There are some important, Anglican-relevant points made about the contrasting marketability of Lutheran and Calvinistic confessional documents and the contrasting intellectual formation of lay people in either context. Yet a key failing of the essay is that I have no idea which Lutherans and Calvinists are being compared. I'm assuming people in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America still hand out the Book of Concord, while I often have to inform Presbyterians (PCUSA) about the existence of the Westminster Confession or Calvin's Institutes. Given that it is First Things, I wonder if the contrast is between the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
Just keep that in mind if you read the essay.
The fun part comes when the author points out that the sacramental (not merely the liturgical) atmosphere of Lutheran churches contrasts with Calvinist churches because of their differing sacramental theologies. Calvinists see the sacraments as memorials or recognitions of actions or interior states already completed. Baptism signifies baptismal faith in God. The Lord's Supper is an act of personal or corporate recognition of God's saving work. The focus is on the remembering we do (anamnesis).
The Lutheran view (and the majority Anglican view is consistent with it) is that the sacraments (and liturgical acts of penance) are vehicles of Grace for God to act on us. We trust their efficacy, because (1) they are instituted by God in Christ; (2) the Pastor acts in the person of Christ to bring Christ's words to us; and (3) Christ is trustworthy. I would say that the liturgical tension between Lutheranism and the older catholic forms is that the Lutherans transmit Christ to us more in the pose of his Earthly ministry rather than as glorified High Priest and King.
The Evangelical Anglican view of baptism is a hybridized version of these views: the liturgy does nothing in itself but describes and signifies what we believe to be happening.
Now that the theology is set forth, the author talks about how it infects the atmosphere.
If our young Evangelical would happen to visit a Lutheran church, long before he hears about theological differences, he will “feel” that the experience of church and spirituality is different in the Lutheran church. With a nod to Cary’s argument, if the Lutheran church, as it were, “does” it right, it will feel alien relative to the average American church—it will “feel” frankly medieval. And it will feel that way irrespective of whether the Lutheran church sings praise songs instead of hymns, or whether it uses traditional or modern architecture in its building. Word and sacrament is what it’s all about. Christians are actually united in baptism with Christ on the Cross, and we actually receive Christ’s forgiveness by receiving his body and blood respectively broken and poured out for that forgiveness.
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