Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this."
Esther 4:13–14
In ways writ both small and large, the landscape of North American worship renewal has just passed an important milestone. The year 2013 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, whose reforms opened the way to renovations and innovations in Roman Catholic worship. Primary among those reforms was the translation of the mass into the languages of the people who worshiped.
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) was followed by its accompanying instructional document to guide the reforms’ implementation, Musicam Sacram (1967, MS). Along with laying out the principles for translating liturgical texts from Latin into local languages, this and other documents encouraged participation of the whole assembly and invited the use of a variety of musical instruments and forms. With these publications came an urgency to find suitable music for worship that allowed for “full, conscious, and active participation” (MS, Art. 9) of the whole people. This opened the windows of the church, as Pope John XXIII described it, to new and authentic expressions of music for worship.
Here in the United States, these documents prompted Roman Catholic leaders, as early as the late 1960s, to invite ecumenical churches to join them in discovering what those reforms would mean for English speakers. Roman Catholic scholars formed the International Consultation on English Texts (ICET) in 1969. The group was ecumenical from its inception and included Lutherans. Rev. Hans Boehringer, Valparaiso University faculty member and director of the Institute of Liturgical Studies from 1962–1974, was a founding member of the group and served at one point as the chair. ICET’s vision for shared texts among North American Roman Catholic and Protestant churches is made clear in the title of its 1975 publication Prayers We Have in Common. It included the English versions of the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer, all still in wide, common use by English-speaking Christians today.
Lutherans played a prominent role in these post-Vatican II initiatives. In fact, Valparaiso University’s connection and commitment to liturgical renewal far precedes the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and has had multiple intersections and parallels with this movement. In the 1930s, Kretzmann brothers O. P., A. R., and Martin, were part of an influential group of pastors in and around New York. Named the St. James Society, their aim was to return American Lutheranism to its more liturgical roots and away from the low-church Protestant milieu toward which it had drifted. When O. P. moved from New York to the Midwest town of Valparaiso, he brought with him the St. James Society and his own vision for Lutheran liturgical renewal.
In 1948, then President O. P. Kretzmann wrote to four Valparaiso University faculty members:
For some time there has been an insistent demand that the University arrange something in the field of liturgical studies during the summer session each year. A few days ago I received a communication from Pastor Lang of California in which he expressed the opinion that the University should take the lead in the study of liturgical history and practice. Since this is one of the most important areas in the life of the church, I feel that something definite should be done during the summer of 1949. May I therefore ask you, whose names appear on this letter, to serve as a Committee to submit plans for “An Institute of Liturgical Studies” to be conducted on our campus next summer. I think you will see the value of such an institute. I believe, too, that it can be of real value to the life of the Church. (Institute of Liturgical Studies)
One of those four professors, Van Kussrow, explained Kretzmann’s intentions.
Dr. Kretzmann realized that the Liturgical Movement was something the Church needed. Recognizing also the fact that in the Anglican Church the Movement had its beginnings in a university situation and that he felt somewhat akin to this and saw the University itself as being the ground out of which the Liturgical Movement could grow and flourish. Therefore it was his idea that the Institute for Liturgical Studies should be formed at the University and the Society of Saint James be phased out or, rather, become the cornerstone for the Institute for Liturgical Studies while losing its own identity. (Ibid.)
Alfred Bichsel, another of the four, noted that the planning meeting of March 1949 revealed how far the Institute had evolved from the thinking of the pre-war convocations of the Saint James Society with its emphasis on historical study, to the Institute’s plans for a daily Eucharist, broader ecumenicity, and practical application (Ibid.).
Since that time, the Institute of Liturgical Studies has continued that vision of liturgical renewal, while also widening the ecumenical scope of the early Institutes. From the beginning, the Institute was pan-Lutheran, and allowed for non-Missouri Synod Lutherans to commune at the Institute’s Eucharists. The Institute’s Advisory Council today includes members of both the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA.) This ecumenical vision was unique in 1949, and in different circumstances today, maintains an unusual place of cooperation between Lutheran churches and the broader ecumenical church.
The liturgical reforms that engaged Lutherans during those latter decades of the twentieth century, led by Valparaiso University and its Institute were:
The reforms of Vatican II of those same years were of a different sort, but brought Lutherans and Roman Catholics to the table together. For Catholics, the emphasis was on:
Taken together, these changes on both sides of the church created heretofore unknown common ground. Now Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians were able to talk about sharing liturgical texts and liturgical music with the assumption of weekly communion on Sunday morning in a way that had never before been possible.
