Erin McCord – Church Visit #3

Church name: St. Sabina

Church address: 1210 W 78th Place

Date attended: October 30, 2016

Church category: significantly more liturgical

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

St. Sabina is a predominantly black Catholic congregation located in Auburn Gresham on the southwest side of Chicago. It is a church that has a very high value for civic and community engagement. This in itself was different from my usual church experience, where social issues are occasionally mentioned but seldom manifested in church involvement or programs directly addressing social issues. Additionally, while I have experience in both Catholic settings and African American church settings, I had never seen the two married into one congregation. In that sense, the service was less ritualized than my Catholic experience has been (for example, instead of kneeling and praying before the service starts, at St. Sabina it was common for people to greet each other and have quiet conversations), yet much more liturgical than my experience in African American churches. The sanctuary reflected this in the use of Afrocentric images to create a liturgical worship space.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?

I found the music very interesting and appealing. In the Catholic congregation I am most familiar with, most of the liturgy is spoken rather than sung, and when it is sung, it is out of a Catholic hymnal. However, at St. Sabina, a larger portion of the liturgy is sung and no hymn singing occurred. Rather than using pipe organ to accompany singing, St. Sabina had a musical set-up typical of gospel music with vocalists, electric guitar, bass, trap set, and keyboard. Using a gospel style of music also meant that certain portions of the liturgy were repeated for the sake of the song and in different keys. For me, this was a beautiful mixture of tradition (Catholic and African American) and worship experience. It also made the service a place where black congregants fully participated in Catholic traditions without the necessity of utterly disconnecting from other African American church traditions or favoring modes of worship associated with whiteness. The service as a whole seemed to be a practice that affirmed sacred space and human dignity.

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?

Father Thulani Magwaza gave the sermon when I was there. He spoke about the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, and interpreted the passage in a very individual and spiritualized way. He defined the poor in spirit as those whose introspection leads them to an awareness expressed in, “God, I am nothing without you, but everything with you.” While this is a very important awareness to come to, in light of Luke’s statement “Blessed are you who are poor” (Luke 6:20) and the general upturning of social priorities in the Beatitudes, I think something very important is lost if the main lesson they teach is applied only individually. For instance, the applications that were stressed in the sermon included following the 10 Commandments, not swearing to your children, praying the rosary in public, and blessing your children on a regular basis. These are important applications, but don’t seem to touch the heart of the Beatitudes or the heart of St. Sabina’s commitment to social justice.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

I had never before perceived so clearly the importance of sharing the peace as a practice in the worship service. Because of the art works in St. Sabina, including a statue made to resist gun violence, and the various programs and efforts St. Sabina engages in that are focused on lessening violence in their community, the act of sharing the peace took on new significance for me. Within the service this plays out in hugging each other and vocalizing words of peace towards each other. I believe this practice serves a few functions: 1) it promotes unity within the body of believers in such a way that they may become more effective as the body of Christ in the world, 2) it builds the skills of the congregants in peace-making and peace-keeping, and 3) it demonstrates trust in God’s peace in the midst of violence, a kind of trust upon which acting is a form of protest against the way things currently are.