Making the Eucharist Speak Middle American: Liturgical Inculturation in a WASP Setting

Learned pastor, skilled writer and editor,
Intrepid leader, indefatigable guide,
Witty genealogist, generous friend—

True catechist of the Church, Methodist and Ecumenical
Wesley's "knowledge and vital piety" have embraced
in you to bring forth fruitful reform and renewal.

With legendary ecclesial savvy, you have
nurtured authentic evangelical diversity
sourced in the centrality of Word and Sacrament—
all with a caring heart.

For these graced gifts marking your steadfast vocation
in this golden jubilee year of your ordination
we shout "HALLELUJAH!" giving thanks.

Here is the text of his address to the academy.

Blessed be God, whose blessings are beyond number, who has brought us all to this time and place, and to whom we offer praise and thanksgiving.

My thanks also to the Academy for awarding me this honor, and for admitting me into the company of the illustrious women and men who have previously received this award. Your generosity is especially astonishing in view of the fact that, compared with most of you, my academic credentials in liturgical studies are highly irregular and my primary ministry has not been in academia. Much of what I know about liturgy has been gathered from reading your writings and by osmosis while participating in the Academy from its beginnings and especially in the Eucharistic Prayer and Theology seminar.

Special thanks to my dear friends and past Berakah recipients Jim White and Don Saliers, my constant co-conspirators in eucharistic reform, who served with me on the task force that guided this process in The United Methodist Church. Their liturgical scholarship, their skills with the English language, Jim's historical scholarship, and Don's theological scholarship were essential to the reform of our official liturgy of Word and Table that took place in the years from 1968 to1992. I am personally indebted to them for much of what I have learned about liturgy.

Thanks also to many others, in The United Methodist Church and ecumenically, who have participated in the reform of our official liturgies during those crucial 24 years. Many of them continue to work for liturgical renewal. They include scholars, pastors, church musicians and other liturgical artists, church members, and seekers. They also include many congregations where I have experienced vital liturgy—especially the Edgehill United Methodist Church of Nashville, where our family has worshiped for more than 30 years. These persons and congregations will never know how much they taught me and contributed to the cause. The years when I was at the heart of our denomination's liturgical reforms was, in the light of hindsight, a window of opportunity. Much of what I contributed was a matter of being at the right place at the right time.

Thanks most particularly to my wife Martha, whose unfailing love and support for me has been essential to all I may have accomplished.

While all the official liturgies and rites of The United Methodist Church were rethought and reformed between the 1960s and the 1990s, the reform closest to my heart was that of the Eucharistic Liturgy, what we United Methodists call the Service of Word and Table. It is to this particular reform—and continuing challenge—that I shall devote the rest of this response.

The long decay of Protestant eucharistic theology and practice following the Reformation and later the Enlightenment has been well researched and described by my colleague Jim White and many others. So have the valiant efforts on behalf of eucharistic renewal by such reformers as Luther, Calvin, and the Wesley brothers. Even in early American and frontier Protestant worship the Lord's Supper was more important than is often realized.

But rather than summarize the readily available research of others I shall simply fast-forward to the year 1968, when The United Methodist Church was created by the union of the Anglican-descended Methodist Church and the German-American Evangelical United Brethren. Both denominations, while international, were primarily American. They shared a Wesleyan heritage, which included the high sacramental theology in the sermons and other writings of John Wesley, the eucharistic hymns of his brother Charles, official confessions of faith derived from the Anglican 39 Articles, and eucharistic liturgies derived from that of the Church of England—in which the Wesley brothers were priests to the ends of their lives.

This heritage, however, had been diluted and sometimes well-nigh washed away since the 18th century. The official liturgies inherited from the Church of England had been weakened through the years by repeated amendments, motivated by a rationalistic theology rooted in the Enlightenment. These liturgies were further weakened by generations of pastors who had received little eucharistic instruction or formation. Such pastors often abridged or even ignored the official liturgical texts and did little to bring sound eucharistic doctrine or spirituality to their congregations.

The newly-formed United Methodist Church established a Commission on Worship, and I was elected one of its members, representing the clergy of the Northeastern Jurisdiction. I had been an invited guest at several meetings of the Commission on Worship of the former Methodist Church in my capacity as national president of the largely Methodist Order of Saint Luke from 1965 to 1968. The new commission had a meager budget that provided for no paid staff; and at its first meeting in June 1968 I was elected its volunteer executive secretary. I had been a pastor in western Pennsylvania since 1954 and would remain pastor of a church in Erie until 1972. I added my duties with the Commission to those I already had as pastor, and the church office also functioned as the office of the Commission.

