“Our lives are, for the most part, full of noise and bustle and hurry, and it is certainly clear that our service of worship should be remarkable by contrast. The ‘snappy’ service in which ‘something is doing every moment’ is too much like the great noisy world outside. If a university is a place ‘where nothing useful is taught,’ why may not a church be a place ‘Where nothing practical is said.” (Elton Trueblood. The Essence of Spiritual Religion. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1936, p. 81)
Trueblood made this statement nearly 75 years ago. How do you hear it today? Trueblood, a Quaker, argues for the value of the traditional Quaker service in which there is little structure, and much silent waiting upon God. And he suggests that if the goal of a liberal arts approach to education is not practicality, but the expansion of knowledge, might not a church’s goal, at least in part, be to increase the knowledge of God for its own sake, to make space as we gather for God to make Himself known (as opposed to just singing to Him or listening about Him)?
Buy a copy of The Essence of Spiritual Religion
