PUTTING AN END TO WORSHIP WARS - Elmer Towns

society is apparently retreating from civilization as we have known it, and that educational
standards are being reduced to a lower level, i.e. to reflect where people are rather than lifting
people to where they should be. Marva Dawn accuses contemporary worship forms of turning
away from the richness of Christianity that brought the church to its greatest height and
"Dumbing down" to where contemporary people are today. She uses illustrations of the
American educational institution that makes tests easier, so students can pass, hence bringing
school standards down to the level of the student; rather than lifting the student to the level of
established norms. She indicates that the reading achievement tests for ninth graders in 1988 is
easier than for fourth graders in 1964. As a result, she feels children have learned less than their
parents, their intelligence is less than their parents, and their academic attainment is far inferior.
She notes some contributing forces to the problem are video games, television, rock videos and a
number of other influences that face today's kids. 1
Marva Dawn, a Lutheran lay-woman, sees a parallel in accommodating culture to
contemporary worship just as the church has accommodated culture into contemporary Christian
music, with the subtle musical beat, giving the young Christians of today what they want; rather
than the stimulation they need to lift them to higher level. 1 Marva Dawn sees the problem as
more than a shallow music style, it has become a "slippery slope" that allows contemporary
culture and society to tell the church how it wants to worship, when it wants to worship, and
what is appropriate for worship. She feels that many churches have made a "Devil's pact" with
contemporary culture and in the process has stripped itself of true biblical worship, so that the
church no longer has the power and influence to change lives that it once had.
Obviously Dawn's problem is more with contemporary culture, than it is with the
contemporary worship service. She describes contemporary culture as "technological, boomer,
post-modern culture." 1 She notes we live in a world that is controlled by television, which makes
people passive. She feels television first makes people lose their ability to rationalize, and
second they surrender to the advertising world of marketing and consumerism. The worse thing
about the contemporary culture is that it makes individuals lose their individuality, each one
conforming to society. Each person is now both submissive and desires to keep up with what
they see on television. As a result she claims this influence leads to hopelessness, cynicism and
ultimately to humanism and atheism. According to Dawn, "When we "Dumb Down" the church,
then we've prayed to the idolatries of mammon, or power, then we allow our culture sloth or
efficiency to control us, then we serve the purposes of evil and allow their principalities and
powers to pervert God's designs for believers' character, growth and for their response to God's
gift in reaching out to a needy world with the genuine gospel." 1
While Dawn has many obviously Christian points to make about the problems of today's
worship, there are some answers to her attack. First, she suggests that anything coming from
popular culture should be excluded from our worship in the church. She wants us all to retreat
into the sanctuary for liturgical worship. But let us ask, does the worship that she suggests come
from a culture that was Christian? Most people who follow the liturgical worship expression she
suggests, usually recognize that it began in Europe and roots in our western civilization. Would
she have other cultures, i.e. Asian, Hispanic, African, and Indian follow a "Westernized"
worship? To do that worship would not come from the heart, but from another culture, i.e. the