The dominant item on the Commission's agenda was a perceived crisis in worship. Both the Methodists and the Evangelical United Brethren had official hymnals and books of worship that were recent but already perceived to be out of date. There was a widespread call for more contemporary worship, focusing on contemporary music, a less formal style, and more openness to creativity—all in the name of relating to a new generation. The Commission solicited examples of liturgical creativity from local churches and between 1969 and 1976 sponsored the publication of 5 collections of contemporary worship resources, 4 of them edited by David Randolph, who was on the staff of the denominational Board of Evangelism.

In 1969 the Commission also held a national convocation on worship in Kiel Auditorium, Saint Louis, attended by about 2,000 United Methodists. The presenters, both in plenary sessions and in numerous breakout groups, displayed diverse ideas of the directions in which worship should be moving. But most importantly, the Commission listened to the often-stormy discussions and circulated a detailed evaluation form.

The Commission received a clear message from the convocationgoers. Your main effort, they told us, should not be to encourage our creativity. It should be to do what only the Commission can do—carefully prepare the best possible alternatives to the present official liturgies, for pastors and congregations to test, with an eye to their eventually becoming official.

This we did, beginning with the eucharistic liturgy that was published as a leaflet entitled The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper: An Alternate Text 1972. Jim White was its writer, and the Commission members functioned as an editorial committee. At one of the editorial meetings Jim White and I had an impromptu lunch conversation at the Tartan Tray Cafeteria at O'Hare Airport, where we formulated our vision of making available to United Methodists a full set of officially endorsed services representing the best thinking in the ecumenical liturgical movement. Not your usual airport cafeteria conversation! The Commission was readily persuaded to adopt this vision and to see the Alternate Lord's Supper Text in preparation as a first step. The text was published as a leaflet in time to be used in the opening service of Holy Communion at the 1972 United Methodist General Conference.

That same General Conference merged several agencies, including the Commission on Worship, into a Discipleship Ministries. I was made a full-time member of its staff, and our family moved to Nashville. For the next 21 years, I was director of worship resource development for the denomination.

For 20 of these years an editorial committee consisting largely of Board members directed the development of our new official Ritual. Its membership changed every 4 years, but throughout the process leading to the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal and 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship they worked hard and effectively to produce services that would 1) represent the best ecumenical thinking, 2) represent the best thinking about our distinctively United Methodist heritage, and 3) enculturate these services so that they would speak to and for the widest range of English-speaking Americans.

With regard to the Eucharist in particular, it had been clear from the beginning that the Alternate Text 1972 needed further revision and was only a part of what was needed for services of Word and Table. In 1973 Jim White, Don Saliers, and I were named the writing task force for services of Word and Table. What we drafted was repeatedly submitted to the Editorial Committee, who would critique it and send it back to us with instructions for revision until they were satisfied. The 1972 text and later 1980 and 1984 revised texts were published and approved for trial use in local churches, a total of over 2 million copies were distributed, and we received much helpful feedback. Jim White served as editor for the Committee from 1977 to 1981, and I served in that capacity beginning in 1981. Eventually these services of Word and Table were endorsed by the Discipleship Ministries and then adopted by the United Methodist General Conference as part of the official denominational Hymnal and Book of Worship.

In other publications I have described this whole process in more detail and done an exposition of the eucharistic theology, explicit and implicit, in the texts and rubrics of our Services of Word and Table.

But as these liturgies were taking shape, we became more and more aware that no collection of officially approved eucharistic texts could meet the needs of all United Methodists. We had recognized from the beginning that texts were needed in multiple languages, and that not only translation but enculturation would be needed for them. We came increasingly to see that the diversity even of English-speaking United Methodists was so great, so complex, and so rapidly changing that we could not create official texts to meet every need.

Although we had for a few years turned our attention away from experiments in creative and innovative worship, it had become obvious that movements for contemporary worship had continued and were attracting ever wider support as the church sought to win the allegiance of younger generations and of seekers. It had also become clear that to think of liturgical diversity only in terms of a traditional-contemporary dichotomy was a great oversimplification that reflected, among other things, white Anglo male tunnel vision.

First, there were several different groups of traditionalists, whose stories are part of the larger story of Methodist enculturation in America.

Early Methodists, coming to America beginning in the 1760s with John Wesley's combination of Anglicanism with a pragmatic passion for evangelism, had quickly found that the Anglican liturgy Wesley sent to America was inadequate for the needs of most Americans. In particular, most Americans, especially on the frontier, preferred an oral rather than print-oriented style of worship and were suspicious of the sincerity of prayers read out of a book. In 1792 the American Methodists, who by then had been self-governing for 8 years, drastically abridged what Wesley had sent them. The Antecommunion, or Service of the Word, in the Lord's Supper liturgy and the service of Morning Prayer were both replaced by a simple directory for a preaching service without prescribed texts. The Cranmerian texts for Holy Communion were, however, retained for what we would later call the Service of the Table.