Roman Catholic liturgical scholars, having found common ground with these church bodies in the formation of the consultation on English texts, a very few years later again turned to ecumenical, and also this time, interfaith liturgists to form the North American Academy of Liturgy. The Academy’s origins date to December 1973, ten years after the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. Two Jesuits organized a group of fifty American experts in liturgy to meet to discuss the principal opportunities, needs, and problems of liturgical renewal.
Again, Lutheran scholars were in on the ground floor. This was evident already in 1975, the year of the Academy’s first annual meeting. Hans Boehringer, then Director of the Institute for Liturgical Studies and a Valparaiso University theology professor, gave a plenary presentation at the Academy. Since that time, there have been numerous Catholic theologians presenting at the Institute, and large numbers of Lutheran scholars in leadership positions in the Academy. David Truemper, chair of the Valparaiso University Theology Department, and Director of the Institute from 1984–2004, also served for a time as treasurer of the Academy. Three of the past four presidents of the Academy have been Lutheran. All of these have also been directly involved in the Institute.
In his book on Roman Catholic liturgical reforms, Dr. Massimo Faggioli wrote, “Vatican II reformed liturgy on the solid basis of an international liturgical movement, a profound stream of theological ressourcement, and ecumenical hope” (2012, 137). But this ecumenical and common work recently has taken a curious turn. By the late 1980s, many of the new English translations of liturgical texts were met with criticism by Roman Catholic traditionalists for their use of inclusive language as well as language that seemed flat and uninspiring. Much of this criticism came from the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the office that oversees liturgical practices. In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship published Liturgiam Authenticam, a set of guidelines for translations of liturgical texts that required a strict, word-for-word literalism. It also appeared to rule out further ecumenical cooperation in the process of liturgical translation (Wilkins 2005). In July 2007, Pope Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum, which allowed wider use of the pre-Vatican II Latin mass. After a return to repristinated English language for the translation of the mass formally adopted in 2011, many have concluded that the reforms of Vatican II have essentially halted inside the Roman Catholic Church. For Roman Catholic liturgists and musicians this has necessitated directing their focus and attention toward developing musical resources for these newly authorized texts. It is not yet clear whether Pope Francis will recover the work of the Second Vatican Council and continue its work.
So from the converging paths Catholics and Lutherans shared from 1973 until 2007, now we find ourselves on diverging paths. It is now only officially possible to carry forward Vatican II’s projects outside of Roman Catholicism. While an odd circumstance, it is not out of character with the reforms themselves. Intrinsic to these liturgical reforms is a fundamental international and ecumenical hope which was expressed in its language (Faggioli, 137). Much more than just an opening to the vernacular, Sacrosanctum Concilium reached outward to express openness to cultural and contextual liturgical expression that would express the unity of the church while developing linguistic and cultural specificity.
With the 1994 publication of Varietates legitimae (“Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy”), the Vatican began adapting the liturgy to cultural contexts, but inculturation today remains one of the unfinished projects of Vatican II. Inculturation is the process of integrating pertinent elements of a local culture into local worship (Chupungco 2014, 262–63). Roman Catholic scholars, most notably Don Anscar Chupungco, a native Filipino and Benedictine monk, helped liturgists introduce indigenous materials into worship. His work opened up the use of new worship forms that integrated customs and traditions from the culture where the assembly gathers. He wrote, “inculturation should aim to deepen the spiritual life of the assembly through a fuller experience of Christ. If it does not do this, it remains a futile exercise” (263).
In 2003 Chupungco was to be a plenary speaker at Valparaiso’s Institute. At the last moment, he was not allowed a visa and could not travel out of the Philippines. He sent his two manuscripts, which Dr. David Truemper read to the conference. In them, he suggested two methods for liturgical renewal as most useful for North American Lutherans: “creative assimilation” and “dynamic equivalence.”
Creative assimilation involves finding similarities between liturgical rites and one’s own cultural rites. Chupungco pointed out that Lutherans have the advantage of decentralized, already nationalized churches, whose leadership is already immersed in the language and culture of its church body (2006, 250). Creative assimilation allows for a local culture to introduce elements of its own experience into worship. This could be as simple as naming local geography in prayers for creation or as complicated as creating liturgical rites for gay marriage.
Dynamic equivalence, on the other hand, expresses liturgy with something of equal value or meaning in the local culture. How a culture expresses hospitality, for example, differs widely from one culture to another. North Americans are currently busy adding spaces to gather before entering into worship to their buildings, highlighting the importance of communal gathering. This is where guests are welcomed and members greet one another, rituals of gathering before proceeding to the sanctuary.
