Growth of Ritualism

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 16, 1912

Growth of Ritualism

THE ordinary reader has to look back only through his own experience to note the rapid growth of ritualism in the Christian church. Order and system and proper form have their place in religious services; but when forms and ceremonies are multiplied and exalted to the place where they supplant the true spirit of worship, they are to be deplored. The editor of the Western Recorder of May 2, 1912, deplores the growth of this ritualistic spirit in the Baptist churches:—

What has created this spiritually depraved taste among Baptists, and what has caused many who, at heart, detest this innovation, to submit in slavish silence, we are unable to say. That some among us are traveling the road that leads at last to Rome, there is little doubt. That they will reach Rome is a question, for many may stop at the last station (Episcopal) this side the Eternal City.

Of the real value of the ritualistic services in the attainment of salvation, the editor says:—

No church that fully believes in salvation by grace, can ever be led to play the rôle of the ritualist. Ritualism must be founded upon a theory of salvation by works, and divinity by doing. One who believes himself a sinner saved by grace, and has felt the pulsing power of the doctrine of God's sovereignty, can never bring himself to believe that he can worship God only by certain forms and formulas. He feels and knows that not at Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, must he be forced to worship; but wherever the creature meets the Crucified, there he worships in spirit and in truth.

It is truly pitiful to see the famished soul, yearning for the bread of heaven, being fed with stones and dry, empty forms. Of the results of ritualism on the life of the church, the Recorder adds:— In many of our cities, notably in New York, Baptists have tried this sort of thing, and tried it, too, to their own undoing. In this city Baptists have steadily declined, while the denominations they have aped—Roman Catholic and Episcopal—have continually gained in membership. Our Catholic and Episcopalian friends have been too long and too successfully engaged in spiritual dressmaking and religious toggery, for Baptists to hope to compete with them at this late date. . . . Until there is a change in the character of New Testament institutions, let Baptists continue to worship God after the manner of their fathers.