Low church subtraction story
Contemporary low church Christian worship is not merely worship with the bells and whistles removed, but represents an alternative vision of what gathered worship is
The removal of the overtly “liturgical” elements of the church’s public worship—I have in mind things like having a set prayer book, raising of hands or kneeling, the congregation reciting prayers or creeds together—is typically understood by the advocates of such removal in terms of a subtraction story.
I am of course borrowing this term from Charles Taylor, who observed that moderns tend to see the story of the rise of secularism as the story of how we have subtracted various extraneous supernatural elements from our self-understanding and experience of human life. The tendency of the subtraction story, writes Taylor is "to see modernity as the liberating of a continuing core of belief and desire from an overlay of metaphysical/religious illusion which distorted and inhibited it" [Taylor, A Secular Age, 573].
The story of the development of low church evangelical worship is similar in some ways: our worship is more or less what emerged after we removed the extraneous accoutrements that were layered on top.
Those who favour any of these apparently extraneous accoutrements in gathered worship find themselves in the position of needing to justify their presence, as if to answer the question of why they need to be added. Frequently, the accoutrements are subject to the charge that they are not merely extraneous, but very likely distractions from Christ, the gospel, true faith or Something That Really Matters. So goes the concern of the subtractionists: Mr So-and-so attends the Church of the Blessed Bells and Whistles because he loves the high church vibe, the traditional liturgy, or the minister wearing a collar. Sure, none of these things are wrong in themselves (concedes the concerned subtractionist), but we should be wary that these things do not get in the way of what really matters.
Contemporary low church worship, by contrast, is understood simply to have omitted these distracting accoutrements from worship, as one would scrape off layers of paint from the walls of a house. Thus, the elements that constitute more contemporary forms of worship tend not to be subject to very much suspicion.
This way of comparing these two forms of worship tends to obscure the fact that contemporary low church worship often represents a positive vision of worship that differs from the one in which more traditional liturgies developed. This substantive difference is seldom recognised by the subtractionists themselves.
What is that substantive difference? In minimising or removing certain accoutrements from the liturgy of the gathered church, contemporary low church worship tends away from being an activity performed by the community in tandem, and the service instead tends towards being an occasion for individuals to spectate at certain things happening for the end of their edification and encouragement. (This is not necessarily to say that the individuals involved are being selfish: the understanding that we come to church to meet with others and encourage them is not, in my experience, denied or even downplayed. But my point remains that, on this view, the telos of gathered worship is the piety of individuals as individuals.)
When these disputes about worship proceed without recognising that we have two distinct positive visions of what gathered worship is, it is very difficult to have a productive discussion.
