Summer Minister  John Monroe

What makes worship meaningful?

That is a constant topic of debate in many religious traditions, where tensions have arisen between some church leaders who seek to hold to traditional forms of worship and others who seek to infuse services with contemporary music and liturgy. In some circles, these ongoing debates have been dubbed the "worship wars."

Vance Bass, contemporary music director at First Unitarian in Albuquerque, NM, clearly comes down on the side of contemporary worship. In a post on his "Liberal Religion Gets Loud" blog, he points to the work of Diana Butler Bass, a scholar focused on American religion and culture. In her recent book, "The End of Church," Bass argues that Americans are searching for religious communities "that are not caught up in political intrigue, rigid rules and prohibitions, institutional maintenance, unresponsive authorities and inflexible dogma but instead offer pathways of life-giving spiritual experience, connection, meaning, vocation and doing justice in the world."

Vance Bass wonders how this dislike of "rigid rules and prohibitions [and] institutional maintenance" extends to worship. "What better way to describe a dogged insistence on traditional worship? Does our weekly worship practice really offer a pathway of life-giving spiritual experience? Or does it focus entirely on the comfort of current members, while avoiding the challenge of change (which might bring in new faces and ideas)?"

Good question. It's fair to say that most religious traditions tend to take a conservative approach to liturgy, rituals and music. But is it merely a matter of comfort? Others might argue that consistency in worship provides clarity of purpose, reinforcing week after week those values that are central to a given community. That clarity can be an important part of the pathway to life-giving spiritual experience.

If that's the case, the question then becomes: How do we embrace the challenge of change within the framework of our tradition?

I am reminded of something I once read about the theory of evolution. According to one scientist (whose name escapes me now), life generally evolves in such a way as to change as little as possible in response to a changing environment - in other words, as much as necessary but no more than that.

Perhaps evolution, with its constant dance between conservation and innovation, offers a more valuable metaphor than the current talk about worship wars.