RELIGIOUS THEATER: ANCIENT AND MODERN (Santamaria)

RELIGIOUS THEATER: ITS ANCIENT AND MODERN VERSIONS

FOREWORD

The old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same is applicable to this topic. Simple worship is not enough; false Churches need more entertainment and pizzazz. The fleshly senses. Must be addressed in the vain idea that these stimulated senses produce spirituality.

Guillermo Santamaria

THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE TWO

1. Both are forms of religious theater

I don’t mean “fake,” I mean staged.

High church drama (processions,^[1][2][3] solemn pageantry):

The clergy move in carefully choreographed ways.

Space is arranged like a sacred stage: altar, rails, choir stalls, icons/statues.

The congregation mostly watches, stands, and kneels, and answers on cue.

Evangelical church band^[4] (lights, screens, praise team, crescendos):

The platform is a stage in the literal sense.

Lighting, sound, and song order are curated to produce a particular emotional arc.

The congregation sings and sways, but the band leads as performers.

In both cases, you have:

• A visible “front” team (priests/choir vs band/worship leader).
• A rehearsed script (liturgy/ceremonial rubrics vs set list/transition patter).
• A structured experience designed to move people through a sequence of feelings.

Change the costumes and the musical style, and it’s the same basic grammar: worship as a sensory event organized by specialists.

2. Both lean heavily on aesthetics to mediate “the holy.”

High church drama:

• Atmosphere of mystery: incense, stained glass, chant, ancient wording.
• Physical distance: rails, elevated altars, special vestments.
• The sense is: the holy comes to you through this sanctified ritual world.

Evangelical band:

• Atmosphere of intimacy/“realness”: contemporary music, casual clothing, emotional language.
• Different aesthetic, same function: the band creates the “space” where you’re supposed to feel God’s presence.
• The sense is often: the holy is encountered in this particular musical-emotional climate.

Two styles, one shared instinct:

Use art, sound, movement, and environment to help people feel that something more than ordinary life is happening here.

Old School eyes look at both and say:
you’re treating atmosphere as a quasi-sacrament.

3. Both can turn the congregation into an audience

High church:

• People watch the priest “do” the liturgy.
• Their part is to be reverent, to follow along, to receive.
• The holiest bits often happen for them, not by them.

Band-driven evangelical:

• People often watch the band “do” the worship.
• If the sound is too loud, their voices are swallowed.
• The band must be tight, on time, expressive; the crowd’s job is to ride the wave.

Either way, worship shifts from body acting together to a platform-centered performance with a largely passive crowd—whether it's a robed chant or a bridge with an epic guitar swell.

4. Both encode theology about who acts in worship

Underneath the aesthetics sits a theology—sometimes explicit, often not.

High church drama tends to say (by its actions):

• There is a priestly class that handles holy things.
• Sacred space and ritual act as mediating layers between God and the people.
• Time and space are sacralized by ceremony.

Rock-band evangelicalism often says (again, by its actions):

• There is a platform class (worship leaders, pastors) who create the environment where encounter happens.
• The key mediating factor is music and mood—if the “set” falls flat, the sense is that the worship did too.
• The emotional arc of the service sacralizes time.

Different clothing, same pattern:
the church is less an assembly of mutually responsible saints, more a crowd shepherded through an experience by experts.

From a strict Old School / regulative-principle angle, both are variations on the same error:

Treating worship as a crafted experience offered to people, rather than a simple obedience offered by people.

5. Both easily become self-justifying “means.”

One more similarity that will scratch your Old School itch:

High-Church drama often justifies itself with:

• “This beauty lifts hearts to God.”
• “This is how the church has always worshiped.”
• “The drama embodies theology that the people can see.”

Evangelical bands justify themselves with:

• “This music helps people open up to God.”
• “This is what reaches the culture.”
• “People feel God’s presence during this set.”

In both, the felt effect becomes proof of correctness. If it moves people, it must be right.

Old School instinct: that is classic means-ism—confidence in what man stages, structures, and stirs up, rather than in the bare, foolish-seeming simplicity of New Testament worship: prayer, the Word, simple singing, ordinances, discipline, fellowship.

So, zoomed out:

High church drama = ancient, formal religious theater.
Evangelical band = contemporary, informal religious theater.

Both:

• Center on a platform,
• Use aesthetics and performance to create “encounter,”
• Risk turning the congregation into an audience,
• And rest on a quiet confidence that a carefully engineered atmosphere is how you “do” worship effectively.

From the vantage point of a stripped-down, primitive ecclesiology, they’re just two different costumes on the same stage.

THE HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS THEATER

Religious theater is basically what happens when worship puts on a costume and steps under a spotlight. The forms change, but the impulse is ancient.

Here’s the flyover, trying not to turn it into a textbook:

1. Before “theater”: ritual as drama

Long before anyone sold tickets, ritual itself was already theatrical:

• In many ancient cultures (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China), priests re-enacted myths: processions, costumes, masks, and symbolic actions.
• People didn’t think “we’re watching a play”; they believed they were participating in a real interaction with the gods.

Ancient Greek tragedy is basically the first place where we can clearly see theater crystallizing out of a religious rite:

• Festivals of Dionysus in Athens involved processions, hymns, and ecstatic rituals to the god. From these developed choral songs (dithyrambs) and then full dramatic performances in the Theatre of Dionysus.

A nice way scholars put it: the shaman became the actor, the altar became the stage, and the participants became the audience.

So from the start, “theater” is a stylized, semi-detached version of religious performance.

2. Early Christian ambivalence: drama is pagan… mostly

The early church inherited two things at once:

• A strong suspicion of pagan spectacles (gladiators, comedies, erotic dances, etc.).
• A deep instinct for ritual (Eucharist, baptism, processions, chanting) that visually looks a lot like drama.

The Fathers often condemned the public theater as morally corrupt, but meanwhile the liturgy itself functioned like a holy script with roles, responses, and repeated actions. It just wasn’t called “theater.”

3. Medieval liturgical drama: theater is born in the church again

Around the 10th century in Western Europe, drama literally re-emerges inside the liturgy:

A tiny Easter dialogue called the “Quem quaeritis?” trope (“Whom do you seek?”) was inserted into the service: monks playing the angels and the women at the tomb, with a short staged exchange.

From that seed grows liturgical drama: small acted scenes inside worship (especially for Christmas and Easter), mixing chant, movement, and symbolic gesture.

Over time, the plays step out of the chancel into the churchyard and town square:

• Mystery plays: cycles dramatizing biblical history from Creation to Judgment, often sponsored by craft guilds.
• Miracle plays: stories of saints and their miracles.
• Morality plays: allegorical dramas where characters are personified virtues, vices, and abstractions—like Everyman, Mankind, The Castle of Perseverance—teaching the soul’s struggle and need for salvation.

By the late Middle Ages, Europe is full of explicitly Christian theater: processions, wagons, costumes, devils, angels, all designed to catechize and move the masses.

4. Reformation and suspicion: who shut the show down?

Then the Reformation and Counter-Reformation hit:

Reformers (especially the more radical/Calvinist/Puritan types) often see religious plays as dangerous:

• They mix Scripture with human invention.
• They turn holy things into entertainment.
• They’re associated with rowdy festivals, drinking, and superstition.

Result: in many Protestant regions, religious theater is sharply curtailed or banned; worship is stripped back to Word, sacrament, prayer, and simple song.

On the Roman Catholic side, the Counter-Reformation sometimes leans into spectacle (Baroque altars, processions, music, and later Jesuit drama in schools) as a way to teach and impress.

So you get a fork:

• Sober, Word-centered Protestant worship (at least in theory).
• Rich, visual Catholic (and later Orthodox) ritual drama, plus local festivals and plays.

5. Passion plays and local pageants: the survivors

Even where drama is suspect, some forms cling on, especially Passion plays:

The most famous: Oberammergau Passion Play in Bavaria, first performed in 1634 as a vowed response to the plague—promising a play of Christ’s suffering and death every ten years if God spared the village.

Similar Passion and Nativity plays exist across Europe and Latin America, blending devotional piety with village tourism and spectacle.

These are direct descendants of medieval religious theater, still going strong.

6. Modern era: from church stage to global media

19th–20th centuries:

• Churches use pageants, Christmas plays, and cantatas as evangelistic tools.
• Religious orders and schools stage didactic dramas—saints’ lives, moral stories—especially in Catholic and Anglican contexts.
• Revivalism and camp meetings add their own theatrical touches: staged testimonies, choreographed choirs, big tents, dramatic altar calls.

20th–21st centuries:

• Film and TV take over much of the old role of religious drama (Ben-Hur, Jesus of Nazareth, The Passion of the Christ, endless Nativity TV specials).

