Evangelical Angst About Ash Wednesday

Aleteia ^ | February 17, 2015 | DAVID MILLS

[NYer]

You wouldn’t think that anyone would fight about Ash Wednesday and Lent. For Catholics it’s part of what we do. For others it’s something they can use or not as they find it helpful, and increasing numbers do. Down-the-line Evangelical churches have started to hold special services for Ash Wednesday complete with ashes and to treat the Sundays after it as Sundays in Lent. Rather severely anti-sacramental Evangelicals now speak of giving things up and fasting on Fridays.

I find this cheering, but my friend Carl Trueman doesn’t. Carl teaches Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the flagship of serious Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) Christianity in America. He’s a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. If you’re thinking of the somewhat wooly-minded, generically Protestant Presbyterians in the church in middle of town, you’re not thinking of Carl’s kind of Presbyterian. The mainline Presbyterians are the ones in tweed and corduroy; Carl’s type are in biker leathers. He’s one John Calvin would have recognized as a brother.

Writing on Reformation21, the website of the Alliance for Confessing Evangelicals, Carl notes that Evangelicals have started observing the season and then lets loose:
 

American evangelicals are past masters at appropriating anything that catches their fancy in church history and claiming it as their own, from the ancient Fathers as the first emergents to the Old School men of Old Princeton as the precursors of the Young, Restless, and Reformed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer as modern American Evangelical.

 
He is a genial and liberal-minded man. His office bookshelf has very large Aquinas and Newman sections along with the works of Luther, Calvin, and their descendants. (He’s just written a book titled Luther On the Christian Life.) I have spent a pleasant night in the Truemans’ home after speaking at the seminary at his invitation. He is generous to Catholics. But Evangelicals observing Lent, this sets him off. “I also fear that it speaks of a certain carnality,” he continues:
 

The desire to do something which simply looks cool and which has a certain ostentatious spirituality about it. As an act of piety, it costs nothing yet implies a deep seriousness. In fact, far from revealing deep seriousness, in an evangelical context it simply exposes the superficiality, eclectic consumerism and underlying identity confusion of the movement.

 
They shouldn’t do this. Their “ecclesiastical commitments do not theologically or historically sanction observance of such things,” he writes in a second article on the website, “Catholicity Reduced to Ashes.” Ash Wednesday is “strictly speaking unbiblical” and therefore can’t be imposed by a church, treated as normative, or understood as offering benefits unavailable in the normal parts of the Christian life. That would be a violation of the Christian liberty the Reformation so stressed (against “the illicit binding of consciences in which the late medieval church indulged,” as he puts it).

The “well-constructed worship service” and “appropriately rich Reformed sacramentalism” render the observance of Ash Wednesday “irrelevant.” Infant baptism, for example, declares better than the imposition of ashes once a year “the priority of God's grace and the helplessness of sinless humanity in the face of God.” The Lord’s Supper does as well.

Worse, Carl argues, these Evangelicals pick from the Catholic tradition the parts they like when that tradition is an indivisible whole. In for a penny, in for a pound seems to be his understanding of Catholicism. He finds it “most odd,” he writes in the second article, that some might “observe Lent as an act of identification with the church catholic while repudiating a catholic practice such as infant baptism or a catholic doctrine such as eternal generation or any hint of catholic polity.” (The lower-case “c” is his but he means the upper-case.) “The notion of historic catholicity itself has become just another eclectic consumerist construct.”

He is clearly not pleased and I can see why. The adoption by Evangelicals of some Catholic practices cheers me, however, because it is a gain for them, an expansion of their ways of living their faith, and one that reduces the gap between divided Christians. And, to be honest, because it opens a way for them to understand what the Catholic Church is about.

Carl is right that they’ve picked pieces they like without enough thought about the thing from which they’re picking pieces, but as a Catholic I think that’s a blessing rather than a mistake. He wants them to be more consistent and coherent Protestants and I would like them to be Catholics, and movement from one to the other requires some inconsistency and incoherence, the way a man wanders back and forth in the forest trying to find his way until he sees in the distance the place he is looking for.

The Church offers riches like an over-loaded wagon in a fairy tale, spilling gold coins every time it hits a pothole. Evangelicals can find in Catholic practice many things they can use just by walking along behind it. Though they have in their own tradition ways to express penance and forgiveness, as Carl notes, Ash Wednesday — the whole rite, not just the imposition of ashes — offers them a more dramatic way of hearing the truth and enacting it.

