PRE-PUBLICATION OFFER Receive Wrestling With God for just £9.95 (post free in UK) by ordering direct before December 20, 2006. Quote “Sofia Offer” Email: Sandra@imprint.co.uk Phone: 01392 851550 Fax 01392 851187 Imprint Academic PO Box 200 Exeter EX5 5HY Payment by credit card or cheque payable to Imprint Academic In a culture in which few find church attendance meaningful, I find myself drawn to church, while reinterpreting the tradition for myself. In this article I suggest what makes me uncomfortable about ‘worship’, yet how I imagine meeting together in a place might yet be meaningful.
The very term ‘worship’ makes me uncomfortable.
Derived from the Old English ‘weorth’ meaning worthy or worth, from which came the Middle English ‘weorthscipe’, meaning worthiness, respect, ‘worth-ship,’ has an etymology meaning to attribute worth to a person or thing. The word carries the marks of an age in which worship was offered to someone of senior social position. In English the title worship is used for various ‘dignitaries’, such as the worshipful justices of the Court, magistrates, and some mayors.
They occupy roles within a social hierarchy in which the titles remind us they should be venerated (like venerable archdeacons) or revered (like reverend clergy). They set authorities and the clergy apart from the people who, one supposes, are left to do the worshipping and revering.
The worship of humans within social and political hierarchies is linked with worship in religion. In the Ancient Near East the main God was ‘El’ which, with similar terms in Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phonecian Aramaic and Arabic, means both ‘power’ and ‘the first’. El is the top of all social order, both the pantheon of divinities (the elohim), as well as humankind. The title Elyon (or El Eyon) is used to mean ‘the highest’ or ‘Most High’.
As the top of social and political hierarchy, such a theology legitimised monarchical political authority.
In hierarchical cultures in the past, social homage was paid to those in power and those in exalted social positions were glorified. Homage usually involves bowing, kneeling, touching one’s head on the floor in veneration, much as one finds in ancient Persian paintings or in Muslim prayer today. In the feudal age, the act of homage was a payment of vassalage, a feudal ceremony by which a man acknowledged himself the vassal before a lord. The homage and fealty (promising faithfulness) bound the lord and serf into a relationship of mutual obligation (mainly the use of the land held as a fief, for a fee and willingness to bear arms for the earthly lord). This served to establish and retain social hierarchy. To praise and glorify a monarch for his exalted greatness was performative, for to celebrate the greatness of the monarch enabled both the monarch and subject to see themselves in a relationship of ruler and ruled, uniting the ruled under the ruler. Homage was also a way in which kingdoms related to one another, with the submission of one king when on the territory of another as a recognition of their territorial rule.
Along with this, the monarch could also exact tributes, the payment by one ruler or nation to another in acknowledgment of submission or as the price of protection. For example, Darius 1st, the king of Persia from 522 to 486 BCE, was paid tributes by all 20 provinces, from Greece to India. Babylon and Assyria paid 1000 talents of silver and 500 eunuch boys, while India gave 360 talents of gold-dust. It is likely that such tributes were paid for protection and out of fear, more than out of gratitude. At other time tributes were tariffs imposed by a sovereign, lord, or King Jehu of Israel paying homage to King Shalmaneser III of Assyria On ‘Worship’ and Worth Paul Overend reflects on the term worship, which makes him uncomfortable because it still carries resonances of the link with a social order of lords and monarchs and a strong relationship to power. landlord. Even in their day, and certainly when viewed from our critical perspective, they can be seen as a form of extortion. If it were the Mafia exacting tribute today, we’d call it a protection racket.
A part of the reluctance of Samuel to having an hereditary monarchy, at the end of the tribal confederacy and the period of the Judges, was that this was going to be costly for the people, who would pay such tributes to the king (1 Sam 8). It was certainly costly for the kingdom’s neighbours when Solomon built the house of the Lord, and a house for himself. It took him seven years to build the house of the Lord to the glory of the Lord – and thirteen years building his own house (1 Ki 6:38-7:1) to the glory of Solomon. It needed to be big to house his wives, among whom were said to be ‘seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines’ (1 Ki 11:3), many of whom would have been tributes. Even the Queen of Sheba was impressed by his court and she joined others in paying tribute (1 Ki 10:4-5, 10, 4:21) Before Solomon’s time, Hebrew worship was dispersed at local shrines where sacrificial offerings were made, but the cult of the temple modelled worship of God on the political cult of monarchy. The Hebrew prophets protest against this, again and again, contrasting an ethical God with the God of temple worship and of monarchy, but these twin ideas, of honour and tribute, became formative in the development of temple worship and monotheistic understandings of God.
This social relationship with the monarch could be viewed on as one of buying favours, but this didn’t stop it still serving as a model for understanding the human relationship with God. For instance, Jacob (Gen. 28: 20-22) promises devotion to God on condition of receiving a certain continuing favour, while in Deut. 28 God, in return for definite religious performance, assures the people prosperity. Such an understanding is of course challenged by the wisdom literature, e.g., Job, as well as by Philostratus in the second century. In Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius, i. x. (c.220 CE), Apollonius of Tyana declares that worship, sacrifice and the like are but a quid pro quo, a buying of favours. Offerings made to the gods were seen to be suspicious in that they indicated an attempt at bribery of the deity, and betrayed the guilt of the one who offered this sacrifice.