Inside churches, you get:

• Christmas/Easter productions that are basically semi-professional musicals.
• Evangelical “worship experiences” with lighting, projections, and narrative arcs that function very much like live theater, but framed as worship.

In many places, megachurch services are now the main form of religious theater: scripted, rehearsed, visually curated, designed to produce a specific emotional and spiritual narrative in 60–90 minutes.

Which is exactly where your earlier comparison comes in: high church ritual and band-driven evangelical services are both descendants of this long line of “sacred performance.”

7. The deep pattern

If you zoom way out, the story looks like this:

• Ritual is originally lived myth—people act out their relationship to the divine.
• Some of that ritual detaches into theater: the action is now watched as much as participated in.
• The Church alternates between:
  • Harnessing drama to teach and move (liturgical dramas, mystery plays, Passion plays, modern pageants).
  • Reacting against it as a dangerous spectacle that competes with Word and sacrament.

Or to put it in one line:
religious theater is as old as altars and processions, and every generation has to decide how much of that “holy show” they can use without it swallowing the substance.

Is there any biblical Basis for the Idea that pageantry, music and lighting, and incense can produce spirituality?

Short answer: No verse says that music or pageantry produces spirituality.

The Bible gives you (1) God-appointed music and ceremony, and (2) very strong warnings that those things, by themselves, do nothing for the soul.

Let’s walk it through.

1. Where music and “pageantry” do appear in Scripture

Old Testament:

• David’s organized choirs and instruments for temple worship (1 Chr 15–16; 25; 2 Chr 5:11–14; Ps 150).
• Processions, trumpets, priests in garments, incense, sacrificial ritual—very “pageant-like” worship (Exodus–Leviticus; 2 Chr 7:3–6).
• Occasional links between music and prophetic activity:
  • Saul meets a company of prophets with harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre; the Spirit comes on him (1 Sam 10:5–6).
  • Elisha asks for a musician; as he plays, “the hand of the LORD came upon him” (2 Kgs 3:15).

So yes: God Himself commanded elaborate, musical, visual worship in Israel, and at a few points, music is right next to prophetic inspiration.

But notice the direction:
God gives the Spirit and the word; music is alongside, not the cause.

2. Where God rejects musical/ceremonial worship

When hearts are wrong, God treats the entire show—music, sacrifices, feasts—as a stench:

“Take away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols” (Amos 5:23).

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? … I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting” (Isa 1:11–15).

In other words:

You can have perfect liturgy, choirs, incense, festivals, and be utterly dead before God.

So whatever those things are, they’re clearly not a reliable producer of spirituality.

3. New Testament emphasis: Spirit and Word, not atmosphere

When the New Testament talks about how spiritual life comes and grows, it consistently points to:

• The new birth by the Spirit alone (John 3:5–8).
• The Word of God as the instrument of faith:
  • “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:17).
  • “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth” (Jas 1:18).
  • “Born again… by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet 1:23).

When Paul mentions music, it’s not as a means to create spirituality but as a fruit and vehicle of the Word already dwelling in the saints:

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly… teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col 3:16).

“Be filled with the Spirit… speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:18–19).

The logic isn’t:
“Use music to get the Spirit.”
It’s:
“Because the Word dwells in you / the Spirit fills you, you sing.”

And New Testament worship is strikingly simple compared to temple pageantry:

• Apostles’ teaching, prayers, breaking of bread (Acts 2:42)
• Reading and preaching of Scripture, simple singing, ordinances, and mutual edification.
  No instructions for staging drama, visual spectacle, or engineered emotional atmospheres.

4. So what can music and ceremony do biblically?

Positively:

• Help believers express joy, sorrow, repentance, praise.
• Aid in teaching and remembering truth (psalms and hymns as doctrinal containers).
• Accompany God’s work in special moments (as with Elisha), but always as a handmaid, never as magic.

Negatively:

• They can mimic spirituality—people feel deeply moved while remaining unconverted or disobedient (Ezek 33:32: “thou art unto them as a very lovely song… they hear thy words, but they do them not”).
• They can become a surrogate sacrament—trusted to “bring God down” or “stir up the Spirit,” which the Bible never grants them.

What was the origin of this pageantry in the early “church”?

Short version: the pageantry is mostly post-apostolic, and it grows out of a mash-up of (1) Jewish/Old Testament patterns, (2) the Roman imperial court, and (3) the practical needs of huge public basilicas once Christianity went legal.

Let’s walk it in time.

1. The very early churches: mostly simple, house-based

First 2–3 centuries:

• Christians are meeting in houses and small halls, often under suspicion or persecution.
• Worship looks like: reading Scripture, exhortation, prayer, psalms/hymns, the Supper, collections for the poor. Very synagogue-shaped, very “living room” rather than cathedral.

No evidence of clerics in special robes, clouds of incense, processional crosses, or choreographed “entrance rites” in the 1st–2nd century sources.

Architecture: “house churches” like Dura-Europos in Syria (3rd century) are basically remodeled homes with a meeting room and a baptistery, not theatrical spaces.

The instinct is ordered, yes—but not pageant-style. Think Bible study + Lord’s Supper, not a mini-Constantinople.

2. The big turning point: Constantine and the basilicas (4th century)

Once Christianity is legalized (Edict of Milan, 313) and then made the empire’s favored religion (late 4th century), everything changes:

New buildings

Churches move into large basilicas, adapted from Roman public halls: long nave, side aisles, apse with an elevated area for clergy.

That elongated nave and central aisle are perfect for processions—clergy, acolytes, candles, crosses moving in and out.

Imperial court influence^[5][6]

Historians of worship point out that Christian liturgy in the 4th–5th centuries begins to imitate imperial court ceremonial:

• Solemn entrance of the emperor ↔ solemn entrance of the bishop and clergy.
• Courtiers in formal dress ↔ clergy in special vestments.
• Imperial acclamations ↔ liturgical responses and hymns.

The idea is: if Christ is King, His earthly worship starts to look like a Christianized imperial court.

Vestments^[7]

Liturgical vestments basically come from normal Roman civil dress that gradually “freezes” while street clothing evolves. By the 4th century, the dress of bishops and priests had already differentiated from ordinary clothing and had become ceremonial.

Over time, those garments pick up layers of symbolism, but historically they’re “old Rome’s Sunday best” turned sacred.

Processions

Processions have OT and Jewish precedents (ark processions, festival pilgrimages) and strong Greco-Roman civic precedents (imperial and city processions).

By the 4th century, we have evidence of specifically Christian processions in Rome and Jerusalem tied to feasts and relics.

Put simply: once you have legal status, big buildings, and bishops rubbing shoulders with emperors, “pageantry” is almost inevitable.

3. Incense, sound, and spectacle

Incense:^[8]

Has deep roots in OT temple worship and also in pagan religious and civic practice in the ancient world.

It shows up explicitly in Christian art and liturgy more and more from late antiquity onward, especially in the East, and becomes part of the standard toolkit of “holy atmosphere.”

Architecture and mosaics:

Post-Constantine basilicas and later Byzantine churches get apse mosaics, gold, rich decoration, and acoustics designed for chant.

Space, sound, light, and movement all combine to create what we’d now call a sacred aesthetic environment—worship as a full sensory experience.

Again: the logic is, “Christ is King, heaven is glorious; therefore, earthly worship should reflect that glory.” The effect is the rise of elaborate ceremonial.

4. From liturgy to overt drama (medieval)

If you keep cranking the “pageantry” dial, you eventually cross from ceremonial into theatrical:

Around the 10th century, tiny dramatized bits are added to the Mass and Office, like the Quem quaeritis Easter dialogue (“Whom do you seek?” between angel and women at the tomb).

Those mini-scenes eventually grow into full liturgical dramas, then spill outside into mystery/miracle plays in the town square.

So the origin of pageantry in the “early” churches (late antiquity) is:

house-church simplicity +

Jewish and biblical processions +

Roman imperial and civic ceremonial +

new basilica spaces designed for processional, hierarchical worship.

The full-blown “Christian theater” (plays, tropes) is a later medieval flowering of the same instinct: make doctrine visible and impressive for masses of baptized-but-barely-catechized people.

From a stripped-down, primitive perspective, all of that is basically the story of how a simple apostolic meeting slowly learned to dress like an empire.

Who Were The Defenders of this approach?

Let’s name names.

When you ask “who defended this pageantry,” you’re basically asking: who built a theology of elaborate, sensory, highly choreographed worship? Here’s a quick genealogy.

1. Late Antiquity / Early “High” Liturgy

1) Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 5th–6th century)^[9]

If you want a theologian of pageantry, this is your man.

In The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he argues that the Church’s visible hierarchy, vestments, rites, and symbols are a God-given ladder of signs that lead the soul upward.

