Discussion of initial field reports

Assignment

In addition to bringing your Initial Field Report with you to class, please come prepared to share with us your most interesting observation, and how you think it can be explained using material we have studied in class.

Notes from class

I record here just a few of our observations about specific Churches--the ones I think we will be able to learn the most about this term. (There were other interesting observations that I just don't think our class materials will help us understand very well, so I won't focus on those.) I've also included here a few questions that our observations raise, which we could try to answer this term.

• "High" churches (hierarchical authority and scripted rituals):
  • Catholic
    • Focus on Jesus' death, especially the cross. This fits our basic theory that Christians emphasize salvation through Jesus' death more than Jesus' ethical teachings.
    • Music without words provides (we suspect) an opportunity for individualized worship and a sense of individual salvation and relationship to God.
  • Episcopal
    • Similar focus on Jesus' death and the cross.
    • Ritual of "first communion" is also similar to Catholicism.
    • But one church emphasized how distinct it is from Catholicism. Let's try to sort out in what ways the Episcopal church is and is not like Catholicism.
    • The Bible was also greatly exalted (decorated, honored in procession). Is this an indication of an especially Protestant focus on the Bible, or do Catholic churches do the same thing?
• "Low" churches (more egalitarian authority and less tightly structured worship):
  • Quaker
    • Emphasis on ethical action, living out faith, social justice, and even politics. This fits better with our Islamic than our Christian paradigm, but we will see that it might be explained by a shift toward ethics among liberal Protestants that took place in response to the Enlightenment.
    • Emphasis on empathy for others. This too may reflect a shift toward emphasizing love and religious feeling that took place among liberal Protestants in response to the Enlightenment.
    • Reference to light rather than to God or Jesus. This too could reflect and Islamic or liberal Protestant emphasis on ethical guidance rather than doctrines of salvation.
  • Evangelical
    • A "traditional" Baptist service involved a surprising number of repeated, scripted words and motions. In other words, worship was fairly ritualized, which is not what one usually expects in a typical evangelical church. Does this reflect a return to ritual among evangelicals, or is it actually a part of evangelical tradition?
    • Also an authority structure made very visible by clothing, surprising in a "low church." Is it this a part of evangelical tradition, or does it reflect a recent return to "high church" practices?
  • Pentecostal
    • Congregational involvement and response to the leader.
    • Lots of technology in use.
    • An emphasis on evangelism, missions, and reaching out to non-Christians and non-members.
    • We will see that all of these stem from specifically American 19th-century developments among Protestants.
• Mosques:
  • A large, diverse, largely "immigrant Sunni" mosque
    • Separate entrances for men and women, and a much larger space for men. We can explain the "long history" of this by noting how the Prophet allowed but did not require women to pray at the mosque.
    • American Muslims often explain the separation as a means of helping men concentrate on their prayer. This is quite different from the concerns that the hadith transmitters had, but it is an explanation that makes more sense in our society, where male-female social interaction is considered normal. It also helps to deflect some popular but negative views of Islam as oppressive to women.
    • The local history of this mosque may also help explain this setup: they built the main hall first, and men and women prayed there together; they added the women's space only later.
    • Even within the congregation there seemed to be different attitudes about the separation: older women stayed at the back of the women's prayer area and around the edges, whereas younger women sat right up at the door where they could see the men's area better.

To start getting familiar with all these various kinds of churches, and the spectrum from "high" to "low" church, read through this List of Churches, Denominations, and Sects.