Wearing the old ruts deeper

Quote of the week:

There is little to be gained by wearing the old ruts deeper. The creeds, symbols, and liturgies of Christianity were framed originally to convey not a sense of beauty but a meaning. We hold on to them now because they are beautiful—and we wonder what they mean. Altogether too much of the faith and worship of the Christian religion is couched in archaic language, so that the most vital transaction a man can have is carried on as though he were living in the Middle Ages and wearing doublets. Accordingly, we have to explain what ought to be self-evident. We have to invest old concepts with new meanings, so that we say one thing but mean another—and the force is lost. We are handicapped by the survival of religious issues which were once of paramount importance but are now irrelevant. If the Church, therefore, is to fulfill its redemptive function in the contemporary world, it will have to be set free from such inherited traditions as do not speak directly and convincingly to modern minds and bring about life changes on the part of those who share in them.

James M. Lichliter, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Webster Groves, Missouri, from the preface to his first book “Whose Leaf Shall Not Wither”, written in 1946.