The quite excellent Scripture scholar Ben Witherington has weighed in on the Christmas church closings
What we are dealing with here are churches whose priorities are so askew that they somehow think it is more important for the church to serve the wants of the physical family than the other way around. This is a far cry from the pattern of the original disciples of Jesus who were seen leaving homes, relatives, jobs to come and follow Jesus. What kind of message does it send to our culture when churches close on one of its highest holy days? That it is o.k. to stay home and do one's own thing even on Jesus' birthday?
It is past time that these sorts of churches be called to account. It is time for them to realize that they have simply capitulated to the larger culture's agenda on issue after issue, in this case in supporting the worship of the idol called family in place of the worship of Jesus. The church does not exist to serve the world, but rather to save the world. The church does not exist to serve the physical family but rather to redeem it and make clear that if it is a Christian family it has a larger and more primary obligation to the family of faith and to its Lord. Christmas is one of two days in the year when we should especially make that clear to our culture and our country.
Interesting comments, as well as atInternet Monk, where I got the link. I'm interested to read these Protestant commentors - and what I'm not seeing is an acknowledgement of the dispensible nature of church attendance for many (maybe not mainline, but...well, we had this discussion below) Protestants anyway, especially on Christmas. I'm glad to see this discussed, for it brings into rather stark relief the contrast, whether it's admitted or not, between the traditional, apostolic church's understanding of liturgical prayer as fundamental to Christian life and identity, and the shape and definition of "worship" in much of modern Christianity.
And here's an interesting comment from Internet Monk's discussion:
Yeah, yeah, the big guys are cancelling their services, I’m a bit peeved at that too. How can we be griping about ‘taking Christ out of Christmas’ to our pagan friends when we aren’t even going to be worshiping on Christmas in the first place? (Remind me to tell you about my plan to have the church have Christmas in August where there are no major holidays and leave the Dec. 25th thing to the pagans).
But to me the most disgusting line in the Lexington Herald story was this: “At First United Methodist Church in Lexington, the pastor will perform a “blessing of the toys,” and the congregation will sing Christmas carols, church spokeswoman Marsha Berry said.”
A ‘blessing of the toys?’ OK, I can stomach the ‘blessing of the animals,’ even though I’m sure the original intent of that service was for farm animals and working animals, NOT spoiled poodles and Siamese Cats. But a ‘blessing of the toys?’ Is it possible to inject MORE commercialism and consumerism into the church? Why not a ‘blessing of the dollar bills’ or a ‘blessing of the credit cards.’ If our culture’s religion is Mammon, is this not the worst kind of syncretism?
