February, 1998

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Have you ever heard a sermon on the Book of Lamentations — not a series; just one sermon? I cannot remember one — in almost 40 years of sermons. It is as if that book were not in the Bible. I have heard sermons on Jeremiah, but not on Lamentations. Yet Lamentations is the fulfillment of the Book of Jeremiah. Here is how it begins:

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people how is she become as a widow she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy (Lam. 1:1-5).

It goes downhill from here. Here is how it ends: "Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us" (Lam. 5:19-22).

The modern American church is not happy with unhappy endings. It wants upbeat music, upbeat sermons, and upbeat small group meetings. But there is nothing toe-tapping about Lamentations. You can't boil down its message into a three-chord, two-chorus praise song. Lamentations, in the eyes of modern evangelicalism, is ancient history. It has nothing to do with us.

The Book of Lamentations does not mix well with electronic guitars. It mixes quite well with traditional liturgies. The church's prayer books are filled with cries of pain, admissions of shortcomings. A prayer book centers around God the judge, God the healer, God the companion in times of anguish. There is nothing toe-tapping about a prayer book.

A liturgy reflects a church's tradition. The church growth movement has a tradition about thirty years old — about the time the IBM 360 computer was introduced. This tradition is high-tech: electric guitars, electric bass, electric keyboard, a sound mixer with a hundred knobs, expensive lighting, cordless microphones, and — in charismatic circles — transparent plastic pulpits. Unplug its support systems, and you unplug this tradition.

This is a liturgy of success, a liturgy of undreamed-of wealth. It reflects men's economic optimism. We have dreamed of unlimited futures, of wealth for all Americans, of 10% per annum increases in our pension fund portfolios, world without end, Amen. This is not the liturgy of the prayer books.

American Protestantism after 1800 rejected prayer books. Immigrant European churches have kept their prayer books, but Baptists and Methodists, who captured American religion in the nineteenth century, were never comfortable with prayer books. Hymnals, yes, but not prayer books. Now the hymnals are under attack. The war for the hearts of evangelicals is being fought between the hymnal and the overhead projector. Fresh young faces don't want to look down into an old hymnal. They want to look up to the overhead display, which has no musical notation — a uniquely Western language that is fast becoming as dead as Latin. Praise songs are replacing Fanny J. Crosby's hymns.

Change a church's liturgy, and you change the character of the church. Liturgy is not an add-on, not an overlay. It lies at the heart of worship. Liturgy reflects what the worshippers believe about God, man, law, cause and effect, and the future. It also reflects what they think about death.

We have lived for two generations in a world without life-threatening communicable diseases, except for AIDS. We have lived for one generation in a world without polio. We have lived in a high-tech historical anomaly, one step ahead of superbugs that grow increasingly immune to our chemicals. We have forgotten the flu of 1918, which killed 20 million people worldwide — twice the number of deaths of World War I. "It can't happen again," we say. But epidemiologists do not confirm this faith. They know better.

Americans have confined death's domain to our wars to save democracy, our inner city free-fire zones, our old age death centers — misleadingly called convalescent homes — and our abortion clinics. Death is not a familiar face to us, which is fine with us, for death is not toe-tapping. (In late medieval times it was: the St. Vitus dance.)

We are living in a fool's paradise. We believe that our world is beyond God's traditional sanctions. War, yes, but not world war. Not now. We have achieved peace in our time. Little wars, maybe. We'll send black and Hispanic volunteers to die in those, with our middle class sons and daughters in high-tech support roles behind the lines.

Famine? Nonsense. That's ancient history. "Food is!"

Pestilence? Not any more. Our pills will protect us. Our greatest worries are the hole in the ozone layer and global warming: pretty distant threats, really. They make for good documentaries on PBS, which we'll skip this week.

Conclusion: "Plug in the guitars. Get out the overhead projector. Let's party."

Social Crisis and Liturgy

If the Millennium Bug bites with anything like the force that I have been projecting in these letters and in Remnant Review, we will soon see a return to traditional liturgies. Maybe prayer books will not be used by people in the pews, but the sentiments expressed in pastoral prayers in 2000 and beyond will be closer to the Book of Common Prayer than anything seen in today's overhead transparencies. There is nothing like good, old-fashioned fear that grips men's hearts to spark a revival of traditional liturgies. Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but . . . fear itself!" Great rhetoric, false theology. We have God to fear. Wisdom begins with this kind of fear.

