One further note--to add something that came up after I sent this piece off...

A commenter reminded me that the congragtions of Mozart's day complained about his masses--they sound too much like the theatre for their taste. And that seems to fit with my point... While a Classical or Baroque Mass setting may seem transcendent now, it may well have seemed too imminent *then*--the issue being the changing standards of the cultural "ear" at any given time.

Thanks for the theological illumination of a question dear to our hearts. Surely in a trinitarian tradition -- which offers us the gift of recognizing God out there as well as God present in the everyday -- there is room for both kinds of music? I find whenever the balance tips too far in either direction, I get liturgically antsy. ;-)

This is exactly how I've looked at worship and liturgy in the Church.

I was called to ordained ministry out of an anglo catholic parish, where the liturgy could be described as "transcendent." In the parish I've served out of seminary, the flagship service is the "family" service. Children participate at all levels. And the music is so "immanent" that during Stewardship season, the band played the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love."

I wonder what it is about "transcendent" and "immanent" worship that attracts its devotees. Perhaps if we can understand that better, we might be able to compose liturgies that speak to those who need to hear the divine in their language.

Thanks Derek, for speaking to something I'm deeply concerned about in "my language."

I wonder.

I may be alone here, but after years of worshiping in all manner of liturgies, and while watching fellow worshippers slowly drift away, I am left wondering if one of the issues we face is that framing the liturgy dialogue as an “either/or” limits us in terms of taking the next bold step in development of liturgies that speak to our souls, that open us to experiencing the transformational power of worship, and that seek to draw the stranger into God’s presence with us in worship. While the reasons for the decline in church attendance are complex and numerous, I often wonder if we are ignoring a fairly straightforward possibility—that folks stand in the back of our “traditional” and “contemporary” services, and find that they do not experience God in either. I also wonder if the debates over classical vs. folk, organ vs. guitar, vernacular vs. Elizabethan, and even transcendent vs. immanent close us off to “3rd possibilities”, to the development of liturgies that are new, bold, and most of all missional; liturgies that speak to our long liturgical tradition and celebrate God’s continued work in and through our 21st century lives; liturgies that challenge as well as comfort us. If, as theologians have suggested, liturgy is dynamic--if it changes us and is changed by us and changes us again-- then I wonder if, whenever we limit our discussion to the liturgy of a certain place and time (whether it is 1890 or 1980), we don’t also limit our ability to engage the Triune God as 21st century Christians and seekers.

I would offer that when we talk about liturgy we are talking about our experience of God’s transcendence and immanence (and that of the fellow worshipper we have yet to meet), a subjective phenomenon by definition. While I agree that some folks experience God as transcendent in traditional chant, organ music, stained glass, etc. and some experience God as immanent in a guitar Eucharist courtesy of the St. Louis Jesuits, the reverse is also true. I would be reticent to define chant (or stained glass, or organ music, or Elizabethan language) as transcendent and a contemporary hymn (or guitar, or contemporary architecture, or the vernacular)as not. All of the aspects of liturgy described above (and a host of others) can, to the individual, evoke the transcendent God, the immanent God, both, or neither. I wonder if we have to choose between the transcendent and the immanent God in our corporate worship.

I have a few practical thoughts:
• We could do with more honesty about the role of “nostalgia” in our liturgical preferences; we prevent ourselves from exploring liturgies and music that move us out of our comfort zone
• There are beautiful, poetic and transformational Eucharistic and other prayers written over the centuries-- and being written today-- that could broaden our liturgical experience and liturgical repertoire; if any of them have the ability to draw just one person to the knowledge and love of God, then they are worth taking seriously
• Organs and guitar (and of course trumpet on Easter morning) are not the only musical instruments that are relevant in worship or in a discussion about worship. Strings, woodwinds, and the a cappella human voice deserve consideration as the musical anchors of our regular worship services
• There is a wealth of hymnody, ancient and contemporary, composed here and abroad, that is not found in the 1982 Hymnal or the repertoire of the St. Louis Jesuits, but it is near impossible to find churches that devote the resources to seeking it out and using it in well-planned intentional liturgies.

This discussion is a relevant and timely one. For me the question is not “traditional” or “contemporary”, but WHAT NEXT?

Derek, Jean, and David,

I wonder about this dichotomy. Does it describe something we recognize instinctively or is it a distinction we've learned and apply? Is it incisive or approximate? Outliers in worship experience, places and modes that are off our regular map don't seem to fit (my impression at least).

