March 18, 2007

How a Tradition Served Innovation:
A Darwinian Moment

By Harry T. Cook

Evolutionary anthropologists, who study adaptive behavior they think may enable the survival of communities, would salivate over a scene that took place in my church the other Sunday.

For about a decade, a lesbian couple has been part of the parish and, over time, has become more and more involved. One of them, whom I shall call Janet, is a member of our governing board, coordinator of volunteers and one of our lectors/lay ministers. Until a couple of weeks ago, she had always appeared in that latter role at the later Sunday service and is therefore not so well acquainted with the mechanics of the earlier service.

On that particular Sunday, Janet was filling in at the earlier hour. At its close, she extinguished the candles, as the lector at that service is supposed to do. Not being clear on the protocol and never having had that responsibility when serving at the later service, she just followed her own inclination and went from stage right to stage left with the snuffer.

Moments later, as members of the congregation were sipping coffee and visiting in the narthex (a fancy church term for “lobby”), one of our older, long-time parishioners who had never approved of our inclusive attitude toward GLBT persons made a beeline for Janet. She embraced her and expressed effusive thanks to her for having extinguished the candle on the right side of the altar first.

Janet was quite bowled over by the token of what seemed to be sincere affection offered by a woman she had once heard rudely say of gays and lesbians (including her and her partner) that “they should stick to their own kind.” Moreover, Janet did not understand what she had done right – having previously been told in so many words all she had ever done wrong by being a lesbian.

The older woman had explained that it was an almost lost tradition, and regrettably so, to extinguish “the gospel candle first, because it should never burn alone.” Janet smiled gamely, thanked her new-found friend, then came to me asking “what the hell all that was about.”

I tried to explain the liturgical routine of “the gospel candle,” which for many Episcopalians had once been as critical to the faith as the doctrine of the Trinity. Janet was bemused and couldn’t quite get over how having performed the routine correctly had changed the older woman’s attitude toward her. Meanwhile, a liturgical sensibility I had always considered to be a useless relic of an earlier time became the agency that brought together a confirmed homophobe and a lesbian.

That set me to thinking about the phenomenon of adaptive behavior of which, as I have said above, some anthropologists who study evolution believe religion enables. Members of a group who develop and practice religious rituals are thereby enabled to band together at some level of trust so as to enhance the welfare of their community.

The rubrics of a ritual – kind of like a secret code or handshake – are agreed upon as being “correct.” Those who perform or require to be performed ritual functions in the agreed-upon manner believe at some level they are helping the community adapt in ways that make it stronger and better able to survive. Think of the Jewish Shabbat in that regard.

The scene described above helps me understand the clannish nature of religions in general and Christian denominations and churches in particular. It helps me understand the resistance to liturgical change that has been under way in the Episcopal Church for all of the 40-plus years I have been associated with it. When the experimental liturgies came out in the mid-1960s, the first thing to go was Elizabethan English – the “thees,” “thous” and “thys,” thus forever alienating tens of thousands of traditional Episcopalians.

The contemporary version of Psalm 150 reads in part: Praise him with the blast of the ram’s horn. That translation is more in line with the Hebrew original, but is found seriously wanting by those who grew up saying and hearing Praise him in the sound of the trumpet. It turns out that better translations do not matter to most. It is the feeling of “how we’ve always done it” that counts.

So with the older woman in my congregation who suddenly discovered an esteemed sister in a lesbian who had theretofore been an object of fear and loathing. The latter happened to have extinguished the candles in the “correct” order, thus honoring a tradition the former had come to believe was not only proper but helped maintain and distinguish her community.

Thus did an unadapted liturgical nicety unknowingly performed in a “correct” manner help a community adapt and move on. Only Charles Darwin would not be surprised.

 © Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.