Emotional Worship
If you think that contemporary charismatic worship is emotional, check out the following description of the worship gathering of the church pastored by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), the author of the classics "Confession"Augustine’s audience responded to his appeals with gusto--with thunderous applause, shouts, cries. In his day, churchgoing was a raucuous, noisy affair. The assembly would applaud whenever they recognized a favorite Scripture verse. They would even interrupt and shout out the remainder of a verse he had begun to quote. They loved to show off their biblical expertise. Once, Augustine obliquely alluded to a man who, while ‘coming to marry a foreign-born wife,’ met a ‘roaring lion’ and ‘strangled’ it. The crowd immediately shouted, ‘Samson,’ before he could give the name….They also would try to outguess him, and when they saw him winding his way towards a favorite theme, they would begin shouting in anticipation. Other times, when they felt chastised--either by the reading from Scripture or by what Augustine said--they would fill the church with loud sighs or groans or would ‘beat their breasts’ like workmen ‘laying pavement stones.’
- Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, pp. 168-9
What do we mean by the term "traditional worship"?