Through the first half of the 19th century the predecessor denominations of the present United Methodist Church became thoroughly and pervasively American and had a sustained period of rapid growth. American society in those days was dominated by its white Anglo-German Protestant majority, and this together with our Wesleyan Anglican origins gave our ecclesiastical and liturgical culture a pervasive WASP cast that has pervaded our liturgical traditions ever since.

Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries these denominations continued to grow, but at a slower rate. American society was becoming predominantly industrial, urban, and literate. Immigration, primarily from other European nations, was making America more and more culturally diverse. My ecclesiastical ancestors continued their evangelistic ministries, but these produced gradually diminishing results. Our extraordinarily successful enculturation to rural, agrarian, Anglo-German early America gave us a character that was hard to change, liturgically and otherwise, as America changed.

Distinct liturgical subcultures and traditions gradually developed among Methodists. Like a stew slowly cooking over time, these in varying degrees flavored one another, while at the same time keeping their identities, as meat, potatoes, or carrots do in a stew. In describing them I must necessarily oversimplify.

1. Some, whom we might call semi-Anglican traditionalists, came to want worship that was more formal, used more printed texts, and was culturally and aesthetically more sophisticated. They tended to be more urban, more affluent, and more highly educated than their forbears. They looked both to their Wesleyan Anglican roots and to their Episcopalian neighbors for liturgical guidance. They led in the development of the two liturgies that during the 20th century had come to be printed in denominational hymnals—an order modeled on Anglican Morning Prayer and Sermon for the majority of services that were non-eucharistic and an adaptation of the full Anglican service of Holy Communion, with printed texts for both Word and Table.
   
2. Others, whom we might call free church traditionalists, wanted worship that was less formal and more oral. These tended to be more rural, or if they were urban they tended to be less affluent and sophisticated. They were more deeply influenced by late 19th and early 20th century revivalism. If they used printed texts for Holy Communion—and sometimes they didn't—it would be only for the Service of the Table, and then it was often further abridged.

   Alongside these two Anglo traditions were racial and ethnic traditions.
   

3. Of these, the oldest and largest was African American, dating from the earliest days of American Methodism in the 18th century. Although the majority of African American Methodists gradually separated into independent African American denominations that continue to this day, a large group remained and still remain in The United Methodist Church. Their distinctive and richly diverse cultural and liturgical traditions are an inportant part of today's United Methodism
   
4. The United Methodist Church had also came to include many Native Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. Some American congregations had retained distinctive European national traditions. There was, and is, a wide diversity of traditions, liturgical and otherwise, within each of these broad categories.
   
5. Finally, although most Methodists outside the United States had come to be in their own self-governing denominations, some remained part of The United Methodist Church and had their own diverse traditions and enculturation issues.

Challenging each of these liturgical traditions were movements for contemporary worship.

These, too, were highly diverse. In each traditional subculture younger generations were dealing with the distinctive challenges of coming of age in that subculture. Some were on the cultural "right," usually evangelical or charismatic and tending to focus on the need for more structure in their personal lives. Others were on the cultural "left," tending to focus on liberation, empowerment, full inclusion, and equal rights. Many combined elements of the cultural "right" and "left."

For all their diversity, these contemporary movements tended to have much in common. They were formed in a post-industrial, post-literate society where images, ideas, information, and experiences were increasingly being shared electronically. They all were reacting to radical changes in American family patterns. They tended to be highly ideological and have an agenda for the transformation of society. They reacted against whatever liturgical traditions had been handed down to them and were developing their own distinctive forms of worship.

These cultural and liturgical currents were colliding in local congregations in what came to be known as "the worship wars." While the focus of attention was usually on non-eucharistic worship, we knew that the full service of Word and Table would not become normative in weekly congregational worship if it could not be enculturated in all segments of this rich and complex diversity. As we listened carefully to all these voices, we knew that The United Methodist Church could not produce a collection of official texts that would meet everyone's needs.

So we made a radical decision. For the first time in our denominational history we made a pattern rather than a text basic to our whole eucharistic liturgy, including the Service of the Table and even the Eucharistic Prayer or Great Thanksgiving. This pattern, which with appropriate modifications was also basic for services where the Lord's Supper is not celebrated, was placed at the beginning of both Hymnal and Book of Worship. This was followed by texts and rubrics to provide models and guidance, including three versions of the liturgy we had prepared, a liturgy using the Cranmerian language still beloved by many traditionalists, and a collection of seasonal and occasional eucharistic prayers. Rubrics also provided basic guidance for those who wished to compose their own eucharistic prayers.

