I have sometimes thought of writing on the topic of the Church, for I suspect that it is issues around ecclesiology that often form a stumbling block for many people. I have often encountered other Christians who are fascinated by Orthodoxy, want to learn from us and “use” our tradition, but who balk at the full implications of what Orthodox tradition really means. You cannot, to be quite frank about it, have Orthodoxy without the Church – and by this we mean the visible, historically mediated Church which is the Eucharistic community gathered around the bishop. Yet it is this Church that is often the stumbling block.
The Orthodox understanding of the Church is often either completely unknown to other Christians, or else it is seen as scandalously arrogant. There is a common – basically Protestant – assumption that “the Church” is an invisible entity made up of various “denominations” that makes it very difficult for Orthodox (or Roman Catholic) Christians to engage in discussions without appearing arrogant or exclusivist.
Linked to this is a widespread horror at our insistence that the reception of Holy Communion is limited to Orthodox Christians – and those who are suitably prepared for it, at that. Such practices fly in the face of contemporary demands for “inclusivity,” which has come to be seen as far more important than the theological integrity of the Church and its Liturgy.
There are issues around this that I keep wanting to explore more, but Father Stephen Freeman has expressed some of them far better than I could in his recent post The Politics of the Cup. Drawing on Hauerwas, he writes:
Many Christians fail to see the “politics” of their faith. They think one thing and do another (it is another aspect of the “two-storey universe”). Almost nothing is as eloquent an expression of the Church’s life than the “politics of the Cup.” What we do with the Eucharist and how that action displays the inner reality of our life is a deeply “political” expression (in the sense that Hauerwas uses the word).
The one common thread throughout the Protestant Reformation was its opposition to the Church of Rome. Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican Reforms were all embraced by various rising nation states, not so much for the appeal of the particularities of their teaching, but for their willingness to provide cover for the subjugation of the Church to the political demands of secular rulers.
Those demands are far less transparent in the modern period. The legitimacy of the state is today rooted in democratic theories. Those same theories are legitimized by the individualism of popular theology. Eucharistic hospitality is the sacramental expression of individualism. The Open Cup represents the individual’s relationship with Christ without regard for the Church. It is the unwitting sacrament of the anti-Church.
In the last few decades, the same individualism has taken on great immediacy within a consumerist economy. At the same time, we have seen the rise of arguments for a radically individualized reception of communion, one that no longer insists on Baptism. Only the secret intention of the recipient is required. The Eucharist becomes inert – reduced to the status of an object to be chosen or rejected according to the desire of the individual. It is a consumer’s communion with himself.
I have more thoughts on this, including on the violence implicit in inclusivist agendas – if everyone can receive communion, then it will not be long before everyone must do so – and on the underlying monism that influences such thinking, but I don’t know when I’ll get them together. But Father Stephen’s post helps to unmask what many people take for granted, and articulates the true vision of a genuine hospitality that is offered to all. Do go and read the whole post.
November 23, 2013 at 9:37 am
Yes, it’s a very good post, and well worth reading. But the chasm seems to be growing wider each day. And ecclesiology is the biggest divider, yet few seem willing to speak about it. I wrote something about that here Ecclesiology – the stumbling block | Khanya
November 23, 2013 at 11:04 am
Thanks, and I agree. I witnessed a discussion of this on FB after a friend shared it that made me realise that people could read it and still not get it! Not through ill will, but somehow they seem predetermined to use words in a certain way and just can’t grasp why we would object to that!
I suppose that, for those who have grown up with many western and modern assumptions, Orthodox ecclesiology does require a real change in thinking, at quite a deep level. And that doesn’t come easily, especially when it flies in the face of generally accepted values, and also when one has no desire to identify oneself with fundamentalism of whatever stripe.
November 23, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Agreed. Good post. I need a little help with your idea of how “the violence implicit in inclusivist agendas” would apply to communion. I understand the concept and how it plays out in other arenas, but for some reason, I’m having trouble imagining what it would look like where communion is concerned. Do you simply mean that if other churches keep “opening” their practice of the Eucharist more broadly, then Orthodox and Catholic churches will be under ever more pressure from the outside to relax their practices, too? I’m thinking you have more than this in mind, but not sure. Thanks.
November 24, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Thanks for your comment, Dianne. I think that the most obvious thing that I have in mind – apart from the general pressure on the Orthodox and Catholic Churches to change that you mention – is that people are pressured to receive Communion in churches that they are not in communion with (or even in their own churches). I have a Roman Catholic friend who attended an Anglican Eucharist and was put under great pressure to receive communion, with people really taking offense when she stood her ground. I also have Orthodox friends who have attended Roman Catholic Masses and been pressured to receive communion, something they resisted. I also found myself, when still Catholic, in a situation in which I realised that I could not easily attend Mass and not receive communion – and when I did refrain from doing discovered that people took offence.
In an Orthodox understanding, the Holy Gifts are a fire that will consume us if we approach them inappropriately. It seems to me that using them (or whatever church one is talking about’s version of them) in this way is a form of spiritual violence. It is also violence because it disrespects the freedom of the human person at this most intimate of levels.
I have further thoughts about how this freedom of the human person relates to the freedom of God, and of how such tendencies are related to monism, something that I hope to write more on before long…
November 24, 2013 at 9:14 pm
O.K. Now I see what you mean. I guess I’ve been out of circulation with respect to other churches long enough that I haven’t observed the kind of pressure on individuals that you describe, at least not recently. I agree that what you illustrate with your examples is a kind of spiritual violence. Pressuring people in these ways displays a very troubling understanding of communion, and of human freedom, indeed. I look forward to reading your further thoughts on these matters.
November 25, 2013 at 5:39 pm
In a blog post here Intercommunion | Khanya I give some examples of experiences of intercommunion” that I have had, and the last one, where I and an Orthodox priest were put under strong pressure to receive communion in a Roman Catholic church, which some have labelled “liturgical terrorism”.
November 25, 2013 at 8:49 pm
That’s an interesting post, Steve. This discussion has reminded me of an incident I experienced many years ago which may illustrate the flip side of such liturgical violence. I was a recent college graduate on an evangelical Protestant summer short-term mission project in Chicago (a project I recall with some cringing now, but that’s another story). Some members of the team attended a local Catholic church one Sunday. I guess we felt like being religious tourists. At the time, I had not the slightest personal interest in ever considering converting to a non-Protestant church (I’m Orthodox now, heh), but I had a basic level of respect and desire to behave with decent manners at this Catholic service. One young man in our group was a very pushy, proselytizing type, who seemed to have no problems at all with low self-esteem, if you know what I mean. He decided he was going to take communion. Ignorant as I was generally about Catholicism, one thing I knew was that they practiced closed communion, and that this was a serious matter to them. He knew it, too. I expressed some concern, but this guy was exuberantly confident in his decision, without any hint of doubt. I guess he knew best about inclusion and whose view of communion was correct, huh? So he did it.
I didn’t say much more about it, but his behavior really bothered me, and even then, I thought it was, if not a type of “liturgical terrorism,” at least a type of liturgical sabotage.