Physicality in Worship

The theology and practice of physicality reveals implicit beliefs about human nature, namely whether humans are primarily spiritual beings or a balance of both physical and spiritual. Denominations with little or no physicality in worship edge towards Gnostic and hyper-rationalist ideas about humans as primarily mind or spirit, rather than body. Denominations that use physicality as a means of guiding and perceiving the spiritual are embracing humanity as both physical and spiritual at once.

She says that though all worship is physical, the various Christian traditions express their views of “physicality” differently in the ways they worship.

Churches from the Reformed tradition, which includes some Baptist and nondenominational churches, are often the least physically involved. Other than standing for worship music and walking to receive communion, most of the service leaves congregants seated and silent. Prayer is often spoken to the congregant rather than participated in by the congregant; eyes are fixed solely upon unmoving text rather than vestments or sacred vessels. In many ways, the body passively receives the service rather than actively participates.

Charismatic churches follow the same general pattern, but they are much more physical, with worshipers waving their arms, dancing, giving testimonies, and speaking in tongues.

Liturgical churches, from Orthodoxy to Catholicism to parts of mainline Protestantism, are physically participatory in different ways. The most traditional and liturgical churches lean fully into physicality; in fact, the more liturgical a church, the more it engages the senses. . . .

Liturgy involves the body in a myriad of ways. Most liturgical churches have periods of kneeling, especially around corporate confession and the blessing and receiving of Holy Communion. The Catholic corporate confession of sin during Mass involves parishioners pounding their chest with a fist as they proclaim their sins. Different traditions embed various rituals into services, from crossing oneself to bowing. Liturgy also has a call-and-response format for prayers and the reading of scripture, requiring congregants to follow along in real time.

This ties in to the tradition’s beliefs about the Sacraments.  Mobley writes:

Certain theological beliefs link to physicality. The theology of Holy Communion serves as a prime example. The memorialist view, held chiefly by Baptist and nondenominational churches, sees Communion as primarily intellectual – a time of remembrance with the bread and wine as physical symbols only. Reformed theology maintains a similarly uninterested view in the physical aspect of the bread and wine, while shifting the focus to spiritual feeding that has sacramental power. Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, and some Anglicans view the physicality of the elements as theologically important. To these traditions, it is vital that one feeds on Christ, not just spiritually, but physically.

Finally a mention of us Lutherans!  Mobley herself is Anglican. Her discussion reminded me that Luther himself had a strong theology of “physicality.”

Allow me to quote myself quoting Oswald Bayer in the book I did with Pastor Trevor Sutton, Authentic Christianity:  How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World:

In his writing on justification, the contemporary theologian Oswald Bayer said that when we are justified by faith, we are reconciled to God, and we are also reconciled to His creation. This is because, he says, God uses the physical world of His creation to bring to us our justification: water, bread, wine. We might add other physical elements: ink stamped on paper and bound into a book; sound waves vibrating in the air; the body of the pastor presiding in a building made of stone and steel. However, says Bayer,

The “new creation” is a return to the world, not a retreat from it. The new creation is a conversion to the world, as a conversion to the Creator, hearing God’s voice speaking to us and addressing us through his creatures. Augustine was wrong to say that his voice draws us away from God’s creatures into the inner self and then to transcendence. Counteracting Augustine’s inwardness in its withdrawal from the world, Luther emphasizes the penetrating this-worldliness of God. God wills to be the Creator by speaking to us only through his creatures. [Living by Faith, Ch. 3]

St. Augustine, for all of his greatness, remained something of a Platonist, something he would share with Zwingli and Calvin. This suggests that the rejection of the religious significance of the world in favor of the inner self and transcendence is nothing new after all. It is also the basis of Medieval asceticism. As we shall see, Luther’s sacramentalism is connected to his critique of monasticism and to his doctrine of vocation.

But we can see the effect of the Gospel as expressed in the Sacraments in Luther’s own attitude toward God’s creation. As a monk, Luther was an extreme ascetic, rejecting the world and all its ways, but when he discovered the Gospel of God’s free grace in Christ, he embraced every facet of God’s creation. Bayer discusses Luther’s “turn from radical denial of the world to an impressive affirmation of everything that is of the world and nature.” [Martin Luther’s Theology, p. 141]

“After Luther was thoroughly convinced, because of his new understanding of Word and Sacrament, that the spiritual is constituted in the form of what was earthly—not only negatively but also positively—the spiritual importance of all things earthly was opened to him in a positive sense as well.” [Ibid.]

“The spiritual is constituted in the form of what was earthly.” That is a succinct statement of Lutheran teaching on Christ, the Sacraments, and—as we shall see—the Christian life.

That is to say, vocation.

In this perspective, notice the similarity–despite their antagonism–between the Reformed separation of the spiritual from the material with that of medieval Catholicism.  Luther’s “physicality” countered both of them.

Illustration:  The Vocation of the Apostles (1481) by Domenico Ghirlandaio – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6636269