Knowing that clergy needed help in taking advantage of this freedom, we conducted workshops and also prepared and published a series of auxiliary resources to help both clergy and laity understand eucharistic theology and more effectively use the eucharistic liturgies in the new official hymnal and book of worship.

The denomination authorized United Methodists in other countries and American United Methodists worshiping in other languages to develop their own official liturgies with appropriate enculturation, and this they have done and will continue to do.

As we all know, other Christian communions have also revised their eucharistic liturgies in the past generation. What is most striking is the degree of convergence these liturgies represent. This convergence is due in large measure to the fact that key leaders in their development met in such arenas as the Consultation on Common Texts and this Academy and were in frequent consultation with one another, constantly sharing ideas and texts as each denomination did its work.

This suggests that, just as we learned from one another in the process of revising our liturgies, so we can profitably share with one another our reflections on what we have accomplished and what remains to be accomplished. As a contribution to this sharing, I submit several observations and reflections relating to the eucharistic resources in the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal and 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship and the broader challenges that remain.

My short critique in the light of our experience to date is this: What we did, we did well. What we have not yet done, has left us with enormous challenges.

My longer reflections are based on the vision that guided our liturgical reforms in the past generation—a vision that I believe is still sound. First, our worship, eucharistic and otherwise, should represent the best ecumenical thinking and the best thinking about our various United Methodist heritages. Second, this worship should be enculturated so that it speaks to and for the people at worship. In short, it needs to be both authentic and relevant.

Put another way, it needs to be both cosmopolitan and local. It should speak for the whole community of saints—the universal Church of all times and all places that is invisibly present as we assemble in services of Word and Table—as well as speaking to the condition of those visibly present in each local assembly. No small task!

Judging by these standards, much has been accomplished.

I submit that the theology expressed in our present Word and Table services, and specifically in the eucharistic prayers, is basically sound. Various helpful criticisms and suggestions have been made for its improvement, by members of this Academy and others. Significant changes should and will be made when the time comes for revising these services. But we have come a long way in what I believe to be the right direction.

The language of these texts represents our entry into the ecumenical search for an appropriate modern liturgical English language. What we have so far produced falls far short of the eloquence of a Thomas Cranmer. Furthermore, in our diverse society, there is no "one-size-fits-all" English liturgical language style; there are many. But we hope that the texts we have will prepare the way for more eloquent texts in the years to come.

These new eucharistic texts have been widely used.

In this connection, we were wise to remember that, in our denomination as in much of Protestantism, official liturgical texts and rubrics have far more power to permit and legitimate than they do to require, prohibit, or set limits. We knew better than to pepper our eucharistic rubrics with unenforceable "shalls" and "shall nots." Strict compliance with our denominational Ritual has from time to time been urged in the past but seldom if ever consistently enforced. In today's cultural climate, enforcement would be harder than ever. On the other hand, if a service or a text or rubric appears with official approval, it is hard to deny that those who wish to use it may do so. We have legitimated and made available good eucharistic resources. We have also legitimated creativity and continuing development.

Already many unofficial eucharistic prayers and other liturgical texts have been published. While these are of widely varying quality, they further widen the range of resources available to presiders at the Eucharist.

In addition, a number of recent books and other publications, by members of this Academy and by others, have provided instruction in eucharistic theology and the effective celebration of the Eucharist.

We have the Revised Common Lectionary, which supports preaching that points to the paschal mystery and moves toward the Service of the Table to follow.

We have seen faculty who are members of this Academy teaching courses in worship at each of our seminaries. There has been much good teaching about the Eucharist in our seminaries in recent years—by persons present in this room and by others. One can hope that their efforts wil bear increasing fruit in years to come. Many clergy now serving have been trained by these teachers. Many others have joined the modern liturgical movement through continuing education courses, training events, reading, and participation in ongoing groups such as the Order of Saint Luke.

As a result, many congregations have experienced dramatic improvements in the quality and frequency of their eucharistic celebrations. There are dozens of congregations in the United Methodist denomination alone where the principal service every week is eucharistic, and there are hundreds more where the Eucharist is celebrated every week at some other service. A small but growing minority of church members give evidence of wanting weekly communion. For the past 30 years our family has worshiped in a congregation where the main Sunday services are eucharistic. I can testify that this long ago became a practice in which the congregation has full ownership and that has in no way interfered with, but rather has strengthened, its ministry in a difficult inner city neighborhood.