For him, you don’t strip things down; you add layers of symbol because God is beyond direct vision and must be approached by images, ranks, and sacred choreography.

He becomes massively influential in both East and West. A lot of later “sacramental symbolism of every object and gesture” traces back to Dionysian logic.

2) John Chrysostom (c. 349–407)^[10]

Chrysostom is complicated: he warns sharply against loving décor more than the poor, but he also speaks of the liturgy in majestic, heavenly terms.

In his homilies, he compares Christian worship with the Old Testament temple and sees it as the fulfillment of that glory and splendor, not a downgrade.

Later Eastern tradition even names the primary Byzantine rite after him: The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which explicitly prays, “sanctify those who love the beauty of Your house.”

So while he rebukes excess and hypocrisy, he absolutely underwrites the idea that beautiful, splendorous liturgy is fitting to the heavenly King.

3) Other early liturgical bishops & councils

Not as flashy, but:

4th–6th-century bishops in Rome, Constantinople, and elsewhere endorsed processions, incense, feasts, relic veneration, etc., through practice and local regulations.

The theology is less systematic than Dionysius, but the underlying instinct is: now that Christianity is public, imperial-style ceremony fitting for Christ the King is appropriate.

2. Medieval & Baroque Latin Catholic Defenders

Once you get into the medieval West and especially the Baroque:

4) Medieval liturgical commentators (e.g., Amalarius, later Durandus)^[11]

They write long allegorical explanations of every vestment, gesture, and object:

Chasubles, candles, processions, and even the shape of the church building are treated as visible doctrine.

This is where pageantry is not just tolerated but systematically justified as catechesis in stone, silk, and smoke.

5) Baroque Catholic apologists (17th–18th centuries)^[12]

In the Counter-Reformation, Roman Catholicism doubles down on grand liturgy, art, and music.

Baroque liturgy is explicitly praised as embodying the “pomp, decorum, and grandeur” befitting so majestic a Prince; its very incomprehensibility to the common people is seen by some as enhancing awe.

The idea is: Protestants have plain preaching houses; Catholics will show the full sensory glory of the heavenly court.

You essentially get: aesthetic shock and awe as a defense of Catholic truth.

3. Anglican High Church Defenders

When Rome and the Reformed world collide in England, you get articulate defenders of a kind of “reformed pageantry.”

6) Richard Hooker (1554–1600)^[13]

In Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker defends:

Set liturgy, vestments, kneeling at communion, and other ceremonies against Puritan complaints.

His argument: ceremonies can be “things indifferent” used for order, reverence, and teaching, so long as they aren’t made meritorious or contrary to Scripture.

He’s one of the classic voices saying: “Protestant doctrine, but not bare-walls minimalism.”

7) Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626)^[14]

A key High Church figure:

Helped shape a sacramentally rich, ceremonially robust Church of England, defending it as a “Reformed Catholic” via Scripture and the early Fathers.

Loved ordered prayer, seasons, feasts, and reverent ceremonial as a way to honor the Incarnation and the continuity of the Church.

Later Anglo-Catholics (Keble, Newman, etc.) will lean on this line of defense: beauty + continuity with the early church as arguments for ornate liturgy.

4. Modern Theologians of Beauty & Liturgy

In the 20th–21st centuries, you get more self-aware apologias for “pageantry” as theology in motion.

8) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI)^[15]

Balthasar: big on The Glory of the Lord—beauty as a transcendental that reveals God. Liturgy is not just teaching but a dramatic participation in the divine form.

Bouyer explicitly analyzes Baroque liturgy’s “external pomp, decorum and grandeur” as an attempt to show the majesty of God to the senses—sometimes critically, sometimes appreciatively.

Ratzinger/Benedict XVI writes repeatedly that liturgy is “cosmic,” ordered beauty mediating God’s presence; he defends chant, oriented worship, and rich symbol as organic expressions of that.

9) Contemporary Catholic/Orthodox aesthetic writers^[16]

Lots of modern essays defend good architecture, vestments, chant, and art as necessary because worship should give God our best, and beauty evangelizes.

They’re more likely to distinguish between “cheap spectacle” and “true liturgical beauty,” but they still land firmly on the side of rich, sensory worship as theologically fitting.

How Did New School Baptists View These Pageants?

Now we’re turning the camera to the other side of the split.

I’ll assume by “New School Baptists” you mean the 19th-century Missionary / Board / “improvement” Baptists in America—the people the Old School split from in the 1820s–30s. Different regions = different flavors, but there are some clear patterns.

I’ll tie their attitude to the things you’ve been tracing: incense, vestments, processions, chanting, Baroque altars, Jesuit drama, Passion plays, and the evangelical band.

1. On Catholic / High-Church pageantry: “No, but also… yes.”

Official stance: very anti-“Romish show.”

Most New School / Missionary Baptists in the 1800s were:

• Strongly anti-Catholic and anti-Episcopal.
• Suspicious of vestments, incense, processions, chanted liturgies, altars, and anything that smelled like Rome or the Oxford Movement.

Typical attitudes:

• “Priestly vestments” = superstition, priestcraft, and works-religion.
• Incense, processions, and images/statues = “Popish mummery,” emotional manipulation, and idolatry.
• Chanted responses and fixed liturgies = “forms without life,” quenching the Spirit.

They saw themselves as heirs of Reformation simplicity: plain clothes, plain meetinghouse, preaching + hymn-singing, Lord’s Supper, baptism. So on the Catholic/Orthodox side of pageantry, New School and Old School actually sound similar in their rhetoric.

But—

2. On revivalist machinery: The New School embraced its own theater

Where the Old School really parted company was over evangelical/revivalist pageantry.

New School Baptists, especially in the North and West, were quite willing to adopt 2nd Great Awakening methods:

• Protracted meetings (night after night campaigns).
• Anxious bench / “coming forward” as a visible crisis-moment.
• Highly emotional “religious excitements” – long closing hymns, pleading appeals, tears, stories.
• Star preachers and mass meetings, often heavily advertised.

They would never stage a Jesuit Latin tragedy, but they very much believed in:

A planned emotional arc in the service is designed to bring people to a decision.

This is their version of theater:

Not vestments and incense, but

Arrangement of songs, testimonies, and appeal sermons to produce a crisis and a visible response.

Where Old School men saw “new measures” and “Arminian machinery,” New School Baptists saw:

• “Means of grace” – lawful tools to awaken the unconverted.
• A necessary adaptation to the times: “We must use every legitimate method to win souls.”

So:

Catholic pageantry: their show = bad, superstitious.

Revival pageantry: our show = good, evangelistic.

Same structure, different aesthetic.

3. On music, choirs, and eventually the “band.”

New School Baptists were also much more open to innovations in music:

• Choirs and later “singing societies” in churches.
• Then organs and other instruments.
• Special anthems, solos, and eventually a full “special music” culture.

Old School often opposed these as “theatrical performance in the house of God” – man-pleasing, not congregational worship.

New School defended them roughly like this:

• Music is a powerful gift; if used reverently, it can soften the heart, prepare for the word, and honor God.
• Choirs and instruments aren’t sacramental; they’re adiaphora—help to worship, not of the essence of it.
• Beauty in music draws the mind upward; as long as the truth is sound, it’s legitimate.

If you fast-forward that logic 150–200 years, you get:

Evangelical church bands, worship teams, and praise choruses designed emotional arcs in song sets.

Most modern evangelical “worship culture” is the direct descendant of New School acceptance of musical and emotional technology as a kind of sanctified theater.

4. On religious theater proper (plays, dramas, pageants)

On literary plays and dramatic performances, New School Baptists were cautious at first, then more relaxed:

19th century:

They generally frowned on secular theater as worldly.

But they might tolerate concerts, recitations, and little tableaux for Sunday School anniversaries, missionary programs, etc.

By the late 19th / early 20th century, especially in urban churches:

• Christmas and Easter pageants,
• “Cantatas,”
• Temperance dramas, missionary “representations,” etc.

Again, rationale:

If it helps teach the young, stir up missionary interest, or present gospel truth vividly, then it can be used—within bounds of modesty.

Old School Baptists saw that as exactly the Jesuit/Baroque move in Protestant clothes:

“You are turning the Church into a theatre and the gospel into a play.”

New School Baptists saw it as holy ingenuity.

5. How they would view your list

If you lined up all the things you’ve been cataloging and asked a representative 19th-century New School/Missionary Baptist:

Incense, vestments, processions, chanted liturgies, Baroque altars, Jesuit drama, Oberammergau Passion Play

Official line:

“Romish, theatrical, unscriptural, likely to obscure the gospel in superstition.”

Deeper reality:
They are doing structurally similar things with revivals, music, and public missionary spectacles—but in a low-church, Protestant idiom.

