Losing God the Father

July 14, 2008
by S. M. Hutchens

Since the canonical expulsion of orthodox Christianity from the Episcopal Church my wife and I have worshipped with an Evangelical congregation, primarily because of its pastor--a friend whose thoughtful, learned, and judicious preaching is always worth hearing. Like nearly everyone who has spent years with the Book of Common Prayer, however, we badly miss a thoughtful, learned, and judicious service of worship to accompany it. While this church, is much, much better than most of its kind, it is still subject to the many vaguaries of a free-form worship, undisciplined by any tradition but its own.

Because of this it would take a visitor a while to confirm that the church is trinitarian. The Creed is not regularly repeated, and the hymnody strongly favors the worship of Jesus. The pastor is aware of the problem, so frequently invokes the Name of the Holy Trinity. But there’s not much of this in what Evangelicals call “worship,” which has lately become almost synonymous with the singing of “praise choruses.” The Father and Spirit are not ignored in these, but the praise usually goes to Jesus.

In the paths I travel have heard from time to time some muted remarks about the tendency of Evangelicals to direct their worship to Jesus rather than the Father. This never seemed to me much cause for concern because the Son and the Spirit are to be worshipped with the Father, and Evangelical churches are by definition trinitarian. the rest image