To be furious at local church carol service

[YogaGrinch]

With our new "fundamentalist " vicar who included genesis 3 16

And other misogynistic patriarchal quotes and suggestions throughout the service -

Listening to the King's college Cambridge service tonight was a completely different service although there too there were some dated patriarchal views shared?

And basically using opportunity of a full church to preach hellfire and brimstone snd call us all hypocrites and sinners rather than preaching love kindness beauty

Never heard anything like it

Was absolutely 💔

Tradition like actually believing Christianity is true and saying so? Tradition like Jesus is the fulfilment in Genesis 3. Tradition like church is for churches to say what they believe. Sin, judgment and hell are all basic Christian teaching, in the creeds and in the CofE. YABU to expect to go to church and just sing mindless carols. If you don’t want Christianity, don’t go to church!

Even if you only have carols, btw, they say things like:

O little town, But in this world of sin…
Hark the herald: God and sinners reconciled…
God rest ye merry gentlemen: Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day, To save us all from Satan's pow'r when we were gone astray
Unto us is born a son: This did Herod sore affray and did him bewilder, So he gave the word to slay, and slew the little childer.

None of which make any sense unless you actually listen to the Bible, rather than a bowdlerised primary school nativity story featuring the third lobster. Sin is pretty important to understand if you want to know why we celebrate Jesus saving us from sin.

Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Depending on which denomination you belong to, the Old Testament has varying degrees of importance. Generally, the Catholics and CofE are not Bible-based, in that they believe the OT is an important historical text, but it is not to be followed to the letter. When Christ died a new coventant was made with God, and we don't follow things in the OT like not eating pork, etc. Besides, even the Popes aknowledge that the OT has a lot of mixed messages and is contrary to how Jesus was teaching us to live.

Also, way to take a verse out of context. Yes, the woman was to blame and cursed. So was the man blamed and cursed for what he did. And the serpent. It’s not misogynistic to blame a woman for what she did.

It’s a very traditional reading for a carol service. That bit of Genesis is the one read as the first reading at Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge, and in most other carol services that follow that same traditional pattern. It’s just that in recent years King’s and many other places, have (rightly in my view) chosen to omit that particular misogynistic verse from the story. This vicar clearly didn’t; but neither will a lot of other people who follow the “traditional” pattern of readings.

As to why we read the Old Testament at Christmas, the Nine Lessons tell the story of our salvation beginning with the Fall (the reading you quote from) when sin came into the world, carrying on through the prophets foretelling the coming of God’s Messiah, and leading into the story of Jesus’s birth which Christians believe both fulfilled the prophecies of God’s salvation for his people and put right the damage caused by the Fall, allowing us back into Paradise. The it ends with St John’s great meditation on the Incarnation: “in the beginning was the Word…”

So yes, it’s all traditional. Nine Lessons and Carols dates from 1880, so not that old, but the tradition at Christmas of meditating on the Fall and Eve taking the apple is much older; there are lots of medieval carols and writings about the parallelism between the Fall coming through Eve and salvation through Mary, for instance. The carol “Adam lay ybounden”, sung in the Kings College service this year, is one of the best known examples.

However, like whoever puts together the service from Kings, I’d choose to omit that verse these days. Just as I also choose (unlike Kings) to omit from the carol “Once in Royal David’s City” the verse about “Christian children all must be mild obedient, good as he” since it rather jars with what we know about safeguarding these days.

Both RC and CofE teaching is crystal clear that the OT is the inspired word of God.

Yeah, nothing says ‘tradition’ like a bit of retrofitted misogyny explaining labour pains as divine punishment.

Our vicar dressed up as a Christingle orange this afternoon! He’s great!

Go and read up on it, not all of the rules in the OT are followed by Christians. It's important theologically, but Christians follow the New Testament.

@ Hotel785634
Interesting to know, thank you.

Thankyou for your insights here . I have attended many nine lesson services and never heard 3 16 read before. Felt very uncomfortable for many of us there. Indeed shocking for some.

A modern church surely needs to adapt and adjust some of these verses. To reflect 21st century.

I mean you can't pick and choose which bits of the religion you believe in can you, surely you're either in or you're out? The bible isn't a Taylor Swift record where you might prefer listening to the lyrics of some songs to others, it's the written word of the religion you follow isn't it.

I mean the whole lot is all guff to me, it was written by a bunch of men in order to control the masses, so what do you expect.

This. The Church of England teaches that holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation, and all its minsters have to assent to this. And there’s no clear distinction between OT and NT - all recognisable denominations teach that the whole Bible points to Jesus Christ. In fact the idea that the OT is unimportant or even teaches about a different God from the NT was denounced by the Church as a heresy very early on (Marcionism). The Bible is to be read as a whole; it’s one long story of salvation from the Creation in Genesis to the new heaven and new earth in Revelation. And the NT doesn’t make sense without the OT (what problem is Jesus here to solve? How does God relate to his people?).