Dynamic equivalence allows each culture to determine what hospitality looks like. Sharing the peace is another place where this would apply. One culture shakes hands, another bows with folded hands, another exchanges a kiss. Each culture decides what, for them, expresses an expression of reconciliation, according to their own cultural norms and boundaries. We certainly wouldn’t want Lutherans to know it is really supposed to be a kiss of peace!
While, as Chupungco notes, Lutherans have an advantage in being able to work out these solutions at more national and local levels than Romans Catholics, Lutherans also have customs and traditions from our own heritage to expand liturgy’s inculturation. Central to Luther’s reforms were the notions of both freedom and essence in the liturgy. The essence of liturgy is the reading of the Word and celebrating the Meal. Just about everything else is adiaphora, a term that refers to liturgical elements that may be beneficial but are not essential to the actual rite. Simplicity, sifting through the unnecessary, would be another way to understand Luther’s reforms. The concept of adiaphora allows for tremendous freedom in exploring any culture’s liturgical expressions.
I first encountered Lutheranism in my second church job when I was twenty-five. Learning about Luther then as a young adult, I found his understanding that music bears the Word, the oral proclamation, into the assembly to be unique among the Reformers. Coupled with his assertion that music is a part of God’s creation, and therefore good, Luther’s teaching affirms music’s centrality, in all its diversity, for use in worship.
Already a practicing church musician by then, I found that Luther confirmed some suspicions I had long harbored about the difference between sacred and secular music. Growing up in a family with two older brothers and a pattern of attending church each week, I could spot the difference between sacred and secular music by the time I was five. The Isley Brothers and Elvis coming from my brothers’ hi-fi player, my Dad’s jazz-inspired improvisation, and the preludes and hymns from our Methodist church formed a contiguous, uninterrupted musical life throughout my childhood. I could tell you which music was which, where each belonged, and what my favorites were. Sometimes a bit bolder than my knowledge deserved, I once raised my hand to request a hymn at our church’s potluck supper and hymn sing. When my parents asked me later why I chose “Are ye able, said the Master,” I answered them it was because of the line “a beacon to God, to love and loyalty.” Our local newspaper was the Aurora Beacon News, and I appreciated the reference to our local news.
This seamless contiguity between the sacred and secular continued in my college life. By then, I was a student of classical music specializing in organ performance. My formal studies included both sacred and secular music, but mostly sacred. In my freshman dorm, though, and later in the sorority house, it was all secular. There we listened all day and all night to the Beatles, the Jackson 5, the Rolling Stones, and the Dave Clark Five, and later to the “new” groups like Chicago and Santana. Since we all listened to the same station on radios that actually emitted sound, the song playing in our room continued as we went down the hallway into the bathrooms and showered, got dressed, and headed to class. We knew all the words to all of the songs, all of the time, and they were decidedly secular. Except some weren’t. Like “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds, which used Ecclesiastes as its text, and later Bob Dylan songs which explored Genesis, the Psalms, and other biblical material. Without knowing it, the sacred and secular worlds were beginning to blur and overlap a bit.
The music history classroom kept these two worlds more distinct. There were chapters which traced the course of secular music and others which outlined sacred music history. We bought our music at stores where we could browse actual copies of music, all sorted and separated into sacred and secular bins. I bought mostly sacred, of course, as I built my organ library, but I did sometimes wonder if the music in the secular bins was better or worse.
Then the music history classes got a little blurrier too. I learned that Bach wrote music for sacred use, but then at times, repurposed it for a secular use. Had it, in that moment of repurposing, been transmuted from sacred to secular music? Or even a bit more scandalous for me, Handel did the reverse, taking music from his secular oratorios and retrofitted them with sacred words. All of a sudden they jumped over into the sacred music chapters. Weren’t they imposters there? How did that happen?
I admired the Beatles’ foray into Eastern music during these years, and noted their collaboration with and learning from Ravi Shankar. They were clearly changed by this exposure, and while I thought it had nothing to do with me, I did realize there were other musical languages out there besides the one I was studying. Around that time my husband, Gary, outfitted his car with the latest in audio development, quadraphonic sound. Listening to Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Deep Purple, Chicago, and Santana in that car brought life to these works in an overwhelming listening event I had never known. In this same year, I likely first sang Stravinsky’s spare setting of the Lord’s Prayer and wondered how a mind created such divergent music.
While I couldn’t articulate it then, I was no longer buying the distinction between the sacred and secular in music. If it was only by function that we could determine whether a piece of music was sacred or secular, then the music itself defied classification. By this time, I also knew that music was a place where I could communicate things that I didn’t know how to verbalize. It was a place where I could say things that were sub-articulate, at least for me. I think I always knew that as sacred space, regardless of the musical classification.