Evangelical church band/emotional praise culture^[17]

Most classic 19th-century New Schoolers didn’t have rock bands yet, but their logic naturally flows there:

Techniques that move people emotionally in the service of gospel persuasion are embraced as “means,” provided the message is orthodox, and the lifestyle is decent.

From an Old School lens, that’s the key distinction:

Old School:

suspicious of any attempt to manufacture atmosphere—whether Catholic or revivalist.

New School:

suspicious of Catholic atmosphere,

but quite comfortable engineering their own non-sacramental atmosphere (music, meetings, appeals) and calling it evangelistic zeal.

So, to your question, “What did New School Baptists think of these things?”:

They denounced high-church pageantry as superstition,

borrowed the emotional logic of pageantry into their revival and music practices,

and framed their own version of religious theater as “the wise, Spirit-honoring use of means” in the service of missions and conversions.

How Would Beebe and Trott Have Looked At These Activities?

Short version:

Beebe and Trott would have seen Christmas/Easter “exercises,” pageants, and Sunday-school entertainments as just another species of New School religious theater—unscriptural, flesh-pleasing “means” that undermine the spirituality of worship and the sufficiency of the local church.

I’ll split them out by theme and tie both men in.

1. Sunday Schools and their “exercises.”

Trott (Black Rock + later pieces)

Trott was already on record in 1832 (Black Rock Address, which he co-authored) that:

Sunday Schools rest on the idea that unregenerate children can be religiously trained into grace by institutional machinery and hired teachers instead of by:

• the home (parents), and
• the church under gospel preaching.

The Address explicitly rejects Sunday Schools as an unscriptural invention that implies the ordinary means God has given (parents + church) are insufficient and must be supplemented by human contrivance.

Once you understand that baseline, the Sunday-school Christmas and Easter shows are, in Trott’s logic:

The flowering of a false root:

• Teach religion as performance and entertainment,
• Gather crowds with “interesting exercises”,
• Reward participation with gifts, trees, and spectacle.

A direct contradiction of Paul’s warnings about “will-worship” and “voluntary humility” (Col. 2:23) — practices that appear humble and pious but are self-chosen, not commanded.

Trott often attacks “religious contrivances” that aim at “interesting the carnal mind” by pleasing its tastes. A Sunday-school Christmas entertainment—a scripted program with recitations, songs, decorations—is exactly the sort of thing he means: religion handled as moral show rather than as the Spirit’s work under simple preaching.

Beebe (Signs editorials)

Beebe, as editor of Signs of the Times, repeatedly:

• Rejects Sunday-school machinery as:
  • distrust of the Spirit’s work in regeneration, and
  • substitution of “learned systems and trained teachers” for the living ministry.
• Argues that if children are elect, God will quicken them in His own time; no set of institutional “helps” can bring them nearer to life.

When New School Baptists used Sunday-school “concerts” and “anniversary exercises” to raise money or stir up interest, Beebe treats such things as:

• Appeals to carnal curiosity instead of the conscience.
• Borrowings from theater and the world, dressed up in religious language.

He’d put a Sunday-school Christmas program under the same heading as protracted meetings and religious “concerts”:

a system that courts the attention of the unregenerate by making religion amusing, in the hope that amusement will slide them toward conversion.

For both men, that is precisely the mentality Old School Baptists separated from.

2. Christmas and Easter as special “holy days.”

Neither Beebe nor Trott had any appetite for liturgical seasons beyond what the New Testament plainly gives (the Lord’s Day, the two ordinances).

Trott

Trott criticizes the notion of setting apart days on mere human authority:

Anything treated as a church holy day must have a warrant from Christ and the apostles.

To invent sacred days (Christmas, Easter) and then build special religious exercises around them is to:

• “observe days, and months, and times, and years” in the Galatians sense,
• drag the church back toward Jewish and pagan festival religion, now in Christian dress.

So a Sunday School “Christmas entertainment” (tree, recitations, special songs) violates his principle twice:

• It sanctifies a day God has not sanctified.
• It fills that day with dramatic, extra-biblical forms under the name of worship.

Beebe

Beebe has at least one well-known editorial on “Christmas” where he:

• Grants that believers may privately remember Christ’s birth in thanksgiving,
• But utterly rejects:
  • treating December 25 as a divinely appointed holy day;
  • the surrounding revelry and superstition (he happily calls out drunkenness, gift-mania, and the “carnal joys of the season”).

He explicitly opposes the church observing such days as part of her worship. Layer on top:

• “Christmas exercises” by Sunday Schools
• “Easter morning programs.”

And you have, in his categories, the church aping the world’s festival instinct and giving it a pious gloss.

3. Religious theatricals and “shows.”

Neither man lived to see the modern evangelical “Christmas pageant” with spotlights and sound systems, but they saw enough of the proto-form to reject it.

Trott’s instinct

Trott:

• Denounces protracted meetings, anxious seats, and similar measures as “means” designed to work on the natural passions.
• Mocks “religious exhibitions” that try to excite the multitude instead of waiting on God.

If you read him carefully, his rule is:

Whenever religion is presented in a form designed to entertain or impress the flesh, it has left the apostolic pattern.

A children’s or youth “pageant”—costumed, staged, rehearsed, done as an entertainment of the Sabbath School—lands squarely in that category. New School defenders might say, “It’s only for instruction,” but Trott would reply: “Instruct them by the Word, not by spectacle.”

Beebe’s instinct

Beebe uses very sharp language about:

• “Religious concerts.”
• “Exhibitions of piety.”
• Efforts to “render religion attractive to the carnal mind.”

He insists over and over:

• The gospel is not improved by being sugar-coated with amusements.
• The Spirit does not need showpieces and performances to call His sheep.

He regularly links this whole mentality to both:

• Popery (with its pageants, festivals, images, and ceremonies), and
• Arminianism (with its “means” doctrine and belief that the right methods can move unregenerate sinners toward life).

A Baptist Christmas or Easter program featuring children “representing” angels and shepherds, reading parts, singing special numbers, all on a decorated platform—Beebe would see as:

• Protestants re-inventing Catholic drama in a cheaper suit,
• While loudly claiming to be “simple, evangelical” people of the Bible.

4. How they’d answer the New School justification

New School Baptists, then and now, justify these things roughly like this:

• “We are just using harmless, attractive methods to teach truth.”
• “It helps children learn Scripture and keeps them interested.”
• “It draws people who might not come to a regular service.”

Beebe and Trott would answer:

Christ never told His churches to attract the world.

He told them to preach, baptize, and teach, and to receive those the Father draws.

Truth does not need ornament to be powerful.

The gospel is “the power of God”; when you lean on spectacle, you quietly confess that you don’t trust that power.

Every inch of “inoffensive” invention becomes a precedent.

Once you accept Sunday Schools, you get Sunday-school concerts.

once you accept “religious concerts,” you get pageants;

once you accept pageants, you build culture around the show, not the worship.

That’s why Old School Baptists pulled away at the foundational level—before the pageant culture fully developed.

So in one sentence:

Beebe and Trott would view Baptist Christmas/Easter pageants, Sunday-school “entertainments,” and similar religious theatricals as unscriptural inventions, borrowed from Popery and the world, relying on carnal excitement as “means” to do what only the Spirit can do through the simple ministry of the Word in the local church.

