to make it easier for the other!
It is strange
It is very strange,
That the laughter and shrieks of an innocent child,
Should be used as the claws of those
Who drag the despairing spirit into hell.
–
For all are welcome here,
Except those who perish for want of silence,
They are worms, not men,
They are to be disposed of –
For the next generation’s sake.
–
But the next generation, when they are twenty-five,
Will equally be considered consigned to the scrap heap,
Will equally find that the welcome meant nothing,
Will equally perish for the want of the silence,
Imposed by the well-meaning who thought to guard the church’s future,
By casting from its doors all that appertains to prayer.
–
Only here,
Only here, is the Music and the Silence,
Only here could be found an echo of that heaven,
Only here could be found the silence that gives silence meaning,
Only here could be sought the silence that sanctifies noise,
Only here, there is only noise.
Only noise.
–
Only noise,
And silence is but by occasional chance,
Only here, in the only place silence has meaning,
Has Life been utterly swallowed by noise.
–
Perhaps in heaven, a child’s wild shrieks of laughter,
Harmonise perfectly with the cherubs’ gentle chords,
Perhaps the noisy footsteps and the clattering toys,
Become a joyful percussion in the worship of God.
But we are in earth, and our music and silence
Are overcome, and there is noise, and noise, and noise,
And a single moment where there is not noise,
And before the mind can settle, noise again.
–
God.
Where is God?
Where is God now?
He cannot be sought in music and silence: there is none.
And He cannot be sought in noise, unless He gives that gift,
What could be more of a rejection of what He did for us than to make quibbles about the plate matter more than the substance of the gift or the reality of the relationship with the giver?
If a woman said that her husband had given her a luxury box of chocolates on Valentine’s day, it would not be considered with much surprise.
On the other hand, if a woman said she had been given a frog, it might create some puzzlement.
The gift of a box of chocolates could in practice be anything from the most devoted tribute of heart and mind, to part of a positively abusive relationship – an abusive spouse trying to make out that they are the good one and the other is the more guilty party.
Similarly, the gift of a frog could be anything from a seriously nasty joke, to mutually appreciated fun, to the best gift ever for the keen amphibian hobbyist.
And given the scrutiny given to the unconventional, it might reasonably be suggested that the frog is less likely to be an insincere gift, though in most cases, I would assume the chocolates would be entirely genuine too.
Reverence in church cannot be reduced to mere conventions, nor can actions be considered something separate from the state of the heart (understood not in the sense of mere feeling, but as a sort of conjunction of commitment, feeling, mind and intention).
A certain degree of convention is necessary for the functioning of community. My Church culture generally expresses reverence for the Eucharist with stillness and music. I would imagine that in some places the greatest reverence would actually be to dance down the aisle to receive dancing and clapping. It isn’t possible, however, to do both these things in the same space.
It is also necessary as a language to pray in. We do receive language from others, and the meaning of language is to some extent a convention (massive oversimplification!). However, the meaning expressed in action is not determined entirely by ourselves, but will take on some meaning from our life experience. I associate tartan rugs with picnics, for instance. I would find it disconcerting if someone was to replace the rugs that lie before the altars in the local church with tartan rugs. But that is not because there is anything wrongful about tartan rugs, just that in my subculture they convey a message of fun rather than one of joy and solemnity.
There is, moreover, a matter of situation. I once had reason to acquire a pyx (i.e. the container people carry the Host to the sick in). I was quite bothered to realise how difficult it was to find one without a plastic inside. The conventions of reverence as I know them require the inside of a pyx to be gilded, so what actually touches the Host is the gold.
On the other hand, I would not consider it the slightest bit irreverent if those ministering in the slums of a poor city Church in a less economically developed country took Communion to the sick in upcycled Vaseline tins for want of anything else. Saying that the complete impossibility of maintaining an particular convention of reverence should prevent the sick receiving Communion makes a priority of the wrong set of things – human conventions before the command.
This is, I would guess, an incredible headache for church authorities in countries where most people are better off but there are some very poor areas, as it would be difficult to know when to accept a different standard, and where to insist on a particular standard on the grounds that the sense of what is being done is being lost. However, I would say that I think it is unlikely that it is not possible in this country to provide parishes that cannot afford basic standard pyxes (which are of the order of £10-£20, at least second-hand) with them at wider church expense.