It never seemed a stretch to me to admit folk music into worship. As a parish music director in my mid-twenties, it was an easy step to teach high schoolers how to lead a congregation in this music. Vatican II had opened the windows to vernacular texts and music by then, and Roman Catholic composers led the way with music by the Weston Priory, St. Louis Jesuits, and many others. This music was singable, accessible, and likable to a large range of parishioners. It didn’t have the musical sophistication of the best of Rock ‘n Roll, but it was good and serviceable music for the liturgy. It was Gebrauchsmusik, useful for its time and place, quite able to carry God’s praises in worship, yet not necessarily of enduring value.
Serving in a Lutheran church, I realized the high esteem in which music was held. Here all music in worship had a function, and as I gradually learned, a very important one. In Orthodox Christianity, Mary is the Theotokos, the God-bearer of Jesus into the world. Luther believed that music could also be that God-bearer, bringing the Word of God, Jesus, into the gathered assembly. This was a profound insight to me, and one that inspired my own understanding of music’s purpose. I appreciated that there was no “traveling music” in the Lutheran liturgy, music that covered the time of something, or more often, someone else. Music had its own, and essential, function, forming the assembly to become the bearers of God’s Word in its midst.
This led me to again question the notion of sacred and secular music. If music in worship is identified by its use, is any style of music then admissible and permissible in worship? I understand Luther to be saying: potentially yes. Music’s origin comes from outside of us: it already exists in creation. We can uncover and explore this piece of creation, just like an ornithologist continues to look for and catalogue new species of birds. That is what composers and ornithologists do. Anything found or composed exists because God put it there for our finding and incorporation. What we do with it is where human creativity enters.
To say it another way, I suggest that music is a material in creation, similar to clay. A potter sculpts a vase. The potter indeed creates a vase, but only because there was clay to begin with. So for music: composers can only compose because sounds and rhythms are already present in creation. If this is the case, there may be any number of sonic elements yet to be uncovered by composers. It would be preposterous for us to say that we won’t admit any new species of birds to our catalogue of species because it is already complete. So it is equally preposterous for us to limit what kinds of music there are yet to be uncovered by future musicians and composers. When they do emerge, then they can be designated and used for sacred purpose. It is not our call to determine sacred and secular music. That already has been done for us. There are no more sacred and secular birds than there are sacred and secular musics. They are all part and parcel of God’s gift of creation, and God called it good. We do best to leave that alone.
In Chupungco’s work of inculturation, the question becomes one of music’s ability to add to the spiritual depth of any culture’s worship. This turns the question of musical choice to its ability to “sound” in a worshipping assembly. If it is able to carry God’s Word, or our authentic voice in worship, then it can find a place.
Over the past fifty years, just about every form, style, and instrumentation has found its way into North American worship. To some today, the field looks to be in great disarray. To others it seems like a battlefield where the traditionalists, especially organists, are losing local skirmishes, and maybe the whole battle. (In fact, the organ department of my own alma mater, Northwestern University, has closed down). To others, it seems there has been a great divide between “traditional” and “contemporary,” two terms which have been mostly vacated of meaning. While I don’t deny that any of these views exist, I do see things differently. I see the Lutheran position bringing a welcome corrective, especially to the North American church.
Church music these fifteen years into the twenty-first century has become a rich and diverse field. We have at our fingertips hymns from the twentieth-century hymn explosion which produced thousands of substantial new texts and tunes. We have texts and tunes and much liturgical music that resulted from the Vatican II reforms. We have praise choruses, praise songs, a few of which I expect will endure as substantial songs of the church. We have hymns from around the globe, places where Christianity is growing and vibrant, which just might shore up some of our ailing and dying churches. We have talented composers, text writers, and young musicians who are eager to share their gifts. A Lutheran understanding of this diversifying of the church’s music, I believe, sees potential for a more robust and vibrant expression in worship.
It is music’s ability to be useful in worship that deems it sacred. Just as ordinary bread and wine are Christ’s body and blood when shared in the Christian assembly, so music which bears God’s Word is sacred in the mouths of those who sing and play. There is no preferential musical form or style, any more than any certain kind of bread makes communion efficacious. Rather, these things become holy in the presence of the assembly who gathers around them.
When we overlay Luther’s understanding of music with Chupungco’s notions of inculturation, we have a new, rich, and fertile field for mining the church’s future music. It seems to me that we needn’t worry any more about whether the music we choose is sacred. Rather, we believe that music is sacred and just might be useful for the things that we humans do, like worship, dance, and sing.