I think of the botafumiero at the end of the Pilgrims' Mass at Santiago de Campostela, the place packed with sweaty, exhausted pilgrims, a Romanesque cathedral whose walls are lined with backpacks and pilgrim staffs, and they bring out this human-sized thurible, attached it to a rope as thick as a man's arm that goes up to a pulley in the crossing, so that four men on the ground can make it swing the length (and at its furthest out also the height) of the crossing. As it begins to swing, sometimes the music is brooding, booming organ music that reminds me of Phantom of the Opera, sometimes it's a solo soprano doing ethereal Latin chant to a delicate organ accompaniment. As it gains speed and height, it's got flames coming out it until it's hurtling past the altar at 60 miles an hour. Transcendent? It feels wildly out of our ordinary experience and in the presence of the holy. Immanent? It's weirdly and wonderfully earthy and elemental. Try searching youtube for Botafumiero.

And I think of the Timkat (Epiphany, Baptism of Christ) 36 hour long outdoor liturgy in Addis Ababa. Twelve processions from the major churches in Addis converge on a huge outdoor field. They come dancing and drumming. The gathering rite only takes a couple of hours. The choirs, like a Charles Ives vision of heaven are all singing different music to different rhythms. When everyone's gathered it's 150,000 people, a barbecue at the edges, a thousand year old Woodstock-like (Greenbelt-like?) prayer meeting. It's awe-inspiring, quirky, energetic, funny, humbling, inspiring, sometimes boring (and I could go on). Is that immanenent or transcendent.

I think of Anglican liturgy in Africa - Catholic, Pentecostal, participatory, rhythmic, musical, community-minded, and how I've seen and heard it blend (seamlessly at best) Afro-pop, plainsong and Anglican chant, traditional African music and hymns I recognized from the 1940 hymnal (or maybe Hymns Ancient and Modern).

I think our habitual dichotomies may obscure something powerful in either 'opposite' and blind us to the possibility of a powerful synthesis of both immanence and transcendence.

What are we actually talking about. I don't have a satisfactory answer, but I suspect that what we call immanent feels easily accessible and that its danger is banality (though at its best simple music and strong direct language are capable of poetry and mystical heights). I suspect that what we call transcendent is less immediately accessible. At its worst its forbidding, and at its best quietly compelling or demanding.

After I sent the note I thought of a couple of clear experiences of musical synthesis of immanence and transcendence closer to home. In 1977 I was at a 'Breath of Life, a Simple way to Pray,' Prayer Workshop/conference at Kanuga with Ron DelBene. We were sharing the place with a group of rural Appalchian pastors and their wives, of what non-denominational stripe I don't know, but their shape-note singing that drifted our way as we were doing our work was country-music-direct, simple as a nursery rhyme, and speech-stopping, hair-raising awesome.

A couple of years ago, our congregation hosted Eugene Rivers, a black Pentecostal intellectual community-organizing activist and invited a neighboring independent black Pentecostal congregation to join us talking with him. Their a cappella singing was like nothing I'd ever heard. Eugene said it was deep country black from Mississippi, the tonalities, rhythms and call and response tradition that got distilled (cleaned up and tamed maybe as well) into what we know as spirituals and Gospel.

Another parallel dichotomy that I think we're playing with in immanent and transcendent is evident (vs?) mysterious. Both the shape note singing and the country black singing were earthy and transporting/transformative and mysterious and compelling evident - not asking for an 'ah...!' but demanding a 'Yes!'

I think part of the problem - a major part, actually - is that we are and have been much too focused on the "Sunday show," and hardly focused at all on faith in daily life, and what that's about and how to live it.

People cannot learn and live the faith by going to religious services once a week, no matter how terrific the show is. And there is almost no teaching of the practice of prayer in most parishes, nor - dare I say it - can you find the Daily Office offered almost anywhere.

People who are formed and grounded in faith do not drift away; they go to Eucharist on Sunday to be renewed and reinvigorated, not for their once-a-week shot of religion. It doesn't really matter what instruments are played, or whether there are guitars or chant or drums in the services; if there is no daily habit and practice of faith - and no instruction in it - people will not find it necessary to belong to the church. Why would anybody belong to such a weird, retrograde organization if not for what it offered that isn't offered anyplace else?

