Strangely Warmed

The prayer of consecration in the United Methodist Church’s Service of Word and Table IV (and in the 1964 Methodist Book of Worship which it copies) closely follows the old Book of Common Prayer pattern and retains the archaic language of its predecessors. For those who would like to use the prayer but prefer contemporary language, the following adaptation approximates the original. I have tried to retain not only the flavor of the original, but its theological themes and points of emphasis as well. Where possible, I have used the original wording. Sentences are shorter, and the resulting grammatical structure required some slight rearrangements for the sake of clarity. I have also slightly altered the order of the petitions in order to better group like-with-like. This adaptation lacks the classic beauty of the original, but take a look, and see how it otherwise compares. The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the ...

Lewis the Younger comments on the awkward attempts at multiculturalism at his ecclesiastical assembly and offers an alternative: catholicity. In an attempt to be multicultural -- which I firmly believe the Church should be -- we have done violence to the cultures we are trying to embrace. We have become cultural  raiders, burning down that which we don't understand and plundering anything with a catchy melody. The irony here is that we do this to replace a liturgy which translates into any language. The Church's historic liturgy transcends time, space, culture, ethnicity, and language. That is, catholic worship is by its very nature multicultural. I should probably also note that one target of his nuevo Lutheran ire is a creed first written and published by United Methodists. Read the whole thing at the link above. UPDATE: Also see part II .