The question for them is how much they can take and adapt to their own purposes without having to face the claims of the Church from which they’re taking the things they like. I think rather a long way, because the Church draws upon a wisdom that it is not exclusively Catholic. You can enjoy the imposition of ashes without asking “Who is Peter?”

But there should come a point where you ask, “What is this thing from whom I’m always taking? What makes it a thing from which I can take so much?” As Carl says, more pointedly: “If your own tradition lacks the historical, liturgical and theological depth for which you are looking, it may be time to join a church which can provide the same.”

[CA Conservative]

Half my Catholic Church this morning was protestants wanting ashes on their forehead. Just another Catholic tradition that some protestants are trying to steal. If someones want to celebrate Ash Wednesday and get ashes on their head and actually know what it means, become a Catholic.

I don't think getting ashes on your head is in any way necessary for someone who wants to use the season leading up to Easter to draw closer to Christ by fasting and prayer. You can actually do that at any time, but using the time leading up to the commemoration of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ may provide a greater focus on the sacrifices He made and the gift of Eternal Life through His death and resurrection.

[CynicalBear]

Matthew 6:16 "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Those who make a big deal out of it and make sure everybody knows already have their reward in full? A sombre note for those at this time of year.

[RegulatorCountry]

Just another Catholic tradition that some protestants are trying to steal. If someones want to celebrate Ash Wednesday and get ashes on their head and actually know what it means, become a Catholic.

So sour. View it as an opportunity to reach out. Why sit on your hands and kvetch? Too evangelical to proselytize?

[CyberAnt]

I’m not Catholic .. and I don’t pretend to be Catholic.

It’s their ritual .. and they have every right to enjoy it. I have absolutely no problem with it.

It’s just not what I believe. But that’s okay.

[Ken H]

Wonderful news! Did they consider naming her Ashley? :)

[Salvation]

Most people know that the Bible talks about sackcloth and ashes frequently, correct?

[Salvation]

You are still a Catholic, then, and we welcome you back.

[CynicalBear]

Matthew 6:16-18 would be one.

[RegulatorCountry]

My brother-in-law belongs to a vaguely Pentecostal-ish congregation that does both Ash Wednesday and Lent. What I know of it, I dislike the church. Cultish. Encourages people to tithe more than the Biblical tenth, even those who can ill afford it.

[Responsibility2nd]

Not satisfied to wait for so called “proof” Google is my friend...

Churches offer drive-by ashes on Ash Wednesday

UPPER ARLINGTON, Ohio (AP) - Too busy to stop in for an Ash Wednesday service? Some churches are offering drive-by ashes.

Clergy at Advent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Upper Arlington, Ohio, applied ash to the foreheads of anyone who stopped in the parking lot of the church for two hours Wednesday.

http://www.wkrg.com/story/28142169/churches-offer-drive-by-ashes-on-ash-wednesday

It may have the word Evangelical in its name. But trust me. There is NOTHING Evangelical about a Lutheran Church.

[Responsibility2nd]

And another thing. I’m sorry, but WHO has two hours to stop in a parking lot for ashes?

[CA Conservative]

Most people know that the Bible talks about sackcloth and ashes frequently, correct?

Yes, but that is used in the context of repentance, grief and mourning. I have already repented, I have no grief and am not in mourning - my sins are forgiven and my Lord is Risen! :-)

[Prince of Space]

Lol that would be funny, Ken!

[jocon307]

Agreed Prince! Praise Jesus and may He continue to bless your granddaughter and all her family.

[Heart-Rest]

"I’m still waiting to hear (see post 7) the name of even one Evangelical Church that is doing Ash Wednesday. I’m afraid this David Mills author and NYer are lying."

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Westminster Presbyterian Church Drive-thru ashes

Myers Park Baptist - does imposition of ashes

Advent Evangelical Lutheran Church Drive-up ashes

[Heart-Rest]

(Forgot to ping you NYer for my post 36, which was quoting another post with your FR name in the quote.)

[txrefugee]

This story was on The Five on Fox this evening. It was an ELCA church, which is neither Lutheran, Protestant, or Catholic but they had TV coverage so that’s all that matters to The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The bible also talks about sitting on manure heaps and scraping yourself with a pottery shard.

if given a choice I would take the ashes.

[metmom]

Sombre indeed.

And all this non-Catholics starting to participate in Ash Wednesday and Lent and all is just heading toward ecumenicalism and the one world religion.