The term worship still carries resonances of the link with a social order of lords and monarchs and a strong relationship to power. To many, it implies an understanding of social and political hierarchy of worth and worthlessness. For example, in the lyrics of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jacob’s sons come to Egypt in desperate need of food and they meet their unrecognised brother Joseph. The words that the musical gives to them are these:
Grovel, grovel, cringe, bow, stoop, fall Worship, worship, beg, kneel, sponge, crawl.
We are just eleven brothers, Good men and true, Though we know we count for nothing When up next to you.
Worship is presented as the act of a nobody, who counts for ‘nothing’, in a relationship of inequality – bowing, grovelling, begging, crawling before another of higher estate. When these lyrics are used in the musical to portray Joseph’s rise to glory, they are intended to indicate he’s getting his own back. That his brothers are humbled, abased, degraded, reduced to nothing.
I think that many outside of the church feel that this idea of grovelling nobodies is an essentially Christian attitude. In an email exchange on Relevance of Worship to Women, in the Nature Religions Scholars Network, a woman contributor who’d left Christianity, wrote the following:
The word ‘worship’ has a connotation of ‘You’re So Much Better Than Me, and I am Lowly’. And ‘lowliness’, I don’t think, is all that conductive to empowerment. Yes? ...’Worship’, to me, feels too much like ‘You rock because I suck’. I’ve been in human-human relationships like that, and they are so far from healthy it’s not even funny. Why would I want to be in that kind of a relationship with a deity?1 This is not, I think, untypical of people who view Christianity from the outside. It also highlights that women may have different reasons for not wanting to be submissive than men, because of their unequal sexual political relationships with men. Whether or not, this example shows something about the cultural gap that makes the idea of worship difficult. The cultural change was characterised more comically by If it were the Mafia exacting tribute today, we’d call it a protection racket.
As top of the social order El, the ‘Most High’, legitimised monarchical political authority. a Monty Python creed, in which the worshipper declared (nonchalantly), ‘Oh God, you are so big, so very huge, gosh we’re awfully impressed down here.’ The satire expresses a contemporary western cultural attitude to worship.
Since the Enlightenment with its celebration of the individual and the rise of democracy, the paying of tribute to another by virtue of the other person’s social station has become distasteful and any submissive relationship with authority is put under examination. We’ve emerged into a democratic society in which honour and tributes are not exacted by those in power. If offered at all, they are freely given expressions of appreciation – more likely to be paid to football clubs and their players, than people of status. The New Year’s honours list is now opened up for the public to nominate ‘commoners’, and they do nominate road sweepers and the like. Today, any gesture that indicates worth, virtue, or effectiveness are called tributes. And so there are regular tributes on TV for musicians and actors. We are no longer indebted to those who protect us, but to those who serve and entertain us.
There is little surprise that in an age in which tributes and entertainment have been aligned, worship has become what makes churchgoers feel good and many churches have ended up with a Sunday ‘jolly’ to start the week. Worshippers may not cringe and grovel, but songs that just posit and praise a God to create a superficial emotionalism present religion as a cheap entertainment. At worst, this avoids the central issues of life, says nothing of human suffering or of our guilt in it, gives little direction to our life and does not engage with the difficult problems of meaning and value.
Personally, I wish such gatherings were not called ‘worship’. I think worship as a term might be retained for the recognition of the worth of other human beings, of other species, of the environment, of ourselves – which are parts of ‘the Other’ that is yet to be known and understood, all that is beyond ‘the known’ of our familiar world. The times of gathering and meeting should resource participants, allowing space for reflection before sending them out, times to intersperse the ‘worship’ (being aware of the other’s worth) in everyday life.
They could be times for the celebration of shared hope for a different sort of world, a celebration of the faith in new life for a new world. These times offer alternative visions of who we are, as travellers together on the way. They provide a space for atunement to hope and love, a space to meditate on the stories of Christian and other religious and secular traditions. They are a time for inspiration and the response of deep joy that expresses the awe engendered by being one with all that is – one with another, one with nature, at one with ourselves, and so on. The exaltation of such an occasion is not of some external deity who needs our flattery and fear, but the lifting up of the spirit within us – the rekindling of love, authentic (even ‘Christ-like’) love for real people, and not mere emotionalism.
These are times to attend to something actually worthy of my concern, such as places of neglect, disaster, abuse. I imagine these shared times of prayer to be times of contrition in the light of our failings, and of celebration – not in terms of the submission of our egos, but the transcending of them in the selfexpressing of love. Such prayers are shared commitments to be concerned, to be interested, to love. Such silence is but an opening of ourselves – not to the certainties and assurances of love, but to the vulnerabilities of self – for without being aware of and open to being vulnerable love is not possible.
Liturgy then could become the meeting place of where we are and who we are, with the ideals of love that have yet to be realised.
Though the words of the service may not share my theology, yet, I do find quiet morning services can provide this space, this sense of belonging, and a revaluing while re-evaluating of my own religious tradition. Having ‘dropped out’ of church for some time, I now find myself happy to be included again, in the reflective and welcoming environment of Salisbury Cathedral. 1 Allison ‘Nature Religions Scholars Network’ posted on January 30, 2006, 03:51:23 PM Paul Overend is Director of the Ministry Development Team for the Diocese of Salisbury. He is a former editor of this magazine.