Advent (or "More Evangelical Goofiness")

Following a bizarre series of events, I found myself in a Southern Baptist church on Sunday morning. There's a story behind all this related to a car breaking down but nobody would find that in the least compelling so I shall skip it except to say that there was a very good reason for me to do this.

In any event, I attended a Southern Baptist church this past Sunday. In fact, it was Southern Baptist Church #2 (last mentioned here). And as obvious as this may be for some of you, I was once again struck by how evangelicalism really is a stripped down, unglued, incoherent photocopy of the catholic faith (which I use in the broad sense rather than specifically Roman Catholicism, although obviously that's the best application here).

For example, most catholic (lowercase "c") churches, particularly Roman Catholic and Anglican, have some sort of choir. And generally the choir members will wear traditional choir dress.

Well, obviously tradition (selectively) has no truck with the evangelicals so they usually skip that. Except that on some level, they still understand the value of a type of uniform for the choir, oops, sorry, the "worship leaders" so they generally try to dress them similarly to one another. Usually it's a dark color (blacks, dark grays, etc.) off-set by another color. Anybody care to guess which color it was this past Sunday?

Anyway, such was the case with SBC #2, and on zillions of previous occasions. So once again they claim they're skipping tradition ("that's not 'biblical'!") but then they attempt to sneak a watered down version of it in anyway. There's a very strange effort from evangelicals to replace tradition and liturgy with things that serve effectively the same aesthetic and practical functions but without the "burden" of centuries of observance behind it. Apparently the guiding philosophy is to change the names and a few particulars of traditional religious practice and hope nobody notices.

This is one of those things I never really paid much attention to when I was lost in evangelicaldom myself but which sticks out like a sore thumb now.

Apart from that silliness though, I've noticed a trend lately where evangelicals have started attempting to hijack the liturgical calendar. Selectively and piecemeal, of course, because that's how they do everything.

Case in point: Advent. SBC #2, which is as evangelical as the day is long, has started using the word the same way the catholics do. I'll cut the Presbyterians and Methodists some slack on this one since some type of Advent observance isn't a new thing for them. But it is foreign to the Southern Baptists; this I do affirm.

Of course, the "observance" of it is primarily confined to throwing the word itself around a lot. There was no real talk about penitence, of course. No, no, you have to call it "serious reflection". Same thing, more or less, just different words without centuries of authority and tradition behind it.

They also made sure to dress the choir, oops, "worship leaders" in black suits and violet dress shirts. The lead pastor got in on the fun too with a violet necktie. Big coincidences all, I'm sure.

When I was an evangelical, I was confused by how annoyed the Catholics could get about our Easter and Christmas services. It just didn't make any sense to me. Their attitude seemed to be that we were co-opting some of their traditions, customs and beliefs for our own use but without putting ourselves under any sort of real church authority. I found it absolutely baffling back then.

Suffice it to say, their outrage makes a hell of a lot more sense now.