We had this verse read out in our church in the 9 lessons in carol service. We are NOT a traditional church, very modern and liberal.

however the 9 lessons is a traditional service written in 1850 for Truro so is sometimes followed faithfully. We followed it faithfully the other day because the whole point of it (well, some of the point) is that Jesus being born is the new covenant and all that vengeful god Old Testament stuff is swept away when Jesus chooses to be born as a vulnerable, child in persecuted poverty.

then live as a man and then sacrifice himself for us.

NEW covenant to replace the old.

I understand that, but it is not merely a historically important text.

Respectfully, this isn’t the interpretation any mainstream Biblical scholar would agree with today. It’s not that the OT has a “vengeful” God or that the OT covenant is somehow evil. In fact that’s a really problematic interpretation because it has tended to lead to antisemitism (not at all saying you’re antisemitic, just explaining why it’s so problematic - it says that the God who chose the Jews and gave them the covenant they still follow is evil and his choice of and love for them is utterly superseded by Christianity). The mainstream view today is that the Bible is one continuous story of God’s love for his people, shown in his creation of them, his covenant with Abraham and his giving of the Law to Moses to show them how to live, and moving through his rescuing of them from slavery in Egypt and then exile in Babylon, and then finally to his giving his Son in Jesus Christ to bring in a new covenant which can include us Gentiles as well as his chosen people the Jews.

There are all sorts of disagreements about the nuances of this among scholars but that’s the basic outline. As I said in a previous post, it’s actually a classic heresy to say that the OT has a “vengeful” God who is swept away by the nicer God of the new.

The New Covenant replaces the Mosaic covenant, but not the others (Abrahamic, Davidic, Noahic). Those latter have still to be fulfilled.

Perhaps because Christian means follower of Christ ... hence New Testament ... not Old Testament?

There are alternative texts within the Bible. Read the Magnificat, the partnership between the God of Israel and Mary, which she actively chooses. Read about Jael and Judge Deborah and Judith and Lydia the purple seller and the Samaritan woman at the well and Deacon Pheobe. There is stuff going on which could barely be imagined by the authors writing at that time and therefore has the ring of truth.

I did a very, very old school theology degree and all these things were important.

If it's in the bible then surely it's fair game for the vicar to pick at any time of year?

Yes, God is the same, past, present and future. His nature is unchanging, it's one of his characteristics, unlike humans! The God of the OT is still God today. when Jesus returns He will judge the world and then you will see He's not only about 'love and blessings' as some of the modern churches would like you to believe. Jesus came to the world so that we sinners would have redemption by believing in him and the blood he shed for us all. Those that believe in Him will not be judged and will pass to the eternal kingdom. God must judge all sin, that's fair. Without the sacrifice of His son, Jesus we would all be judged as sinful.

Of course God wants all to come to Him and accept Jesus and be redeemed, so no-one is lost. It's up to each person whether they do so or not.

That's sounds disappointing. Just the thing that would put non regular church goers from wishing to come back. I always feared this to be the case so it made me not want to go.

The carol service should be used in a way as a subtle marketing exercise to get non practicing or lapsed Christians back into the church.

So the message should be engaging and appealing, not preachy and horrible.

I hope you can speak to the vicar about how it could be improved.

Jesus himself knew and loved the Old Testament, quoting from it frequently. All scripture is God- breathed.
The whole of history is an arc, flowing from Old Testament into the New. The OT continually points to the coming Messiah. The readings of the 9 lessons and carols actually helpfully explains this. Lots of carols also help ( some are theologically nonsense though but have good tunes)
O come, o come Immanuel is one of my favourite, from the 15th C. It's lovely to be connected with worshippers so long ago. ( Immanuel - God with us). The Jesus Storybook bible is really helpful in connecting the old and new testaments.

That's a matter of oppinion debated by the many different denominations. But fact is Christians follow the new covenant made by Jesus in the New Testament, which is why they're not sacrificing lambs and following the rules in the OT.

Agreed. And O Come O Come Emmanuel is actually based on a much older text, the O Antiphons or Great Advent Antiphons, still in use in CofE and RC liturgies and which go back to early medieval times; Boethius quotes them in the sixth century.

But Christ is there, throughout the OT, in fact, in Genesis 3:15! God is speaking to the serpent:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

This is a Messianic prophecy if you take it in its literal, historical and grammatical sense. The 'seed' of Eve is the Messiah, the seed of the serpent is the Antichrist.

There are many, many references to a coming Messiah throughout the OT. The OT is incredible and is very much worth studying.