This post was too good to pass up – it highlights the importance of creeds that you actually subscribe to – in other words you stay standing. (Episcopal Life – Feb 2008)
The Rev. Tom Woodward of Santa Fe, N.M., once devised a startling way to show a congregation its belief, unbelief, and the value of community. He calls it “an experience with the Nicene Creed.”
After explaining that they would be reading through the creed phrase by phrase, Woodward would give the charge: “When the phrase is something you understand on one level or another, and believe, stand up or remain standing. When the phrase is something that makes no sense to you, or is something you do not believe, sit down or remain sitting.”
The resulting dance, he said, appeared to be something akin “to a rebellious exercise class,” with folks popping up, sitting down and squirming to watch their neighbors as they stood and sat and stood again.
At the end, Woodward would ask what they had observed. “The answers were always the same: No one stood all the way through the creed, and no one stayed seated all the way through, and there was always someone standing for every phrase.”
Martin Downes over at Against Heresies points out another disturbing trend with “minimalist doctrines” (broad but minimal statements of faith) which he laments as the a-historicizing of Christianity:
Phil Johnson …referred to the short life-span of theological views held by the people in their twenties. Every eighteen months or so some people go through a revolution in their thinking, a paradigm shift that leaves behind one view and is off touting a new one…
Hence, some people change their theology more often than Madonna changed her image in her illustrious pop career. The point at issue is not of course the exact time frame involved but the short term exposure to, and grasp of, a particular view or church tradition.
Some think that if we would just use “minimalist doctrines” we’d avoid “creedal gymnastics”. True, but wouldn’t we be left with congregations that could remain standing but all to ready to hop to the next doctrine (heresy) that comes along? Maybe that would be the new definition of “Hip-Hop” in relation to doctrine – congregants ready to hop to the next doctrine every 18 months, in order to stay standing to their minimalist “creed”.
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