Jenna Herskind - Church Visit #2

Church Name: Immanuel Anglican Church

Church Address: 900 W Wilson Ave, Chicago, IL 60640

Date Attended: 10/23/16

Church Category: More liturgical

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

I walked into Immanuel right as they were finishing singing a song that I didn’t recognize.  A small band led worship, a man with an acoustic guitar led with a keyboard and one other guitar behind him. Father Aaron Damiani was dressed in full robes, and after the song finished he turned towards the congregation and introduced a passage of Scripture from Isaiah. A young woman sitting in the congregation suddenly stood up and began to recite it from memory.  She moved towards the front, and as she finished, another member of the congregation stood up to pick up where she left off in the passage.  The entire scripture passage was acted out by over 5 members of the congregation. When they were finished, a second Scripture reading from Luke was performed by Fr. Damiani, with a chorus of “Alleluia” before and after a large book (presumably the book of Luke) was handed off with great precision. After a message from a guest speaker (though I’ve been there twice now, and both times there has been a speaker other than the father, so I wonder if that’s actually the norm), we took communion together (“for those who have faith in Jesus Christ and have been baptized”), and then sang several more songs before departing.

Unsurprisingly, the physicality of this service stood in direct contrast to my regular worship services. At one point the entire congregation received a cue invisible to me, and all bowed their heads. Children didn’t have to be told by their parents, and they too bowed. I was caught off guard, naturally, but appreciated how embodied faith was in this Anglican church. In my customary church context, we do two motions: we sit, and stand.  At Immanuel there is dancing as members acted out the Scripture, there was crossing of one’s self, there was bowing, etc.

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

I was (again, unsurprisingly) most drawn to this difference, the physicality of the service.  How can faith be purely in our minds? I resonate with criticisms of an evangelical emphasis on orthodoxy while orthopraxy goes unattended to. While often we talk about orthopraxy as the action-y stuff of social justice, I also think it’s simply what this Anglican church does each week: move your body as your read Scripture, raise your voice as a critical part of the sermon. Doesn’t it make sense that the movement of your body while you listen to Scripture would actually shape your soul (pulling from class on 11/2 now).  The same way I believe that binging on Netflix shapes your soul, and choosing to walk on the other side of the road from the beggar shapes your soul, of course bowing upon speaking the words of the Bible and moving your body with the cadence of the words shapes your soul.  I am so untrained in this; it does not come naturally. But I wish it did.

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

Encountering the moments in which I didn’t know what to do when everyone else did threw me off. There were moments in which everyone else seemed to know exactly where to put their bodies; I found myself behind even the children in front of my as I tried to keep up with patterns of congregation contribution (whether vocal or bodily). I also wonder how involving yourself so fully in a worship service contributes to self-centeredness during worship.  I, of course, don’t think this about every person in that room, but in the recesses of my own brain I found deep insecurity as I moved about and spoke aloud and found my person, my body, heavily invested in the service.  Does liturgy that involved senses make one more prone to thinking about how they’re perceived by the outside world, or is this a personality trait that I brought to the table?

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

I think the Anglican church, and perhaps just more liturgical churches in general, are meaningful in their emphasis on congregation participation.  My neighbor heard my voice over a dozen times, whether singing or speaking or reading Scripture, and I heard my neighbors’ voice too.  We were integral parts of that which was playing out in front of us--without our responses, the service would have ceased for a moment, or at least had awkward silence.  We were expected to, and invited to, contribute to the experience of our neighbors.  The critique I level of churches I’ve grown up in is that we are not required to bring anything to our worship services: I can show up, sit through a service, and then go home without really contributing anything to the service. I am not necessary for the service to continue. At Immanuel, if there is no congregation, around 50% of the service would be silent!  There seems to be a direct connection to the unity of the church, the “body” nature of the church, the necessity of each member of the church raising their voice and body.  We need those leading worship, those speaking, and those in the congregation for the service to be a worshipful one.