The Book of Lamentations is out of favor because American Christians believe that there are no longer covenanted nations under covenantal sanctions invoked by covenantal oaths of citizenship. They believe that there are no longer predictable corporate sanctions in history, either positive or negative. Prayer books reflect a very different theology. They reflect a theology of sin and its consequences in history, of redemption and its consequences in history. They are out of favor today. They will not be out of favor much longer.

When the comfortable economic assumptions of an entire culture are shattered by the return of corporate sanctions, men will face a time of decision. In this century, fearful times have produced a new faith in government. World War I destroyed the international gold standard, which had kept government spending in check for a century. The Great Depression led to the growth of the welfare State. World War II led to the growth of American empire. Every crisis has led to more government spending and control. Robert Higgs's book title, Crisis and Leviathan, summarizes the movement of the twentieth century.

Men have attributed to the State what their forefathers attributed to God. But God tolerates no rivals — not the State, not the free market, not the New World Order.

I receive lots of e-mail through my Web site. I have noticed three theological schemes in those letters that accept the reality of the threat. The Millennium Bug is: (1) the judgment of God; (2) a prelude to the Rapture; (3) the latest plan of the New World Order's Insiders. Each of these assessments reflects a definite view of God, man, law, cause and effect, and the future.

In a sense, all three are knee-jerk reactions. The first theme is my view. I expect God to judge this society. Most Christians find such a view comforting, but only if they don't get caught in the corporate judgment. They appreciate the thought, just so long as they don't wind up writing a version of Lamentations. But a handful of them accept the fact that judgment is necessary, and it must begin at the house of the Lord (I Pet. 4:17).

The second approach is also familiar. Any bad news that threatens America is more proof that Jesus is coming soon, that Christians won't go through the worldwide crisis, and the Jews will have to hunker down and go through the Great Tribulation. Really bad times are designed by God for the State of Israel, not for the good old U.S. of A. — this side of the Rapture, anyway. The theology of imminent escape continues. But not for long.

The third view is based on a theology of the conspiracy as God. A secret association of clever, wealthy, and well-connected people orchestrate world events. They can predestinate the future. God doesn't; the Insiders do. So, even though the Millennium Bug threatens the banking system more than any other industry, and even though the Insiders are all supposed to be connected to, and funded by, the Big Banks, the Millennium Bug just has to be a plan concocted by the Insiders to extend their power — computer-based today, but not after 1999. The theology of omnipotent conspiracy continues. But not for long.

Conclusion

The most popular liturgy in the United States is the liturgy of televised professional sports. Pizza and beer have replaced bread and wine on Sundays. But when millions of men find themselves unemployed, this liturgy will have less appeal. Viewers will have less disposable income to spend. Companies will find that their advertising budgets are killing them — those companies that actually survive the Millennium Bug, that is. The huge, computer-dependent companies that advertise on national television are the most vulnerable to the Bug. The salaries of our 21-inch screen heroes will suffer dramatic declines.

The church liturgies of the twenty-somethings have a short life expectancy today. It will not take the failure of the national power grid to unplug these liturgies, although such a failure would surely have this effect. Hard times are coming, unfamiliar times that will force each person to rethink his priorities. Under such conditions, the Book of Lamentations will make a comeback. So will the kinds of prayers that are found in prayer books.

Men believe that they are beyond the negative corporate sanctions of God. Today, Christians who enjoy the corporate blessings of God cringe at the thought of corporate cursings on a scale that would shake men's faith in the Savior State. They prefer bondage to the State rather than a shackle-shattering crisis of leviathan. The State has become what Alexis de Tocqueville predicted in the 1840's: a bland leviathan. Christians think its yoke is light. They are wrong. Ever-growing government debt points to promises unfulfilled, dreams not come true. The Millennium Bug will merely speed up the default.

I think we are approaching the greatest church growth era of all time. But it will not be based on electric guitars. It will be based on men's realization that the might of men's hands is not the basis of wealth. Unexpected poverty will remind them of this fact.

Sincerely,