I was quite horrified to be told some months ago that some Churches are too poor to afford wine for the whole congregation at the Eucharist, thus meaning that their congregations always have to receive in one kind: I find it extraordinary that such a need could be known and not assisted by the wider church*. If we were told to value spiritual food before earthly bread, then we should regard that as more important than running food banks. Food banks matter – we were told to care for each others’ physical needs – but we may be in danger of becoming an organisation which justifies itself as good for social welfare, rather than a church which preaches and enables the living of the Gospel. Living the Gospel doesn’t mean being merely moral as the secular world would understand it, though ordinary justice and consideration and truthfulness are part of it, but means opening heart and mind to grace, and that is normally done through conscious engagement with worship (God is not limited to this, but we are bound to seek through the channels He has shown us).
I prefer the use of gilt Communion sets where possible, as I tend to prefer the idea that the use of the best we can provide with reasonable (but not ostentatious or officious) effort is appropriate. What Christ gave us is precious beyond all thought, and using the most precious earthly things we have in token of our value for that seems to me to make sense. This would equally mean that the use of silver or glass or the one teacup with only three cracks would fit the same criteria if those things were the best available.
Having said this, if a priest and congregation who could use a gold plated-chalice decided that using a pottery cup as similar as possible to the sort used in Israel in the second temple period, was more appropriate in their celebrations, as the best way of connecting with the reality of every Eucharist’s participation in the Last Supper – from which, 2000 years later and in a very different society and with the story very familiar, it is easy to get detached – then I would argue that is perfectly reverent. Because it is being done in order to communicate the reality better, and enable people to engage more, I’d argue that accepting this sort of decision is allowing the substance to take priority over conventions which are becoming less than helpful. A considered decision, however, that it is the best way of enabling a particular congregation to deepen their faith is not at all the same thing as simply not bothering.
Using the most precious things that you have in order to honour the preciousness of the gift is similar to the sincere gift of a box of chocolates. Using a pottery cup for the right reasons is more like the gift of a new type of frog to an amphibian lover. Not bothering is like not bothering with any sort of gift (or gift-equivalent attention if you have love languages other than presents). And that’s not a good idea.
I have heard a lot of marriage advice which is very insistent about the need to carry on with courting attentions in order to preserve the relationship and commitment: sometimes the gift is given sky high in love, sometimes it is given in conscious decision to be true to the commitment and get through the rough patch. I am not married, but if I understand rightly, it’s important as a signal to the other person that you still love and are still committed (whether or not you are currently “in love”, which is a rather different thing from loving). And I think worship and the relationship with God is like that too. But the monetary value of the box of chocolates is not relevant absolutely, only comparatively to the circumstances, and the monetary value of the frog – as opposed to its appropriateness as a gift – is not relevant at all.
The point of all this is to try to explore what it is that we should mean by reverence, what it is for, and how it fits in as a reason for doing or not doing something.
Firstly, though it is not meaningful to take a Humpty Dumpty attitude to language and decide a word – or in this case an action – means whatever you choose it to mean – there is a formation and a sense to what we do – language is fluid to some extent. If there was a fashion for putting tartan rugs in churches, I would probably ultimately build a new sense of association of that item with worship.
Secondly, and following partly from this, almost all normal church reverence is a human tradition. This does not mean it is bad, on the contrary, we need conventions so it is not simply chaos, and we need conventions to reinforce our understanding that the Eucharist is something we take seriously. But it does mean we need to be careful what we are putting our current conventions in front of. Our Lord did not say – or at least, it is not recorded and it is a reasonable assumption that He did not say – “Do this in remembrance of me, but only if you have a gilded chalice to honour me in.” If we use such things with the right spirit, as an acknowledgement of Him and a way of engaging more deeply, they are a worthwhile custom. But when these things stop being an orientation to Him and become burdens getting in the way of fulfilling and engaging with those things actually commanded, they should be laid aside. They should always be the things open to review. Otherwise we are committing the fault of nullifying the word of God for the sake of our tradition.
Finally, what is or isn’t reverent is going to depend heavily on circumstances, and on the particular reasons we have for doing or not doing a particular thing. The principle of using the best we have to honour the Eucharist will look very different in different circumstances. There may be reasons sometimes to use objects which aren’t the best possible, because those things point more strongly to the substance in some other way.
With regard to the refusal of the Precious Blood to the majority of the People of God in response to an epidemic, on the grounds that it would be irreverent to allow the people to do other than to share chalices, I would suggest that the reasoning is extremely flawed. It’s rather like a parent insisting that a wife has to refuse her husband’s Valentine’s day chocolates – or indeed, more like them actually taking those chocolates off her – because the sort of gold plate the family traditionally displays them on as they are eaten in acknowledgement of the gift, runs the risk of spreading COVID-19. The notion that the gift should be refused, rather than it being mutually accepted that while the problem remains you’ll eat them out of the box instead, is an extreme failure of correct priority. (Of course we have no right to the gift – but the clergy have even less right to deprive us of what was given by God, to us as much as to them. Should not the shepherds feed their flocks?)
