Traditional vs Contemporary Worship (2)

Doing individual study and especially field-research is very essential to a Sociologist. One shouldn't rely merely on speculations and hearsay by poorly-informed and probably biased people.

I'd been told that Presbyterians are somehow old-fashioned and conservative. I once had a bad experience at Hanmi Presbyterian Church that would reaffirm such a view.

One day, I was late for my afternoon prayer and fearing I wouldn't make it in-time, ringed their door-bell and asked for permission to say my prayer there. Just after making my Vozu (ablution), when I was about to start my prayer at their office lounge, their pastor (who was Korean) appeared and told me I couldn't say my prayers in their church; and his reasoning: mutual respect! In what appeared to him as reasoning, he tried to make me understand that just as he wouldn't worship his God in my place of prayer, I shouldn't worship my God in their church and this meant mutual-respect. If he had mentioned any other excuse, even saying he wouldn't simply like it, I would had found it acceptable. But this respect thing was really offending.

In a futile effort, while struggling with myself to keep calm and although I had no intention to say my prayer there anymore, I tried (Khatami-style) to make it clear for him that it's not my God or their God; rather there's only one God worshipped by everybody; and that Jesus Christ does not belong just to them and we Muslims too believe in him as Prophet and Savior; and that Church is the House of God and He would welcome anybody coming there to worship Him; and that God wouldn't regard worshipping Him at His own House as disrespect; and that if he'd come to my place of worship and pray to God, I’d be more than happy and mutual-respect means he should be happy with my praying God in their church likewise.

But he still kept repeating his line of mutual-respect without grasping a single word of what I told him. I realized that I was banging my head against a stone wall (as Captain Haddock puts it) and gave up debating and told him it had nothing to do with respect or lack thereof; it was simply a matter of intolerance on his side.

Fortunately, I could make it to Hope Lutheran Church before sunset and said my prayer there. Here, their discipleship pastor (Pastor Tom, who’s very fond of learning how to pronounce my name correctly) showed me to their family lounge and was quite happy with it. After I finished with my prayers and returned to the sanctuary, he asked me whether I enjoyed my prayer there. Surely, I did.

Anyway, curious to observe a traditional (and presumably mundane) service, I attended Christ Presbyterian Church. I had no intention to stay there for long and had arranged for a crammed schedule attending two more services at Hope United Methodist Church and maybe Christ the King Catholic Church (both nearby on Sylvania Ave).

I ended up staying at Christ Presbyterian Church past 2 pm, attending all of their services. It was quite an experience, a surprising yet enjoyable one. And it somehow broadened my view. Here, the contrast between their traditional and contemporary services was rather sharp.

I'll write about it in my next post.

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P.S. I admit that the title of this post doesn't reflect well on what I've written. I wanted to make it a prelude to my observation on traditional vs contemporary worship at Christ Presbyterian Church. But the result is ... well, not completely relevant.