Why there is no revival

Today, I've been told why there is no revival -- or, someone has tried to tell me why.

While preparing for a wedding today, I pulled out our old service books for the Holy Mystery of Matrimony. The cover is emblazoned with the title "The Rite of Holy Matrimony According to the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church."

Scrawled in pen by a 50-ish brain that should usually sniff at graffiti on walls and bridges were the unkempt words "or Why there is no Revival."

The underline, I take it, was for emphasis. I also take it, despite the difficult logic implied in the argument, that it is the Orthodox penchant for ritual (i.e., "rite") that is the reason for the supposed lack of "revival."

Of course, one could also say, exploiting the ambiguity, that it is the observance of matrimony that is the suggested cause. I don't think the graffiti artist intended this implication but, you know, there it is. If you're going to speak ambiguously, you'd better be prepared for surprising conclusions.

Anyways, I will make the friendly assumption that the writer (who has ruined one of my service books, and owes my church $3) really did mean well. He (the not-quite-copperplate indicates a male hand) must come from a revivalist perspective, since "revival" is the sine qua non for his ecclesiology.

Revival, for him, must mean an absence of ritual -- what he would call the "traditions of men." It must mean, too, the absence of sacrament: in the case of matrimony, he would never stipulate that marriage is a blessed unification of persons accomplished by the Trinity -- quite objectively transcendent of the emotional state of the participants.

Revival means the absence of historic order and hierarchy. It means the absence of old-fashioned fanciness (e.g., icons, gold chalices, lampada, incense, bells); although new-fashioned fanciness would be okay, because one must have their transparent plexiglass lecterns, ferns, and Amway auditoriums with horns, drums and gurgling fountains.

Revival means not just absence: it means the presence of a quasi-informality, an adoption of a practiced boisterousness, a tragic hybridization of modern idioms (e.g., self-help and temperance movements, business and townhall models) with expositions of isolated scriptures.

It also means the adoption of ecstasy or catharsis as the gold standard. "I was blessed at Church." "The anointing is here." "The Spirit was really there last night." "Revival broke out."

I am sure that much good has come from "revivals" that would past muster with my middle-aged male commentator, whose marginalia included "Rom 3:23 Impossible" atop the priest's petition that Christ might make "their marriage holy and grant that their life be without sin."

[By the way, he had better pray for a life without sin, and hope that such a thing was possible: if sin were irresistible, then there would be no sin.]

[Yes, yes, I too know the Roman Road, and that "all have sinned" -- but that is a far cry from saying "all must sin always," which seems to be the cognitive pothole my friend must have stumbled into.]

I am sure that my revivalist friend, whoever he may be, who was forced to sit through an Orthodox wedding with his eyes turning up in his head, and though his ears have been accustomed to 87 verses of "Alleluia" and "God is so good," but for some arcane reason he scrupled against hearing repetitions of "Lord have mercy" in my place ... I am sure that he has seen sinners repent and, with God's grace, overcome temptation and turn away from sin.

I hope so, because God often works despite the prejudice of graffiti.

Meanwhile, I will call my people to the annual revival of the Great Fast. At every Liturgy, I will issue an Altar Call, in which I intone "In the Fear of God, with Faith and with Love Come Forward."

And my people will come, and receive their Personal Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into their heart, mystically, and in the physical symbol of His very Body and Blood.

And they will be revived.

Precisely because of the Rite.

So buddy, wherever you are, pony up with the $3 you owe me, since I am busy right now dabbing whiteout over your crabbed marginalia.

Unless, of course, you want to come and repair your damage, as your first penance, after your proper chrismation into the very Apostolic Church that gave you the word "revival" in the  first place.

You're welcome to come here to find its meaning.

Comments

[Rob G]

Fr. Jonathan, your post reminds me of something I once heard the Calvinist author David Chilton (who was well on his way to becoming Orthodox when he died of a heart attack, I believe) say in a lecture. He was talking about revivalism and all its various problems, then said that he and another friend had considered authoring a book called "Revival: Its Causes and Cure."

As one who grew up Baptist, then Assemblies of God, I knew exactly what he was talking about!

[Catherine K.]

As someone who grew up around this, (and got away from it rather quickly) and with family members who are still Baptists - it seems to me that "revival" is full of ritual. THIS must happen, THAT must be felt, THESE songs must be sung (or that skit or whatever).

It is interesting that someone chose to mark up the book. It sounds like something got to him or her enough that they had to do something like that. Perhaps you may indeed be hearing from them in the future :)

[Ben]

Your still-Protestant brother mutters a quiet "amen" to your post. The problem with revival is the suggestion that Christians have become apathetic to sin in their lives, and therefore need a jolt of hellfire-and-brimstone and/or ecstatic worship experience. But doesn't the jolt wear off eventually? At some point, doesn't the law of diminishing returns kick in? Perhaps this truth is why some Prots are experiencing the yearning for mystery and ascesis. Today we are awash in "postmodern" (whatever that means) decadence, and the lust for the new and innovative cannot be sated. We get drunk on being trendy. In my all-too-shallow understanding of liturgy and sacrament, I sense in the poignant depth of "Let All Mortal Flesh" and the refrain of "Lord have mercy!" both the familiar and the alien: familiar, because the best of Protestant worship still contains glimmers of Trinitarianism; alien, because I'm still entrenched in a Protest against I know not what.

[Kirk]

"...the Calvinist author David Chilton (who was well on his way to becoming Orthodox when he died of a heart attack, I believe)..."

Really?? Chilton's book "Paradise Restored" changed my life. I grew up in the Churches of Christ, and have never held Calvinistic views, but I was taken with Chilton's method of biblical interpretation and argument for Post-Millennialism. Now I'm on the road to becoming Orthodox myself. Interesting that one of the non-Orthodox people who set me on the road of theological exploration was headed in the same direction!