Emotion as Religious Affection
The issue of Liturgy dealing with “Worship and Emotion,” guest-edited by L. Edwards Phillips, looks at the relationship between worship and emotion. What follows is an excerpt from Don Saliers’ essay in this issue which explores how it is that worship “kindles” affection in us. –– Melinda Quivik
There is nothing more obvious yet more contested than the role of emotion and feeling in Christian prayer and worship. This issue has divided churches and has often defined differences between worshiping traditions. The emotional exuberance in one congregation, say a Pentecostal assembly, may be frowned upon and avoided in a high Anglican liturgy. The quiet orderliness in some Presbyterian and UCC congregations is regarded as too intellectual or even devoid of real faith by many in Baptist and Methodist churches. The contemplative mysticism of Orthodox practices is regarded by other Christians as too “other-worldly.” There are marked differences in how emotions are expressed in African American and Latinx congregations in comparison with many Anglo congregations. Cultural differences in worship are often seen primarily as differences in emotional temperament and behavior.
At the same time, who would deny that the Christian faith has to do with real human experience: joy and sorrow, praise and lament, silence and exclamation, fear and trembling? In fact, we could say that the very language of religious faith is the language of emotion. . . Yet the role and value of emotion and feeling easily become matters of controversy and theological conflict. Hence, being “emotionally charged” is, for some, a sign of true worship, while others find that excessively emotional expression is “in bad taste.” . . . This essay is one attempt to provide a framework for thinking theologically and pastorally about the role of emotion in various traditions and practices of common worship.
The term “emotion” has a complicated history in human discourse. . . . We should be cautious about generalizations, but we cannot avoid speaking about emotions, feelings and passions, negatively or positively, when we reflect on Christian worship.
What do we mean by speaking of religious belief and practice as “emotional”? . . . We can gain a certain leverage on such questions, I think, if we look at the relation between the “emotions” and the “affections”?
A place to begin is a passage from one of the most important American theologians, Jonathan Edwards. Responding to controversies generated during the Great Awakening of the early eighteenth century, he wrote:
“Take away all love and hatred, all hope and fear, all anger, zeal, and affectionate desire, and the world would be in a great measure motionless and dead; there would be no such things as activity amongst [hu]mankind, or any earnest pursuit whatsoever... . And as in worldly things worldly affections are very much the spring of men [and women’s] motion and action; so in religious matters the spring of their actions is very much religious affection; [the person who] has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.”
Edwards here connects emotions with human motion and intentional activity, not merely with feelings. Emotions can and do become “motives.” But when he says that the “spring” of intention and action is found in our hoping, fearing, glorifying and loving God, he speaks more of “affections” than of “emotions.”
The full article and the entire issue of Liturgy 36, no. 1 is available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
Don Saliers, “With Kindled Affections: Worship and Emotion,” Liturgy 36, no.1 (2021): 4-10.