Music is not the only area in which Lutherans are poised to continue the work of the 1964 Council. While music remains a strong suit, it behooves us to consider some of our weaker suits, whose vision remains largely unrealized yet today. One of those areas is the connection between liturgy and justice, praying and doing. It is intrinsic to the spirit of Vatican II that the church’s liturgy, in whatever context it exists, be an authentic expression of the gathered assembly, rooted in Christ’s love, seeking justice in God’s eyes through the human community. So we raise current questions like “Who is welcome at the meal?” and “What about people who are communing and have never been baptized?” The Institute of Liturgical Studies is at the forefront of raising these questions for the wider church and engaging in discussion as our churches grapple with their own doctrinal guidelines.
The Institute’s theme for 2015, “The Cosmos in Praise and Lament,” was an attempt to raise the questions that surround our use of earth’s resources. The biblical command in Genesis to have dominion over creation has, in large part, led Christians to justify dominating creation. Knowing now our ability to overuse and damage creation challenges Christians especially to re-examine what God intended in creating an interrelated cosmos. As we confess the ways we have used dominion to our advantage, upsetting the delicate eco-balance, we also take responsibility for developing a new relationship with creation.
Yearning for the peaceable kingdom, which Isaiah envisions, raises for us our relationship to all that is not yet peaceable. How can our liturgies acknowledge the reality of brokenness, oppression, and violence around us, without drawing us into despair? What biblical models can we raise in our liturgies which lead us to honestly recognize the brokenness inside and outside our churches? How can our liturgies lead us back out into the world to work for justice and peace for all people?
These are a few of the yet underdeveloped areas of liturgical reform. As Lutherans with a unique contribution, we can offer an accent to the ecumenical church. While these may not be areas where Lutherans have always been in the forefront, they might be places that stimulate our own growth. Remember that Luther himself had no interest in developing a separate Lutheran liturgy, Lutheran music, or a Lutheran church, for that matter. Rather, he worked squarely in the Western catholic tradition, mildly reforming it, but never intending to leave it. So it is a very interesting time for Lutherans to consider what our place might be in the musical and liturgical renewal of the wider ecumenical and global church. Our long tradition of liturgical renewal and musical innovation unhindered by ecclesial authority has allowed us to be leaders for ourselves, and for the wider church, ecumenically and globally. Now, it is the turn of other churches to step in and continue the work that Catholics have begun. This is work on behalf of the whole church.
As the early vision of O. P. Kretzmann and Hans Boehringer placed Valparaiso University at the forefront of North American liturgical renewal before Vatican II, it is important to continue this work of renewing the church’s liturgy today: for those of us here at Valparaiso University, undoubtedly, for the Lutheran church bodies that are in the fabric of this university and rely on this place to provide new leaders for the church, and also for the wider church who may rely on us to carry these projects forward.
Ten years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of Vatican II, Chupungco remarked, “Forty years have passed, but it is never too late to start” (2014, 286). Now, at the fiftieth anniversary, we might add: we Lutherans are sure more comfortable in the background, in the back pew, on the side street of town, but perhaps it is time to recognize how we can contribute to a wider church in need of our leadership at this critical new decade of North American liturgical reform.
Lorraine S. Brugh is Professor of Music and University Organist at Valparaiso University and Director of Chapel Music at the Chapel of the Resurrection. This essay was originally presented on March 19, 2015 on the occasion of her promotion to full professor.
Works Cited
Chupungco, Anscar J., OSB. “Methods of Liturgical Inculturation.” In Worship and Culture: Foreign Country or Homeland?, Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey ed., 262–75. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014.
_____. “Liturgical Inculturation: The Future that Awaits Us.” In Liturgy in a New Millennium: Occasional Papers #1, 2000–2003, Rhoda Schuler ed. 248–260. Valparaiso, Indiana: Institute of Liturgical Studies, 2006.
Faggioli, Massimo. True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2012.
Institute of Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University. “History of the Institute of Liturgical Studies.” n.d. http://www.valpo.edu/ils/history/index.php.
Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. Musicum Sacram: Instruction on Music in the Liturgy. Rome: March 5, 1967. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_instr_19670305_musicam-sacram_en.html.
Wilkins, John. “Lost in Translation: The Bishops, the Vatican & the English Liturgy.” Commonweal. November 28, 2005.
Jaroslav Pelikan
June 1961
In Thy Light
O. P. Kretzmann
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Stanley Hauerwas
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Martin E. Marty
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Beauty and Justice
Nicholas Wolterstorff
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