Religious Emotion Seeks Depth not Excitement

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

How does Christian worship, understood as the shaping of enduring affections [as Jonathan Edwards argued], fare in a media-saturated, social, and political environment of rhetorical hype and exaggeration? The question challenges every current community of faith. Romano Guardini’s important book The Spirit of the Liturgy prompts reflection on the way worship expresses religious affections today. Guardini writes of restraint and exuberance in Christian liturgy from a Roman Catholic standpoint, but his thoughts are relevant for worship in every Christian tradition. He made a case for restraint.

Christian worship in America occurs within a social-media culture, fueled by rhetorical hype, advertising, and the sports and entertainment industries. This culture, pervasive in social and mass media, shapes us in ways that make it hard for us to distinguish between immediacy of feeling and depth of emotion over time.

Guardini contrasted the fixed, repetitive, and communal Christian liturgy with the expressive flow of individual feelings and devotional intensity. He argued that the primary purpose of Christian liturgy was not to arouse excitement and generate intense feelings of intimacy. He acknowledges that the liturgy should not deny worshipers what they feel in prayer and song. The church’s worship is “full of deep feeling” and emotional depth—as we find in the psalms or in the pattern of the Three Days between Maundy Thursday and Easter morning. But Guardini proposes that the Eucharistic action of the assembly is properly pervaded by a sense of restraint. He does not favor arousing exuberant feeling, The actions surrounding the prayers and reception of Holy Communion contain emotion that “glows in its depths” as in a volcano’s fiery heart. He grants a need for emotional expression in popular piety, but he suggests that personal prayer and devotions flow to and from the gathered and ordered worship of the whole church.

This may seem to make communal worship more impersonal, or perhaps more “formal” (though we must be careful of thinking that “informal” is more deeply affective). In our present North American cultural ethos, the accent falls on “liveliness” and “upbeat” experience. . .

When each worship gathering has to be “more exciting” than the previous one, we run the risk of emotional imperialism. This cuts across the liturgical/free church spectrum. At the least, Guardini’s reminder will help us practice the rhythms of celebration through various cycles of time and changing circumstances in a congregation’s life. More to the point, faith communities need forms of ritual and prayer that are larger than our own personal or local group experiences. Many contemporary strategies, by contrast, assume that social-cultural differences within worshiping assemblies require more experiential variety and immediate relevance, not losses. Yet, when our Sunday (or weekly) services try to be “happy” or “light and easy,” access to deeper encounter and intimacy is diminished. There is a difference between being made to “feel good” and being invited to communal gratitude, awe, delight, and hope. Christian worship is different from casual entertainment. Restraint and depth of form and language is not opposed to feeling. This may well be the key to a more profound exuberance.

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