Endnotes

1. Good question for the “when did the show hit the road?” timeline...long before the churchProcessions are ancient:In the Old Testament:We get liturgical movement built into Israel’s worship and life – ark processions, festival pilgrimages, trumpets, priests in holy garments leading the people (2 Sam. 6; Ps. 42:4; 68:24-27).In the Greco-Roman world:Religious processions for gods and emperors were everywhere – with statues, incense, chanting, sacrifices, and civic pageantry.In other words, when Christianity comes on the scene, processions are already a normal way ancient people “do” religion.Christians didn’t invent the idea; they inherited the cultural grammar and re-purposed it.2. Earliest Christians: movement, yes – formal processions, not reallyThe first two centuries of Christian worship look simple and house-based: reading Scripture, preaching, prayer, singing, the supper. There is order and structure, but not a lot of evidence for the kind of long, choreographed processions you see later.Partly because:They’re mostly meeting in homes or small halls.They’re often under suspicion or persecution; big public religious parades are not their thing.We might have had small, local processions (e.g., escorts for baptism, funerals, etc.), but what we know from sources like Justin Martyr, the Didache, and early apologists sounds very non-pageant-like.3. Once Christianity goes public: Constantine and the basilicasAfter Constantine (4th century), things change fast:Christianity gets legal status (Edict of Milan, 313) and eventually becomes the empire’s favored religion.Huge basilicas are built for worship, especially in Rome and the Holy Land (Jerusalem).Suddenly:you have long naves with central aisles,side aisles for movement,apses with bishop and clergy in prominent positions.That architecture naturally invites processions; it’s basically a holy runway.The bishop and clergy enteringThe carrying of the Gospel bookThe movement of deacons, subdeacons, acolytesIncense, candles, relicsAll start to get organized into processional patterns.4. Influence of imperial court ceremonyThis is crucial:Late antique liturgy borrows heavily from imperial court rituals.Emperor’s entrance + acclamations → bishop’s entrance + “Axios!” / “Many years!”Courtiers in formal dress → clergy in liturgical vestmentsCivil processions → liturgical processions for feasts and relicsSo when we see those big, stately processions in, say, 5th–6th-century liturgy, they are partly:
   Christianized OT processions,
   partly baptized Roman political theater.5. Jerusalem and the “Holy Places”A big booster for Christian processions was Jerusalem pilgrim liturgy (4th–5th centuries).The famous pilgrim Egeria (late 4th century) describes elaborate Holy Week services:processions from one holy site to another,reading relevant Scriptures at each stop,chanting psalms and hymns.These pilgrim rites heavily influenced how processions spread elsewhere.6. Medieval and beyond: processions everywhereBy the Middle Ages, processions are everywhere in Western Christendom:Corpus Christi processions with the Eucharist through the townRogation processions (asking God’s blessing on the fields)Marian processionsLocal patron-saint daysAll with banners, music, incense, relics, and civic participation.Processions move from “only inside church for special feasts” to becoming a main way the church and city enact their religion together.7. Summing up timeline-style:Before Christ: processions are ubiquitous in both Jewish and pagan worshipEarly Church: simple, house-based worship, some movement, but not big formal processions (at least not much evidence)Post-Constantine (4th century): basilicas + imperial models = liturgical processions for clergy, gospel book, relicsJerusalem pilgrim rites: feed into processions tied to holy places and feastsMiddle Ages: processions multiply and move into streets and civic lifeThe “big religious parade” that you see in later Catholic and Orthodox contexts is therefore not apostolic in origin; it’s a post-Constantinian and then medieval development, built on much older processional instincts that existed long before the church, now draped in Christian symbolism. ↩︎
2. Short version:Incense is very old in religion generally.It’s explicitly commanded in Old Testament temple worship.It was not a staple of the very earliest Christian meetings as far as we can tell.It shows up more clearly in Christian liturgy after the 4th century, becoming standard especially in the early Middle Ages.Let’s break that down.1. Long before Christ, incense was everywhere:Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions offered incense as:a sign of honor to gods and kings,a way to create “holy” atmosphere,a practical way to mask the smell of sacrifices and crowds.You see this in Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and other cults. It’s a basic tool in the religious sensory kit.2. Old Testament: incense as divinely commanded worshipGod explicitly commands incense as part of temple worship:Exodus 30:34–38 – God gives a specific formula for “holy incense” to be burned on the golden altar of incense before the veil.This incense is:
   holy to the LORD,
   not to be copied for common use,
   a perpetual statute for the priests.In temple symbolism, incense is often linked to prayer (cf. Ps. 141:2) – a fragrant representation of the prayers of the saints rising before God.3. Second Temple Judaism and synagogue usageSecond Temple Judaism (time of Jesus) maintained temple incense, but synagogues – local gatherings focused on Scripture and prayer – did not necessarily copy the temple’s incense practice.Synagogues were simpler, word-centered assemblies, much closer to early Christian house meetings than to later Christian cathedrals.4. Earliest Christians: lots of prayer, little evidence of incenseThe New Testament never instructs churches to use incense in their gatherings.It frequently uses incense symbolically (e.g., Rev. 5:8; 8:3–4 connects incense with the prayers of the saints), but as a vision, not a liturgical command.Descriptions of early Christian worship (2nd–3rd centuries – e.g., Justin Martyr, the Didache, Tertullian) focus on:reading Scripture,preaching,prayer,singing, the Supper.They say nothing about Christians burning incense in their worship.5. Why early Christians were suspicious of incenseIn the Roman world, burning incense was deeply associated with:emperor worship,pagan sacrifice,civic loyalty tests (e.g., “throw a pinch of incense on Caesar’s altar”).Christians who refused to burn incense to Caesar could be persecuted or killed. So incense was not a neutral smell; it was loaded with idolatrous significance.That likely made early Christians reluctant to bring incense into their own worship.6. After Constantine: incense gradually adoptedOnce persecution eases (4th century) and Christian worship moves into public basilicas, several things happen:Christians re-appropriate cultural symbols, including incense.Incense is re-framed as:honor to Christ the true King,prayer ascending to God,participation in the heavenly worship seen in Revelation.Sources from late antiquity start to mention incense in Christian services more explicitly, especially in Eastern liturgies.7. Medieval and later: incense as standard in “high” liturgyBy the early Middle Ages, incense is common in:Roman Catholic Mass and OfficesEastern Orthodox liturgiesProcessions, feast days, funerals, etc.It becomes highly ritualized:thuribles swung in patterns,incensing of altar, clergy, congregation, and Gospel book.Incense now functions as an integral part of the pageantry:it marks off sacred space,it encloses worship in a scented cloud of “otherness,”it visually manifests prayer and blessing.8. So did Jesus or the apostles use incense in church?We have no evidence the apostles instituted incense as part of Christian assemblies.NT worship commands emphasize:
   Word, prayer, psalms, ordinances, mutual edification.9. SummaryIncense in Christian worship is:a legitimate biblical symbol (prayer rising, divine presence),a temple reality that the New Testament fulfills spiritually,but historically a later import into Christian liturgy, especially post-Constantine, when the church gained political safety, large spaces, and began to adopt sensory tools of earlier temple and pagan worship, re-baptized with Christian meaning.It’s part of the long story of the church “re-learning” how to smell like a temple after the apostles were gone. ↩︎
3. If we’re talking about chanted responses in Christian worship—people answering back in a rhythmic or musical way—you’re looking at a practice with roots both before Christ and after the apostles.1. Before the church: synagogue and psalms already had “call and response”The Old Testament Psalms assume some kind of back-and-forth:Psalm 136 has that repeating refrain, “for his mercy endureth for ever,” which many scholars think was done antiphonally—one group leading, the other repeating.Exodus 15 (Song at the Sea) also looks like it could be call-and-response: Moses and the men sing, Miriam and the women answer with tambourines and dancing.By the time of Jesus, Jewish synagogue practice included:
   reading of Scripture,psalms and prayers,with the congregation saying “Amen” and likely other brief responses.So the raw idea of the people answering back is older than Christian liturgy.2. New Testament era: lots of “Amen,” little formal chantThe New Testament clearly has:
   corporate “Amen” to prayers and doxologies (1 Cor. 14:16),psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16),but it never gives a musical notation or says, “Use chanted dialogue between priest and people.”Early Christian worship in the apostolic age is:
   simple, house- or hall-based,word-and-prayer centered,with singing, yes, but no clear evidence of elaborate chant structures like we see later.3. Post-apostolic: chant starts to formalizeAfter the church spreads and grows, especially 3rd–4th centuries, music in worship becomes more structured:By the 4th century, we have evidence of:
   antiphonal psalmody (two choirs or sides alternating verses),simple refrains the people can sing while a cantor handles the verses.These practices develop especially in:
   Syrian and Antiochene circles (think of figures like Ephrem the Syrian),later spreading West.4. Chanted responses become liturgical “dialogue”As the Eucharistic liturgy and daily offices formalize, chanted responses appear as set parts of the service:Priest: “The Lord be with you.”People: “And with thy spirit.”Priest: “Lift up your hearts.”People: “We lift them up unto the Lord.”These are early, but their full musical development (chant tones, call-and-response singing) unfolds over centuries.These responses function as:
   verbal participation,affirmations of what’s being prayed,mini-creeds built into the service.5. Gregorian and other chant traditionsBy the early medieval period, what we call “Gregorian chant” in the West is basically a family of chant traditions used for psalms, readings, prayers, and responses.The people’s role varies:In some places, the schola (choir) does most of the singing;the congregation may join with refrains or simple responses;in others, more robust congregational chant happens.The key point:chanted responses are now integral to the structure of the Mass and Office,not improvised but prescribed.6. Protestant reactions: some keep chant, some strip itSome Reformers, especially in Lutheran and Anglican contexts, kept a moderated version of chanted responses.
   Lutheran Matins/Vespers, Anglican Evensong = still full of sung responses.More radical Reformed and later Puritan traditions often drastically reduced or eliminated chanted dialogue as “Romish” or “ceremonial,” favoring:
   spoken prayer and preaching,metrical psalm singing only,very little set “back-and-forth.”7. Summary timeline for chanted responses:Old Testament / Jewish background: call-and-response psalms, congregational “Amen.”Apostolic age: corporate “Amen,” singing, but no detailed ritual chant structure described.3rd–4th centuries: antiphonal psalmody, emergence of structured responses.4th–8th centuries: formal liturgies solidify; chanted dialogue between priest and people becomes standard. Medieval: fully developed chant systems; responses woven into daily and weekly cycle.Reformation onward: split between traditions that maintain chant (Lutheran/Anglican/Catholic/Orthodox) and those that reduce or reject it.Fundamental point: chanted responses are a post-apostolic development that grew naturally from biblical/synagogue patterns, but they are not themselves prescribed in the New Testament as a necessary form of worship. ↩︎
4. When we say “Evangelical church band” in this whole religious-theater conversation, we’re talking about a fairly recognizable creature:1. Typical instrumentationDrums, bass, electric/acoustic guitars, keys, multiple vocalists, sometimes loops, pads, and tracks—basically a pop/rock band adapted for congregational music.2. Sound and styleMusically, it borrows from:
   soft rock,arena rock,CCM (Contemporary Christian Music),occasionally gospel, folk, EDM, etc.The songs follow pop structures: verses, choruses, bridges, big builds and drops.3. Role in the serviceThe band usually:
   leads a block of 3–6 songs at the beginning (and sometimes end) of the service,uses dynamics (quiet moments vs. big crescendos) to shape the emotional flow,intersperses exhortation, prayer, and Scripture between songs.The whole “set” is often:
   rehearsed,arranged with intentional key changes and tempo shifts,coordinated with lighting and projection.4. Visual layoutBand members are placed on a raised platform, often with:
   stage lighting (spots, color washes),projected lyrics on screens,possibly haze/fog for light beams in bigger venues.The congregation stands facing the band, which visually functions like a concert stage.5. Theological-rhetorical framingEvangelical churches typically describe this as:
   “worship,”“ushering people into the presence of God,”“preparing hearts for the Word,”“giving God our best in music.”The band leader becomes “worship leader”; language of “leading people in worship” reinforces the sense that what happens musically is the main corporate act of praise.6. Practical realitiesThe band is often:
   made of trained volunteers, orsemi-professional musicians,with regular rehearsals and strong expectations of excellence.This leads to a platform/audience dynamic:The band must sound good enough to not be “distracting”;worshipers can slip into watching/consuming.7. Why it’s relevant to “religious theater”The evangelical band isn’t “theater” in the sense of costumes and scripts, but it’s theatrical in that it:
   uses performance techniques (sound, staging, pacing) to create an experience,places a visible group in front of a largely passive crowd,builds an emotional arc designed to move people in predictable ways.From an Old School or very simple-worship eye, this is structurally parallel to older forms of pageantry—even if its content is more biblically orthodox and less sacramental. ↩︎
5. Baroque altars are basically the theological drama of the Counter-Reformation carved in wood and stone and gilded for maximum effect.1. Historical settingBaroque art and architecture (roughly late 16th–18th centuries) is the Roman Catholic answer to:
   the Protestant Reformation’s plain preaching houses, andthe need to reassert Catholic doctrine and glory in a very visual, emotional way.After the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Church encourages art that:
   teaches clearly,stirs devotion,exalts the sacraments and saints.2. What Baroque altars look likeEspecially in Italy, Austria, southern Germany, Spain:Huge, vertical structuresBehind or above the actual altar table (the mensa), you get a towering reredos or retablo:a central painted or sculpted scene (often a key mystery: Crucifixion, Assumption, etc.),surrounded by columns, broken pediments, volutes, angels, rays of light,gilded surfaces catching candle and window light.Altars may incorporate reliquaries, tabernacles, and sculptural groups in unified ensembles.3. Theological and liturgical functionsBaroque altars visually proclaim:
   the centrality of the Eucharist (tabernacle often centered),the intercession and presence of saints and angels,the triumph of the Church and of Christ the King.They are designed to be:
   didactic: teaching the faithful through images,mystagogical: drawing the mind “upward” into contemplation,sensory: overwhelming the eye with movement, contrast, and light/dark.4. The altar as stageIn practice, the altar and its backdrop become a kind of stage:the priest performs the liturgy (especially the Canon of the Mass) facing the altar,within a richly symbolic frame,the people watch much of this from a distance, often in partial silence.The effect is theatrical—not in the sense of “fake,” but in the sense of a carefully staged sacred drama, with the altar as focal point and the reredos as set design.5. Protestant vs. Catholic opticsBy contrast, many Reformed and Protestant churches of the same era emphasize:
   a central pulpit or reading desk,plain or modest altar/communion table,scripture texts or simple symbols,not big sculptural backdrops.Barock altars scream:
   “Here, heaven touches earth;here is the Lamb, the angels, the cloud of witnesses;here is the living, sacramental presence at the heart of the Church.”They are the visual quintessence of the Catholic claim that the Mass is a true, objective, sacramental participation in Christ’s sacrifice, enacted in a space that looks like a slice of the heavenly court.6. Why they matter to your projectFor your “religious theater” theme, Baroque altars are prime evidence that:
   Catholic liturgy in the Baroque era intentionally embraced dramatic, theatrical visual language,believing that such sensory overload serves true worship by showing forth glory.Beechy Old School Baptists, of course, would see this as precisely the kind of “sight-worship” and theatrical sacramentalism they wanted no part of. ↩︎
6. Yes, there’s solid historical basis for seeing a link between Christian liturgical ceremony and imperial court ritual, especially after Constantine.1. Late Roman imperial ceremonialBefore Christianity was legalized, the emperor’s public appearances were already:
   highly staged,full of processions,acclamations, special clothing, and choreographed gesture.The emperor didn’t just walk into a room; he appeared with entourage, incense, music, and proskynesis (bowing, prostrations).2. After Constantine: bishops in basilicasOnce Christians gain imperial favor, bishops increasingly operate in spaces and settings that resemble public and courtly life:Basilicas are public buildings, originally used for law courts and markets, now repurposed for worship.The bishop presides from an apse in a cathedra (chair), flanked by presbyters, visually echoing:
   the emperor or magistrate with his council.3. Liturgical scholars on the connectionModern liturgical historians note that:
   entrance rites (processions, veneration of Gospel book, etc.)are formal greetings and acclamations (“Peace be with you,” “And with your spirit”),set prayers around the “throne” (altar/cathedra)bear strong structural similarity to imperial audiences.There’s not a one-to-one blueprint (“they copied this ceremony”), but a shared cultural grammar:honoring a ruler with:
   movement,vesture,acclamation, incense,music.4. Theological “upgrade”The Church’s argument became:
   If earthly emperors get pomp and choreographed honor, how much more the King of Kings?So what began as imperial etiquette is baptized and reoriented:Christ, present in the Eucharist and in His minister, receives the kind of honor once given to Caesar—but with a higher, theological meaning.5. What this means for your workIt’s historically sound to say that:
   late antique and medieval Christian liturgy borrows heavily from Roman imperial court ceremonial,in order to express visibly the kingship and majesty of Christ.For an Old School Baptist critic, that’s exactly the problem:the church has learned to worship Christ using the theatrical tools of empire. ↩︎
7. Short version: clerical vestments start out as just “nice Roman clothes,” then slowly freeze into tradition and get loaded with symbolism.1. Everyday Roman dress firstIn the 1st–4th centuries, what we now call liturgical vestments are largely just:
   standard Roman upper-class garments (tunics, himations, etc.)worn in nicer or cleaner versions for public and sacred functions.Christians didn’t immediately say, “Now we invent special priest costumes.” They just wore the best/most proper clothing for public office and worship.2. Freezing while fashion changesOver time, as lay fashion changes:
   tunics get shorter,styles evolve,but clerics keep the older forms for solemnity.That’s how you end up with:
