Christian Worship Like All Religions,

¶ … Christian Worship

Like all religions, Christianity has some conditions underlying what it means to worship in that religion. Some religions have very rigid worship requirements. For example, both Islam and Catholicism have very specific ritualistic requirements about what it means to worship in those religious traditions. Other religions have fewer conditions about what it means to worship; for example Buddhists place few conditions on what it means to worship. The modern Methodist approach to worship falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of worship requirements. However, there are some basic characteristics of modern Christian worship. First, only those who believe in Christ can be said to worship Christ. Second, worship is based upon the individual's personal relationship with God and is not dependent upon the intervention of a third party. Finally, worship can occur at any time and in any manner.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of Christian worship is that only those who believe in Christ can engage in Christian worship. The belief in Christ is the defining characteristic for a Christian. It is both the necessary and the sufficient condition to being a person of the Christian faith. Moreover, regardless of the symbolic behavior that a person engages in, without the belief in Christ, that worship is meaningless. This is important to keep in mind because, even within the confines of a single Christian denomination, there are differences in what it means to be Christian. "Christian worship, like Christian ethics, is both a descriptive and a normative subject. Specific decisions have to be made locally in terms of people, places, and times, but they should be based on the experience of the whole Christian community throughout space and time" (White, Introduction, p.16). What all of these people share is the common belief in Christ.

The next component of Christian worship is one that has been subject to debate among various Christian denominations, and actually marks one of the major divisions between the Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations: whether worshipers need the intervention of a third person, generally a member of the clergy, in order to worship God. In fact, the non-Christ centered religiosity of the Middle Ages helped contribute to the division between the Catholic Church and Protestant churches. "This religiosity was expressed in the cult of the saints, particularly in images and sacred objects, and in the veneration of the eucharist" (James, Protestant, p.26). These practices actually led to the feeling among some Christians of that time period that they had somehow been fooled or tricked into a non-Christ focused type of worship. Moreover, this disagreement continues to mark a major division between Catholicism and Protestant belief; the modern Protestant belief is that worship is based upon the individual's personal relationship with God and is not dependent upon the intervention of a third party.