Evangelicals and Orthodox United

No....it ain't about some Social Statement. It's a bit more important than that...

From Christianity Today, an article by Mark Galli, senior managing editor of that magazine, on why some Evangelicals are discovering the importance and need for liturgy:

Yet many evangelicals are attracted to liturgical worship, and as one of those evangelicals, I'd like to explain what the attraction is for me, and perhaps for many others. A closer look suggests that something more profound and paradoxical is going on in liturgy than the search for contemporary relevance. "The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world," writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. He continues by saying that in the attempt to "make Christianity understandable to this mythical 'modern' man on the street," we have forgotten this necessary separation.

It is precisely the point of the liturgy to take people out of their worlds and usher them into a strange, new world—to show them that, despite appearances, the last thing in the world they need is more of the world out of which they've come. The world the liturgy reveals does not seem relevant at first glance, but it turns out that the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

Certainly would be nice if the LiturgyWonk (Liturgeist) bunch in the Catholic Church understood this as well as the Orthodox and the Evangelicals.

Of course, that might take them out of their Warm And Fuzzy Comfort Zones...

...you know, like towards God.

HT: Ignatius