   the chasuble (originally an everyday outer garment, the paenula),the alb (a long white tunic),the stole (linked to signs of office or rank).These items become “liturgical” simply because:
   the church conserves older styles,long after the street has moved on.3. East and West variationsIn the East, vestments develop into:
   phelonion, sticharion, epitrachelion, etc.with rich colors, crosses, and iconographic motifs.In the West, you get:
   chasuble, dalmatic, maniple, etc.,eventually in codified colors based on calendar.4. Symbolism layered on laterAs centuries pass, writers like Amalarius, later Durandus, pile allegorical meanings onto each garment:alb = purity,chasuble = charity,stole = priestly authority,etc.These meanings are often “after the fact”:the garments existed first; the symbolism is a later theological imagination.5. Reformation critiquesReformers often argue that:
   special priestly dress implies a separate sacrificing priesthood,undermines the priesthood of all believers,feeds superstition and clericalism.Some keep minimal vesture (e.g., simple gowns); others strip down further.6. For your purposesClerical vestments:
   started as normal clothing for public dignity,became frozen “costumes” as fashion moved on,then became a central part of Christian “visual theater,” signaling hierarchy and sacrality.Just the kind of thing Beebe and Trott would treat as human religious costume, not New Testament ordinance. ↩︎
8. Jesuit drama is best understood as the Catholic Church’s “holy theater department” in the early modern period—especially through Jesuit schools.1. Educational contextThe Society of Jesus (Jesuits), founded in 1540, quickly becomes:
   a major teaching order,opening colleges across Europe and beyond (for both elites and broader populations).In those schools, drama becomes a standard pedagogical tool:students write, rehearse, and perform plays—often in Latin.2. Content of the playsThese plays are frequently:
   on biblical stories,saints’ lives,moral and allegorical themes (virtues vs. vices),historical or hagiographic episodes that support Catholic doctrine (e.g., martyrs vs. heretics).The aim is:
   to teach rhetoric and language,to edify, andto defend or illustrate Catholic positions in a vivid way.3. Theatrical styleJesuit plays often feature:
   elaborate costumes,music and choral interludes,stage machinery and special effects (within the tech limits of the day),symbolic staging.Their productions can be quite impressive, especially in larger urban colleges.4. Counter-Reformation purposeThey are part of the Counter-Reformation push:
   using art and theater to catechize,move emotions, andwin hearts back from Protestantism.While Protestants emphasize preaching and sometimes polemical pamphlets,Jesuits are happy to put doctrine “on stage” with memorable characters and spectacles.5. Reaction from ProtestantsMany Protestants saw Jesuit theater as:
   deceptive propaganda,worldly entertainments smuggled into religion,another form of Catholic “show” opposed to pure, simple worship.For your Old School frame, Jesuit drama is basically the codified, educational version of religious theater—explicitly using performance as a tool of indoctrination and devotion. ↩︎
9. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is a mysterious Christian writer from around the late 5th or early 6th century who wrote under the name of the convert of Paul in Acts 17.1. Who he is (as far as we can tell)Modern scholars agree he’s not the real Dionysius of the New Testament, but an anonymous Syrian or Eastern Christian theologian.He writes in a heavy, mystical Greek, blending:
   Christian theology,Neoplatonic philosophy,liturgical reflection.2. Major worksHis core works include:
   The Divine Names (on God’s attributes),Mystical Theology (on apophatic, “negative” theology),Celestial Hierarchy (on angels and their ranks),
   Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (on church offices, sacraments, and rites).It’s that last one that really matters for your religious-theater theme.3. His liturgical/theatrical visionIn Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he presents the church as:
   a visible, structured hierarchy of bishops, priests, deacons, and laity,a liturgical cosmos where everything—from vestments to gestures to spatial arrangement—is symbolic and sacramental.He argues that:
   we cannot grasp God directly,so God uses sensible symbols (signs, rites, images) to lead the soul upward,the church’s ceremonies mirror the celestial hierarchy of angels.The result:all the pageantry (vestments, incense, processions, sacred space, sacraments) is not “extra,” but the divinely intended ladder through which we ascend.4. InfluenceDionysius becomes massively influential in:
   Byzantine theology and liturgy,medieval Western mysticism (especially through translations),Catholic and Orthodox understandings of hierarchy and sacrament.His thought helps justify and sacralize:
   organized liturgical drama,layered symbols, andhierarchical worship as a participation in heavenly order.5. Why he matters to your projectHe’s basically the patron saint of “holy pageantry as theology”:he gives intellectual and mystical backing to the idea that the church should look and act like a carefully choreographed, multi-layered performance,because that’s how the transcendent God reveals Himself to embodied, sense-bound creatures.For an Old School Baptist critic, he’s a key architect of the “religious theater” that turns simplicity of worship into a symbolic spectacle. ↩︎
10. Chrysostom’s sermons show:
    1) fierce moral critique of luxurious worship, but
    2) at the same time, a rich, heavenly vision of the liturgy itself.1. His critique of excessChrysostom frequently rebukes Christians who:
    adorn churches lavishly while neglecting the poor,focus on golden vessels and rich decoration while ignoring justice and mercy.In one well-known line (paraphrased often):he says you should not adorn the altar with golden chalices while Christ is starving at the church door.He’s deeply opposed to:
    vanity disguised as piety,using grandeur to cover over lack of love.2. His exalted liturgical languageYet, when he describes the liturgy itself, he speaks in terms that almost demand pageantry:He likens the Eucharistic assembly to heaven on earth:angels present,invisible powers surrounding,Christ Himself acting through the priest.He presents the priest at the altar as a kind of icon of Christ,standing between God and the people in a sacred ministry.He emphasizes that what happens at the altar is more awesome than anything in the Old Testament temple.3. How this feeds pageantryLater generations take Chrysostom’s:
    heavenly vision of the liturgy,plus his acceptance of beautiful worship when not opposed to charity,and use it to support:
    rich vestments,incense,solemn processions,icon-filled sanctuaries.His name is attached to the Divine Liturgy used in the Byzantine tradition, which is precisely the richly choreographed, symbol-laden rite we’ve been talking about.4. The tensionFor your purposes:
    Chrysostom embodies the tension between:
    prophetic critique of “holy show” divorced from justice, androbust embrace of the idea that public worship should mirror the splendor of heaven.That tension runs right down into modern debates:Old School Baptists resolve it by stripping away most outward grandeur,insisting that the true beauty is in Christ preached, not in liturgical spectacle. ↩︎
11. Amalarius (9th c.) and later Durandus (13th c.) are the guys who look at the Mass and say, “Let me explain what every stitch and candle means.”1. Amalarius of Metz (c. 775–850)A Carolingian bishop and liturgical writer.He wrote works like On the Offices of the Church, in which he:
    describes the liturgy in detail,assigns allegorical meanings to parts of the Mass, garments, actions.For example,he might say the priest represents Christ,the deacon represents prophets or apostles,the subdeacon, the Old Testament, etc.Every action (e.g., washing hands, turning, bowing) is tied to a biblical episode or doctrine.2. William Durandus (c. 1230–1296)Bishop of Mende and author of the Rationale divinorum officiorum (“Explanation of the Divine Offices”).This becomes the classic medieval manual for:
    what each vestment means,why each gesture is done,how every detail of church building and ornamentation is symbolic.He treats church architecture, furniture, vesture, and ritual as:
    a grand allegory of Christ, the Church, and salvation.3. The effect of their workThey don’t invent the ceremonies; they explain and reinforce them.People may have used vestments and candles long before, but after Amalarius and Durandus, they’re seen as:
    intentional, necessary symbols in a cosmic drama,where every item preaches if you understand its meaning.4. Why they matter for youThey are key intellectual defenders of religious theater as pedagogy:their message is, in effect:“The faithful need not only words but also visible signs;the entire liturgy is a vast picture-book of doctrine;pageantry is not fluff but catechism in motion.”From an Old School point of view, that approach dangerously shifts instruction from:
    the plain preaching of the Word → to a web of humanly-invented symbols and performances,which can easily smother the gospel under layers of ceremonial meaning. ↩︎
12. The classic Baroque/Catholic defense of majestic liturgy goes something like this:1. “Senses need sanctification too”Humans aren’t just minds; they have bodies and senses.So:
    the eyes should see beauty (icons, architecture),the ears should hear beauty (chant, polyphony),the nose should smell fragrance (incense),the body should move in reverence (kneeling, standing, crossing).This full sensory engagement is presented as:
    treating the whole person as an object of God’s redeeming work,not just the intellect.2. “The Mass is heaven on earth”Baroque theology loves to present the Mass as:
    participation in the heavenly liturgy (cf. Revelation),a meeting place of angels, saints, and the Church on earth.Therefore,
    the space should look like heaven:gold, light, clouds, rays, angels,the altar as a radiant throne.Especially after Trent, this is deliberately:
    contrasted with “bare” Protestant interiors.3. “Beauty evangelizes”Catholic writers argue that:
    a poor peasant or illiterate person may not follow a sermon,but can be deeply moved and instructed by:
    a crucifixion scene,statues of saints,dramatic altarpieces.They see Baroque churches as:
    stone catechisms,
