Northwoods Seelsorger

 I was privileged to hear the author, Dr. Ordway, offer a lecture on Tolkien at Nashotah House Seminary, in April of this year. At the lecture I purchased her book, Tolkien's Faith, and have been working on it off and on now for at least four months.  It took a while, in part, because I have a tendency to read more than one book at a time.    I have been interested in J.R.R. Tolkien for a number of years and was already working my way through his magnum opus, the Lord of the Rings for the second time twenty years later. Thus, I was was pleased to learn more about his faith, something not readily covered in summaries of his life and work and not always obvious in his popular writing.  Although baptized within the Anglican Church in South America, he was subsequently raised in the Roman Catholic Church in England following his father's death.  His mother also passed away relatively early, and so his upbringing fell to Fr. Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Ora...

   Recently, due to the influx of conservative Mennonites and Amish into my rural community, I have begun to reflect on the conflict between traditional culture and what I call "the ever-evolving culture."  I am reading extensively now on Amish history and practice, trying to better understand my new neighbors.  Yet as I do I realize parallels to my own struggle within the Lutheran church and its divergent 'cultures.'  My traditional, rural parish still reflects the worship and practices of previous generations. We use hymnals. We follow the established liturgies. We sing the 'old' hymns. But the lure to newer and more progressive parishes looms large.  Some churches cater to this increasingly casual culture, offering a 'style' of worship that has easy access and little demand.  It is well suited to a generation that eschews anything formal, preferring to dress down and enjoy church much like one might enjoy an outdoor music festival on a ...

 The long-standing controversy about contemporary worship, especially within more conservative traditional church bodies, seems to have largely died down.  It feels more or less like a 'live and let live' detente.  In some denominations, such as the Episcopal or Lutheran ones, you can find the full spectrum of evangelical performance to high church, with blended variations in between.  But it appears that some are living in one realm or the other without any crossover.  It's like multiple churches coexisting within one large group but rarely interacting. When I grew up most everyone I knew in the church had some substantial exposure to the traditional liturgical forms and hymns.  People knew the words and had familiarity with the music.  That time has now long since passed.  Now you can meet people within a denomination once known for traditional liturgical forms that have no working knowledge of these.  The hymns sound foreign to them and th...

 I finally finished this book and just submitted a review of it to Amazon where I originally ordered it.  It forms the basis of my two previous blog articles, and may inspire yet more. The book was published by Yale University Press, copyrighted in 2021and put into paperback just last year in 2022. Below is my review: It took me about a half a year, picking the book up again and again, but that does not indicate lack of interest.  From forward to end the book encompasses around 400 pages, and the print is relatively small, as one reviewer noted.  This is a social history of the institution of the medieval church, and in chapter 9, "Reflections," Dr. Orme describes for the reader the honest challenges of constructing such a history.  As I read this history I was struck at times by how much of medieval practice and architecture has survived in one way or another in our modern times.  My rural American Lutheran church was built in the early 1950s in what might...

 Once a month my church celebrates Matins.  During Lent we also use Vespers and Compline.  All of these are from the ancient services of the canonical hours.  During the Middle Ages it was customary, at least in England, to celebrate what they called "The Office" or "The Divine Office" at least once a day, in addition to Mass.  The Office included Matins, Vespers and Compline, besides other offices we normally associate with monastic worship such as Sext, Terce, Lauds, and Nones. Now I know of no modern churches that incorporate "The Office" as did the Medievals, not even the modern Roman Catholic Church.  As a result one seldom, if ever, uses such services in the public worship of a typical congregation, at least in my observation. It may be observed in smaller communities and among clergy, but I never hear of my Catholic neighbors going to Matins. Now substituting Matins for a service of Holy Communion (the Mass) is certainly not medieval.  But the f...

 I'm not sure how many people realize that our churches and architecture, even in America, are influenced by medieval traditions.  My congregation has a somewhat typical building reflective of the neo-Gothic revival style, or more accurately a "Collegiate Gothic" style.  Although Gothic Revival in architecture waned in popularity long before this (a revival of architectural styles in the 1800s which revived styles prevalent from 1300 to 1500), its style lingered on in churches into the mid-20th century.  My church was built in the early 1950s. The fist picture is the altar area prior to renovations we made by removing the red velvet reredo and wooden valance above it, along with the illuminated wall cross. The next picture shows the renovations. I did not realize until recently that an altar up against the wall was a development in the medieval church in the 1200s.  I know that this was changed after Vatican II (in the early to mid 1960s) when freestanding altar...