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 PrintableVersion Creation at worshipDangerous theologyCREATION AT WORSHIP Worship practices have changed. One danger is that we lose our view of God as Creator in our urgency to experience the crucified and risen Christ. Chris Voke, deputy principal at Spurgeon’s, aims to restore the balance. He draws on an analysis of transcripts and liturgies from over 140 services in a wide variety of churches. He finds that God as Creator is often barely mentioned, and ecologial issues are mostly ignored. He proposes that we recover the doctrine of creation in corporate worship, both in theology and in practice. Voke makes useful suggestions as to how to bring creation into a service: in praise, readings, penitential and petitionary prayers, testimonies, the offering, and the benediction. The wheat will have to be sifted out from the chaff, such as tree-planting Eucharists in Zimbabwe, or well-dressing ceremonies in Derbyshire, or simply pronouncing God’s blessing on ‘happy pagans who have just wandered in, since the creator God is their God too’ (p.153). The majority of the book presents Voke’s theology of creation in worship, which is precarious at best. He draws heavily on Colin Gunton, although it is down to the reader to spot that. He treats Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox practices as equals: the ‘three main traditions’ (p.102) with a ‘long and eminent tradition of liturgy’ (p.97). But Voke himself has a variety of ‘unusual’ beliefs. He abandons the Augustinian grasp of the Fall as ‘a sudden descent from a state of original perfection’ (p.69) for Gunton’s ‘transformative’ view of creation. Worse, Voke denies that faith in Christ is necessary to worship God. ‘Having no conscious knowledge of the gospel of Christ is not in itself a bar to valid worship’ (p.108). He aims — not unlike Schleiermacher — to use creation to provide ‘a bridge over which not-yet believers may come into the context of Christ’ (p.171). But by dropping the demand for faith Voke blows up that bridge and maroons himself in inclusivism: ‘Any worship offered anywhere that is worship of a [sic] Creator and Lord of the universe, may be understood as assisted and enabled by the presence of the Spirit’ (p.112). Leaders of worship may find some practical ideas here, but the theology is dangerous. Tim Mitchell,
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