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With the Church, change is not as good as a rest

I’ve never quite grasped why politicians across the ideological spectrum routinely deploy the word “change” as a campaign slogan. You can get an idea of just how popular the notion of change is from the hoary old light bulb jokes.

How many Marylanders, for example, does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: “Change!!!!!!!!!!!”

How many New Yorkers does it take? Answer: “Get lost! It’s none of your business.” How many Virginians? Answer: “One to change the bulb. The rest to discuss the merits of the old one.”

But if change is less than popular in secular society, 2,000 years of experience teaches us that churchgoers react badly to any form of change—even change for the better.

For instance, a number of Roman Catholics’ trust in the Church was considerably undermined when the Second V atican Council announced that it was no longer considered a venial sin to eat flesh on Fridays.

Their problem was reconciling the Vatican II pronouncement with the fate of sinners condemned to the agony of purgatory for breaking the mandatory fast by sneaking an illicit steak before the proscription of meat eating was lifted.

From earliest times Anglican have reacted in similar fashion to changes in modes of worship.

Back in the Fifth Century AD, priests and parishioners stubbornly resisted attempts by the hierarchy to replace the ancient Latin Bible—based on the Greek Septuagint—with the new–fangled Vulgate.

They were quite unmoved by arguments that the scholarship of St Jerome and his collaborators meant that the Vulgate was an infinitely superior translation to the ancient book. Inferior or not, the people in the pews preferred the comfort of the familiar.

The replacement of liturgical Latin with English in the 16th Century was by no means greeted with universal rejoicing. Nor was there unbridled joy when, in the 17th century, the venerable Great Bible, translated by Miles Coverdale, Archbishop of York, was supplanted by the new–fangled King James’ Version.

The Gospels and much of the Old Testament in the King James Version follow the Coverdale Bible quite closely. The psalms in the King James Version, however, do not.

Efforts to replace the Coverdale psalms with those of the King James Version were firmly rejected. And for more than 300 years, churches of the Anglican Communion echoed to the sonorous tones of the Coverdale Psalter.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, turmoil followed as hymns edged out the familiar metrical psalms and the magisterial discipline of the pipe organ gradually replaced the instrumental anarchy of the “parish choir”.

What’s more, resistance to the replacement of the Geneva gown by the traditional Eucharistic vestments continued into the 20th Century—even though their use was declared mandatory in the Books of Common Prayer from the 16th Century onwards.

The story of the American 1928 edition of the Prayer Book bears eloquent witness to the lay people’s stubborn resistance to change.

Original plans to replace the King James Eucharistic lections with those of the Revised Standard met strenuous objections. Ultimately, a few Revised Standard lections were quietly introduced to the book a decade or so later.

The 1929 revision of the psalms, on the other hand, seems to have gone virtually unnoticed by the laity, largely because Coverdale’s language was left largely untouched.

The revision mainly consisted of expurgating “objectionable” passages. True, the “imprecatory psalms” express some ugly thoughts. But to expurgate the word of God was an act of presumption that set the tone for subsequent liturgical revisions.

Indeed, it is the precursor of the methodology employed for far reaching changes that have radically altered the face of Anglicanism both here in America and in England.

Change has been rushed, helter skelter, after change. Liturgical revision, the abandonment of ancient doctrines, and a major departure from the church’s traditional understanding of the authority of Holy Scripture—hardly had one change been instituted than the next was upon us.

Had the sound and fury of the debate engendered a mighty powerful spiritual and moral awakening, the proponents of rapid change might have been justified in their strategy. Had the turmoil swiftly abated, having inflicted no lasting damage, they might have been able to argue persuasively that their haste was justified.

But the fact of the matter is that their strategy has been an unmitigated failure. Church membership in America has fallen by more than a third, and even more precipitately than that in England.

The lesson to be learned from this history is that, should it prove necessary to institute changes in the church, it is essential to do so very slowly, with great care and with an absolute abundance of Christian charity and understanding.

One might have imagined that experience would have taught the proponents of change to see the wisdom, temporarily at least, of dropping the subject of change in the interest of promoting harmony. But the notion that change equates with virtue is so deeply ingrained in its proponents that they simply can’t stop babbling about their determination to impose it on us.

Not content with revising the Nicene Creed, many parishes have adopted cutting edge formulae. As a consequence, parishioners, unwilling to make, a fuss slip quietly away to the golf course or some other Sunday morning pastime.

The lesson to be learned from this record of disaster is that changes in the church should be introduced slowly, with abundance of Christian charity, and only when absolutely necessary. But wait a minute! That, in itself, would be a change—and not just a change so much as a major upheaval. GPH✠

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