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This blog is part of a mini-series of blogs that looks at the idea of Christian Social Liturgy as outlined in Theos’ ten-year anniversary report Doing Good: A future for Christianity in the 21st century, and explores what it means and what it might look like in practice.
I am grateful for the critical feedback we – I – have received for our recent series of blogs on Christian Social Liturgy and the future of Christianity in the UK and, more generally, for our 10 year anniversary report, Doing Good.
That is not meant sarcastically. The feedback – much positive, some not – has carried criticisms that have been thoughtful, constructive and encouraging and never merely trolling (is there, I wonder, a word for theological-flavoured trolling and, if not, what should it be? Please tweet your answers).
The most common and, to my mind, most accurate criticism has been with the word “liturgy”, to the effect of: “enough church-speak please”. Thus, for example, Fraser Watt’s short review which remarked that the report’s “suggested solution of renaming it as ‘social liturgy’… just makes it sound churchy.”
In actual fact, Watts’ criticism is less linguistic than it is theological (which he expands in the rest of his blog), but the language point was made by several others who felt that “liturgy” could be somewhat off-putting. Bluntly, most non-Christians aren’t 100% sure what Christian Social Action is; they will be completely confused and possibly alienated by Christian Social Liturgy.
In the light of that, I would like, as a way of rounding off this short series on the blog, to clarify what I was trying to achieve with the phrase Christian Social Liturgy.
Firstly, I’m certainly not advocating using that phrase to describe the kind of activity the report and this blog series talk about to non-Christians. My critics are entirely right to say that the words are likely to do more harm than good in that context.
Second, I’m not even especially concerned what we call that kind of activity, short of the extent to which, what we call something shapes how we do it. Liturgy, for the etymological reasons discussed in chapter three of the report, frames what I see as a key aspect of this activity: its simultaneous and explicit love of neighbour and God. But the word is also, in fact, used simply to mean “not action”.
Writing of how the future of Christianity in the UK is inextricably tied up with the level of Christian Social Action would have been a hostage to fortune, with people rightly pointing out how we’ve been here before and how “painting railings for Jesus”, as a good friend of mine rightly dismisses it, offers no substitute for the gospel or future for the church. As much as anything else, Christian Social Liturgy is an awkward phrase intended to be awkward, to deter people from simply retreating to the familiar comfort zone, and to encourage them to think about the how and why as well as the what of social action.
I confess that I am quite pleased with the liturgical phrase but that, no doubt, is simply untamed vanity for which I should be shriven. But for those less enamoured, other words and phrases will no doubt do the trick of conveying that the future of Christianity in the UK lies not in serving others or in preaching the Word, but in doing both simultaneously.
Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos | @theosnick
Read all our blogs in the 'Christian Social Liturgy' mini-series here.
Image from Caritas Ambrosiana
