Barclay Press Post: Repetition and A Non-Liturgical Liturgy

Here’s my latest installment at Barclay Press. As you’ll notice I worked at weaving a number of ideas I’ve had together and tried to initiate a forward step in a Quaker understanding of “liturgy.” More on this to come.

What Quakers were against wasn’t forms but rather things that became objects and ultimately obstacles for our belief. Anything that takes the place of or “prevents us from experiencing the true reality” of our social situation or the reality of the kingdom of God was to be questioned by the church. Two assumptions play into this reading, first in every generation we have to ask this question again, “what is preventing us from experiencing the reality of our social situation, from the reality of the kingdom of God?” It’s not enough to simply duplicate a black and white copy of everything the first generation of Friends did – that requires no faith and betrays yet again a faith fixated on something else. But neither can we simply dismiss their keen insights either. As Pink Dandelion has argued silence itself has become a form, a fixation, that can lead to disbelief but neither can we get rid of this because we know that rituals, pastors, etc. can also become obstacles to faith.

(From Repetition and A Non-Liturgical Liturgy)

One response to “Barclay Press Post: Repetition and A Non-Liturgical Liturgy”

  1. I attend a very small Friends Meeting.
    We meet in a UCC church. Sometimes I attend the early service of word-table( Eucharist)
    at the Church.For long time I wasn’t sure why! Nostalgia from my High Church Lutheran Heritage? Recently I started participating in a Lenten study group at the church.We are studying Saving Paradise; How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, the new book by Rita Nakashima Brock. Last week I learn the crucifixion was designed to destroy both bodies and identities.
    It was a capital crime to remember the dead person or his or her message.First radical act of the early church was to remember Jesus not on a cross but in the breaking of bread- Eucharist.Bread bless not by the empire but by the Spirit.”Wow, What An Eye Opener”
    For me the Eucharist with or without the elements is not obstacle to faith but invitation to faith.To remember the simple message of the Galilean.I am always with you,.
    Paul