Worship… Expression and Controversy
April 6th, 2006 by Steve
I just finished a great book given to me by my friend Andre. It’s called Diverse Worship: African-American, Caribbean & Hispanic Perspectives. Dr. Maynard-Reid does a wonderful job of describing in form, philosophy, culture, and theology that informs these forms of worship.
I was reminded, again (will I ever learn?), that I often interpret my world only through my own cultural lenses. These lenses tend to distort the reality of unfamiliar forms because I’m trying to use “my language” in (what is to me) a foreign environment.
Anyone who has learned a foreign language knows that, while vocabulary words may have similar meaning, translation goes beyond a one-for-one equation. Unless we immerse ourselves in another culture, I believe we will continue to misunderstand that culture because we’re trying to see it through our own cultural lenses.
My Hebrew prof used to remind us that we really begin to get to know a language, not when we read it, or when we speak it, but when we dream it. I think there’s truth in that. When the language begins to permeate our very being, then we have hope of beginning to see things through other’s eyes.
For whatever reason, this is hard for us to do. Some are just not gifted in languages. But the problem is not intellect, it’s the heart has of us have a problem with moving beyond the comfort of our own cultures into the “unknown” of other cultures. Some of us might even be afraid that “other cultures’ might begin to shape “our culture.”
It hurt to read in this book, to learn how these forms of worship are striving to recover from years of oppression (intentional or unintentional) by euro-American, puritan pressure, that viewed certain forms as “spiritual” and others as not. It reminds me that expressions of worship and expressions of church are issues that run much deeper than whether we like the music or not. It seems as though we continue to perpetuate the abuse of control and power in our churches elevating personal preference to “theological conviction.”
The result is a community that becomes fearful of the outside world and is suspicious of anything that is different from the familiar. Even bigger, it keeps us from ever being stretched to grow outside our cultural boundaries and theological discovery.
This doesn’t mean that everything is up for grabs. I do believe it means that we hold too tightly to the way we like things. We see it in the way we react to other cultural forms of worship. We see it in the way some react to the emerging church. We see it in our own churches in the way we react to our own younger tribe called teenagers.
When we realize that when we react this way, the church is only hurting herself?
April 6th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Timely post. Our church, an international one that’s supposed embrace every culture, is struggling with and working through worshiping together using means and methods that work with the native cultural lenses we see through. It’s a challenging and exciting venture. Your thoughts are right on track with what I’m learning. Thanks for sharing!
April 13th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
[...] My friend Steve Argue adds another important perspective to this conversation in his post Worship… Expression and Controversy where he shares his thoughts on the book Diverse Worship: African-American, Caribbean & Hispanic Perspectives which addresses the question of how the contributions of non Anglo cultures to Christian worship has been largely ignored. Steve writes My Hebrew prof used to remind us that we really begin to get to know a language, not when we read it, or when we speak it, but when we dream it. I think there’s truth in that. When the language begins to permeate our very being, then we have hope of beginning to see things through other’s eyes. [...]