But let's take a closer look at what we have not yet done.

We have so far not been able to educate and form the great majority of either United Methodist congregations or their clergy in the theology, spirituality, and effective celebration of the Eucharist. There is only so much that good texts and rubrics, by themselves, can do, especially when clergy ignore them. There is only so much that simply producing and advertising good interpretive resources can accomplish.

I'm happy that in 2000 our General Conference set up a task force to study the Eucharist, survey attitudes and practices among United Methodists, and produce a document on the Eucharist for approval by the 2004 General Conference and subsequent churchwide study. Its chair, Ed Phillips, and several other members belong to this Academy. Its work to date has been both sobering and encouraging. One of its findings to date is that United Methodist people in general have a high regard for Holy Communion but that they and their clergy are woefully uninformed about it.

I can support these findings from my own observations. United Methodist people in general certainly sense the numinous power and presence of Christ in receiving communion. This is something we can build upon. On the other hand, I am disturbed by what I observe actually happening in many congregations when the Eucharist is celebrated.

Happy as I am that we have the freedom to modify and compose eucharistic liturgies, I have to conclude that our teaching has not yet equipped most of our clergy to do this. Few, for example, appear to be able on their own to compose anything remotely resembling an adequate eucharistic prayer.

While the lectionary is widely used, much if not most preaching in my experience, even when the Eucharist is celebrated, has little or no apparent connection to the paschal mystery, although many give an invitation to Christian discipleship following the sermon. On occasions when Holy Communion follows, it is all too often perceived as something extraneous, "tacked on" to the preaching service.

I wish I could say that these criticisms apply only to clergy long out of seminary, but some recent graduates of our more highly regarded seminaries fall equally short. Were they not exposed to a better understanding of the Eucharist in either theology or worship courses? Or did they not learn how to be effective change agents and for this reason gave up when they discovered the gap between what they were taught in seminary and the expectations of the congregations they found themselves serving? Or does this mean that the old adage is true that seminarians graduate with three theologies—what they have been taught in theology courses, what they have learned in preaching or worship courses, and what they really believe? Was their eucharistic theology, or lack thereof, examined during their candidacy for ordination?

In any event, we need more emphasis upon the continuing education and formation of our clergy. There are some things that clergy are not ready to learn until they are in the full-time parish ministry. I can say from my own experience over the years that clergy in continuing education are a joy to teach.

But it takes more than classroom instruction to form clergy in a vital eucharistic spirituality. They need the experience of regularly receiving Holy Communion, preferably every week. Many clergy and laity alike have what might be called "eucharistic anorexia;" they have been on a eucharistic starvation diet for so long that they have lost their appetite for it. They need to experience the Eucharist celebrated in such a way that they acquire an appetite for it.

Where can seminarians and clergy experience the joy of communion? Perhaps in weekly celebrations on a seminary campus. Perhaps a nearby church offers weekly celebrations at some time in the week when seminarians or clergy are free to attend. Seminarians and clergy alike may participate in groups such as an Order of Saint Luke chapter that provide such an opportunity at least monthly.

For that mattter, pastors can be empowered by experiencing communion at eucharistic celebrations at which they themselves preside.

I think of my own pastoral experience. In my first pastorate after seminary almost 50 years ago the congregation had a history of poorer-than-average attendance on communion Sundays, but after I had been there a year or two I noticed that attendance went up on communion Sundays. One day I said to the Sunday school superintendent that I was pleasantly surprised at the rise in attendance on communion Sundays. He replied: "Preacher, don't you know why? Word's got out that you preach better and do everything better on communion Sundays."

Everything in my experience suggests that if we want to increase the frequency of Holy Communion the best way to begin is to celebrate in such a way that the people want it more often. In particular, the preaching should be the best of which the preacher is capable and should lead the people toward the communion to follow.

Since moving to Nashville 30 years ago I have been affiliated with an inner city church whose worship is eucharistic every Sunday, in a lively style that is both traditional and contemporary. The congregation has made it clear to 3 different senior pastors during this time that this is what they want. As a result of this experience I'd now have a hard time settling for less.

In the cause of liturgical renewal we have come astonishingly far by faith, and we have a long way yet to go. It is a journey that cannot be completed in one generation. We are like runners in a relay, passing a baton to those who come after us. I look back with gratitude for all that I have seen come to pass, and I look forward in hope and faith to a future that is in the hands of God.

Copyright © 2003 Hoyt L. Hickman. Posted on the Center for Worship Resourcing website by permission of the author. Any use of this article requires the consent of the author, Hoyt L. Hickman, [email protected].