Please Me, O Lord
S. M. Hutchens on the Roots of Romantic Worship
After the collapse of the Episcopal Church our family returned to the Evangelicals whence we came. During our years away, however, they had been undergoing their own changes. An electrotheatrical liturgy seems now to be the common and expected manner of worship—spectacular when the budget can manage it, and imitation-spectacular when it cannot.
On a recent visit to a fairly typical Evangelical church, we were treated to one of its regular features. A handsome young woman, attractively dressed, stood before the congregation with an eight-inch microphone, the head of which she held gently to her lips while she writhed and cooed a song in which she, with closed eyes and beckoning gestures, begged Jesus, as she worked her way toward its climax, to come fill her emptiness. The crowd liked it.
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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