Under normal circumstances, I would have my hair standing on end at the notion of receiving the Precious Blood in tiny disposable plastic cups, one for each member of the congregation**. With more force than something like tartan rugs, it feels to me like a picnic outing not a Eucharist. In fact, I think there are better safe ways of doing it – but if the option is between individual plastic cups, and refusing to allow Christ to be with those He loves in the way He chose, then plastic cups hands down. If the reason for doing that is to protect and save life, made in the image of God, it is not irreverent, but a respect for the life that God has given. And it is not anything like as irreverent as refusing to allow people to receive at all. If reverence is about engaging with Him through what He has given us, refusing to let people receive or engage at all is much worse than losing, for good reason, some of the things used under non-crisis circumstances to express respect and aid engagement.
How can we wound the giver more, than by treating their costly gift as if it did not matter? What could be more of a rejection of what He did for us than to make quibbles about the plate matter more than the substance of the gift or the reality of the relationship with the giver? We are not being denied to protect life (whether that would be right or not) we are being denied reception rather than alter the conventional manner of receiving. The common cup is scriptural, but as it is not a common cup if only the priest receives from it, the common cup cannot be defended by refusing to allow the congregation to receive. In any case, we do not scruple to use 20 chalices or more at large celebrations for practical reasons. What’s the difference between using eight chalices for a congregation of eight, and eight chalices for a congregation of eighty – other than that the one is conventional and the other is not? If there really are numbers of laity who don’t know how to be reverent with a cup after receiving then it is a wonderful opportunity for teaching them***. The rest of it is entirely our own accretion, good if it helps and bad if it does not. Nothing could be more unhelpful than not being allowed to receive in fullness. If some people don’t choose to, that is between them and God, but the priests should not be standing between God and the way He has chosen to relate to us. No relationship can function if others will not give it the space it needs to do so.
In fact, my suggestion for reception if people are worried about sharing chalices, would be intinction by the priest. The priest should have scrubbed his hands anyway, so it should not be a risk from that point of view, and it means both the use of a normal chalice and no extra risk of spills (as far as I can make out, this does seem to be the case – it might well actually be safer from that point of view than a hundred people trying to drink from a cup held rather awkwardly by someone else while trying to negotiate an obstacle course!). We would continue to receive from a common cup, though not literally drink from it.
Cherry Foster
*It is necessary to avoid treating the middle class congregations as mere milk cows to be squeezed for poorer churches, but that is another subject: the rightness of giving assistance, and the social attitudes which cause me to think the middle class congregations have a point in resenting the way they are regarded, are different issues.
**Which is not to say that those whose churches do it like that are being irreverent: it could be irreverent, or it could be a different language of reverence.
***In any case, the obvious thing to do if using separate cups in the context of an epidemic, in a church usually set up to receive from common cups, is probably to have each person put their own cup in a bowl of clean water as they leave the altar. It is difficult to see how that holds more risk of accident than sharing the chalice. If fear of an accident is to prevent reception of Communion, where do you stop? I’ve heard Tridentine Catholics say that congregations should never receive the Precious Blood for fear of accidents. If we never celebrated at all, there would never be any risk of an accident. To be careful is entirely right – it is respect – but to disobey the command (worse, to prevent other people obeying it) in the name of that care does not make sense.
N.B. I should say that what I am objecting to is the church institution denying people the Precious Blood. If an individual has made the decision to receive only in one kind for whatever reason, that is between them and God, and those who advise them: it is not my problem to judge that, though there might be academic discussion about the sense or otherwise of the reasons people might give. Space for relationship has to mean that – the freedom to receive, and the decisions a particular child of God makes about reception, are not the same thing, and are subject to different processes of thought even if some of the technical reasoning is common to both issues. Assuming respect for the other person’s relationship with God as one would the internal dynamics of a marriage seems to me about right (though no analogy is perfect). If someone was saying “It doesn’t affect my marriage if I commit adultery,” then we would be right, at the least, to say that someone was not talking about Christian marriage, but we would not rightly start telling someone that their not bothering with Valentine’s day could not possibly matter: it would depend on their own relationship. Similarly, we cannot say that serious sin is not affecting our relationship with God, but we are wrong to start saying that it cannot be important to another person’s relationship with God to receive the Precious Blood.
Handmaid's Distaff 