It seems to me just about as plain and simple as that. The liturgy at a place like St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square is what you might call "transcendent" (and at the same time the staff there is very warm and welcoming), and I love that - but the important part is that it teaches the faith in every moment, via the chanted Propers and the Ordinary of the mass, and the choice of hymns, and everything else that goes on there. The parish celebrates all the feasts of the church and offers the daily round of prayers, every day.

Donald, I agree that the most wonderful liturgical experiences yank out out of the everyday in ways that are not readily defined. But even in using the terms immanent and transcendant with regard to music, I think we probably need to define our terms. I am not the least bit interested in the "Jesus is My Buddy" hymns. "Breathe on Me, Breath of God" is my idea of an immanent hymn. I love transcendant hymns in a cathedral setting with incense, etc. But when transcendant hymns are done anything less than wonderfully, I fear they come across as deflated balloons.

Jean,

What I'm wondering is whether 'immanent and transcendent' are polar opposites are aspects (ideally) present of the same reality and the same moment. When Prince Vladimir of Russia sent emissaries to Byzantium to listen, see, and feel what Islam, Christianity, and Judaism had to offer, the story is that they returned from liturgy at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople saying, 'We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth.' The usual interpretation of that is that they'd encountered an experience on earth that felt like heaven. I think itt's more interesting to consider that they may have meant that the two came to together indistinguishably. It echoes Jesus' preaching in the Gospels that the Kingdom of God has come and is here present among us.

sorry, a typical proofreading failure - I meant
'are polar opposites OR...'

Donald, yes, I'm with you; you are pointing out the linguistic limitations of God-talk. Music can transcend those...sometimes. I think this thread is about all the other times, the Sunday-by-Sunday times.

Donald,

I don't think they're polar opposites, rather, they're different ways of approaching the same thing. I'm definitely on the same page with B. Snyder--Sunday worship isn't just about a once-a-week shot. What's key is the long haul and discovering the connection that's always inviting us into God's presence.

Karen,

Part of what I'm saying hear is that, for me, speaking as someone on the cusp of Gen X and Y, one of the prime demographics for a church (young family...) what some consider ultra-traditional *is* the missional.

I think there's another, less esoteric answer that gets at the problem of worship. We clergy are lazy. Because we get so bound up in the program and administrative demands of our job, and because our BCP has the easy answers in terms of 'pick a prayer: Rite I: 1 or 2 or Rite II: A, B, C, D,(of which we typically use only one or two in our regular rotation) - we just let our fingers do the walking and leave our brains and hearts at the door. Let's face it: Liturgy takes work. And if we are going to offer worship that is constantly shifting and changing in a way that broadens the spiritual horizons of the congregation and keeps them from getting too nostalgic, then we have to be committed to the hard work of research, experimentation, and taking serious notice of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel in our congregations' worship experience. And we have to be willing to take the hits from those who say, "But I don't know that hymn" or "If you use incense one more time I'm out of here." Let's face it - we want to be liked and we don't want to have to work too hard at it.

Sorry - my name in the by-line on my comment is incomplete. It's Jennifer McKenzie for the record and in the spirit of transparency.

I also wonder about the dichotomy. For years I divided worship time between Washington National Cathedral, where I had a child in the choir and was often transported by the beauty of the music (still am - still love Evensong, and the music generally) -- and my own parish, Our Saviour, Silver Spring, where we have an unusual mix of worship styles, which works because the congregation is really sincerely at worship, and the practices have grown out of a variety of cultural worship styles. No guitars at the 10:30 service,so far, though they are the main instruments at the 12:15 Latino service.

You might want to check out our 10:30 service, Derek-- -- we're right down the road from Ellicott City and several of our members live there (www.episcopalcos.org) I think the worship is "transcendent" more because of the congregation's engagement in it than in the particular style. Or maybe the way that Anglicans from Africa sing "Jesus and me" hymns just feels more transcendent (or I would say, classicall contemplative) because it's very real to a lot of the singers. I would once have described myself as someone preferring "transcendent" worship in the terms you describe. And occasionally I find myself singing heartily hymns whose theology I would be hard pressed to defend. But there is something "real" about worship at COS. I'd be interested in how it strikes you.

Thanks for the invitation, Kathy--I'll have to take you up on it one of these days!

Jennifer, I think you're quite right. Personally, I find that that my greater weaknesses tend to be shadow-sides of my strengths; I think what you're describing there--phone-it-in liturgy--is the same kind of thing. The BCP is one of our greatest treasures and greatest strengths, but when we fail to engage it meaningfully, it shows... And that's true for us laity as well as you clergy!