….perhaps the day has arrived in the PCA when progressives need not worry about any negative connotations of the term “progressive.” However, it might still be proper to ask, “Towards what are the progressives asking their church to progress? If we follow the path of progress or get swept along by its tide, what will be left behind and where will we end up?” (Or, for real traditionalists, “where up will we end?”)
Dr. Chapell places the label “Traditionalists” on those who are “highly committed to Confessional fidelity and are often worried about perceived doctrinal drift.” Is there a more pejorative term in America, where you buy your laundry detergent because it is “new and improved,” than the term “traditional”? Not even conservatives want to be traditionalists unless they are appealing to “traditional values” (as in “family” or , peculiarly in Mississippi, “traditional Mississippi values” – wink, wink, hint, hint, get it?). Americans fought a great War for Independence so we wouldn’t have to be traditional like those stuffy old British. The last thing a true American wants to be is a stick-in-the-mud old fuddy-duddy traditionalist.
In the churches it’s the old and soon to pass from the scene folks who attend the “traditional” service, which may not be traditional at all but a service in which gospel hymns are sung with a song leader rather than praise and worship songs with a praise team. The cool kids flock to the contemporary service, where they will not be turned off by robes, minsters leading worship, and too much Scripture and prayer – until that comes to feel like it is traditional in which case they may join Rachel Held Evans who likes her doctrine and morals progressive but her liturgy sort of traditional in The Episcopal Church.
Read it all (my emphasis).
William Smith on the PCA–reflecting on the performance of the monkeys in my old circus
….perhaps the day has arrived in the PCA when progressives need not worry about any negative connotations of the term “progressive.” However, it might still be proper to ask, “Towards what are the progressives asking their church to progress? If we follow the path of progress or get swept along by its tide, what will be left behind and where will we end up?” (Or, for real traditionalists, “where up will we end?”)
Dr. Chapell places the label “Traditionalists” on those who are “highly committed to Confessional fidelity and are often worried about perceived doctrinal drift.” Is there a more pejorative term in America, where you buy your laundry detergent because it is “new and improved,” than the term “traditional”? Not even conservatives want to be traditionalists unless they are appealing to “traditional values” (as in “family” or , peculiarly in Mississippi, “traditional Mississippi values” – wink, wink, hint, hint, get it?). Americans fought a great War for Independence so we wouldn’t have to be traditional like those stuffy old British. The last thing a true American wants to be is a stick-in-the-mud old fuddy-duddy traditionalist.
In the churches it’s the old and soon to pass from the scene folks who attend the “traditional” service, which may not be traditional at all but a service in which gospel hymns are sung with a song leader rather than praise and worship songs with a praise team. The cool kids flock to the contemporary service, where they will not be turned off by robes, minsters leading worship, and too much Scripture and prayer – until that comes to feel like it is traditional in which case they may join Rachel Held Evans who likes her doctrine and morals progressive but her liturgy sort of traditional in The Episcopal Church.
Read it all (my emphasis).