    where doctrine is displayed for the senses and memory.4. “God deserves our best”They’ll say:
    if rulers and nobles get elaborate halls and music,how much more should God receive the best human artisanship?“Plain” worship, in this view, risks dishonoring the majesty of God or underestimating the Incarnation (God meeting us in embodied, material form).5. Old School counterpointFor your angle, this becomes a classic clash:Baroque defenders:
    beauty + ceremony = appropriate to the King of Kings,evangelizing and sanctifying for ordinary people.Old School Baptists:
    beauty + ceremony = human additions that overshadow the foolishness of preaching,appeal to carnal senses but cannot give life.Baroque apologists see religious theater as glory;Old School absoluters see it as glamorous unbelief. ↩︎
13. Hooker’s basic line in Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is: “Not every church practice needs a specific Bible verse; some things are lawful and helpful as long as they don’t contradict Scripture.”Applied to ceremonies, that means:1. Ceremonies can be “things indifferent”He argues there are:
    doctrines and practices that are necessary (explicitly commanded or implied by Scripture),andceremonies and customs that are adiaphora (indifferent things), which the church may order for edification.2. Criteria for lawful ceremoniesFor Hooker, a ceremony can be retained or adopted if it:
    does not teach false doctrine,does not obscure the gospel,does not bind the conscience as if it were necessary for salvation,serves decency, order, or reverence.If a ceremony:
    helps maintain reverence,expresses fitting honor to God,teaches by symbol without superstition,then it may be kept.3. Defense against Puritan objectionsPuritans wanted to abolish vestments, set forms, kneeling at communion, etc., as “Popish relics.”Hooker responds that:
    just because Rome abuses something doesn’t mean Protestants can’t use it rightly,using historic forms can witness to continuity with the ancient church,uniform ceremonies can promote unity and avoid confusion.He is not arguing for full Baroque overload, but for a moderately ceremonial, ordered worship that:
    avoids anarchy and individualism,embodies, rather than contradicts, Reformed doctrine.4. Why this matters for your comparisonHooker becomes a foundational voice for later Anglicans and some Protestants who say:“We can keep a certain amount of pageantry without becoming Rome;the Bible doesn’t require us to be bare and minimal.”Old School Baptists, by contrast, treat most pageantry as not indifferent at all, but as contrary to the spiritual, apostolic pattern—and see Hooker’s openness as a slippery slope to theatrical religion. ↩︎
14. Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) is one of the classic Anglican “High Church” bishops:
    deeply learned, liturgically rich, and sacramental without being Roman.1. His roleHe was:
    Bishop in several sees (Chichester, Ely, Winchester),a key figure in the translation of the King James Bible,known for his elegant, deeply patristic sermons.2. His liturgical stanceAndrewes favored:
    reverent ceremonial,keeping the church year and feast days,using set forms of prayer and responses,maintaining a sense of the sacred in worship.He loved linking Anglican practice to the early church Fathers, arguing that:
    their moderate, ordered liturgy is the true pattern—not medieval accretions or radical Puritan bareness.3. Theology of worshipHe saw worship as:
    offering God the best words (prayer books rooted in Scripture and Fathers),the best music and architecture possible for one’s situation,all within doctrinal bounds of Reformed Catholicism (no sacrifice of the Mass, but real spiritual presence).4. For your theater themeAndrewes represents an attitude of:
    “Not all pageantry is bad; sober, historic ceremonial is a proper expression of the church’s dignity and her continuity with the early centuries.”From an Old School perspective, this is halfway to Rome:
    too committed to visual and ritual continuity,not sufficiently wary of how ceremonies can become a show. ↩︎
15. Balthasar, Bouyer, and Ratzinger/Benedict are all part of a 20th-century Catholic movement that says:
    “We need to recover the beauty of worship, not just its correctness.”1. Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988)In his massive trilogy The Glory of the Lord, he argues that:
    beauty is a primary way God reveals Himself,not an optional decorative extra.The form of Christ—His life, death, and resurrection—is God’s supreme “aesthetic” revelation.Liturgy, in his view, is:
    participation in this dramatic, beautiful revelation;its gestures, art, and music are not random but expressions of divine glory.2. Louis Bouyer (1913–2004)A former Lutheran turned Catholic priest and liturgical theologian.He both:
    critiques some later Baroque excesses,and yet strongly defends liturgy as:
    an organic, symbolic action,rooted in Scripture and tradition,embodying mystery.His writings on the history of Christian worship emphasize:
    how form, structure, and beauty are tied to the church’s self-understanding.3. Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI (1927–2022)In books like The Spirit of the Liturgy, he argues that:
    liturgy is “cosmic” – it joins heaven and earth, time and eternity,creation and redemption.The Eucharist is:
    not a self-made celebration, but entering into Christ’s once-for-all act.Liturgy should therefore be:
    oriented (often literally, towards the East or a cross),reverent,God-centered rather than community-centered.He critiques:
    gimmicky, self-referential liturgy, but also
    defends traditional elements like chant, vestments, and incense as fitting expressions of the mystery.4. Why they matter to youThese guys are the sophisticated version of: “Yes, worship is theater, but theater in the noblest sense—God’s drama, not ours.”They see pageantry (when rightly ordered) as:
    a necessary embodiment of the church’s faith,not a distraction from it.Old School absoluters, by contrast, see this as baptizing the very sensory apparatus that so easily becomes a substitute for the simple, Spirit-blessed preaching of Christ. ↩︎
16. “Contemporary Catholic/Orthodox aesthetic writers” is a big bucket, but many share some core claims:1. The crisis of modern uglinessThey argue that:
    modern architecture and art (including many 20th-century churches) have become:
    utilitarian,abstract,brutalist or sterile.This, they say, fails to:
    convey transcendence,invite contemplation,form the faithful’s imagination.2. The case for traditionThey call for:
    a return to traditional forms (Romanesque, Gothic, Byzantine),rich iconography,figural art that clearly depicts Christ, Mary, and the saints.They argue that:
    people intuitively respond to beauty,even if they lack theological training;beautiful churches silently preach the reality of God.3. Beauty as evangelizationPopular writers and speakers in this space (priests, artists, theologians) often say things like:
    “People step into a beautiful church and encounter God,”“We should make our churches so beautiful that they can’t be ignored,”“In a secular age, beauty is a powerful apologetic.”They see:
    well-done liturgy + well-done architecture/art + well-done musicas a kind of integrated evangelistic strategy.4. Critique of minimalismThey specifically criticize:
    whitewashed, boxy, “multi-purpose” church spaces,cheap materials and bland design,pop-concert worship environments that feel like shopping malls or theaters.They often sound surprisingly close to Old School critics of evangelical theater—but then they point back to:
    traditional Catholic/Orthodox splendor as the alternative,not apostolic simplicity.5. For your purposesTheir message is basically:
    “The solution to shallow religious theater is better, more theologically deep theater—true liturgical beauty, not cheap emotionalism.”Old School absoluters would say:
    “No, the solution is not a more tasteful show but a return to the apostolic pattern: Word, prayer, simple song, ordinances—no sacred stagecraft at all.” ↩︎
17. Yes—evangelicals talk constantly about being “Spirit-led” in worship, but their practice often reveals a quiet confidence in atmospherics.1. The rhetoric“Worship leaders” say things like:
    “We’re creating space for God to move,”“We’re preparing hearts for the Word,”“Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to come,”“We want you to encounter God tonight.”The implication is that:
    if the set is spiritually and emotionally ‘right’,people will be more open to the Spirit.2. The methodIn practice, many services use:
    progression from upbeat song → mid-tempo → slow/intimate,“spontaneous” repetition of bridges and choruses,lights dimming as emotion intensifies,key changes or drops to heighten effect.All of this is:
    deliberately arranged, often rehearsed,engineered to produce:
    a sense of intimacy,brokenness, surrender.3. The feedback loopWhen people say afterward:
    “Worship was powerful tonight,”they often mean:
    “I felt a lot,”and what drove that was:
    the music, pacing, environment, and crowd energy.Sermons or doctrinal content may be relatively thin, but the worship is rated as “amazing” if the band was on point.4. How this parallels high-church pageantryBoth:
    high liturgy and evangelical worship sets are defended as:
    vehicles for encountering God,Settings where God “shows up” in a special way.In both cases, what’s actually being controlled is:
    the environment and performance,not the sovereign Spirit.Evangelicals tend to deny they have a liturgy or a theater, but their weekly pattern is as repeatable and predictable as any missal:3–4 songs, prayer, sermon, response.5. Old School takeAn Old School absoluter would say:
    The Spirit is not tied to your lighting rig or your bridge progression.He works where and when He pleases, through the Word He has ordained.The more you trust emotional engineering, the less you’re really trusting the bare proclamation of Christ crucified.This is why, in your frame, evangelical band culture and Baroque Catholic spectacle are just cousins in the same family of religious theater. ↩︎
18. Short answer: yes—New School / Missionary Baptists were historically very wary of Catholic pageantry but quite happy to build their own “evangelical theater.”1. Against Catholic pageantryThey:
    preached and published against “Romish pomp and ceremony,”denounced:
    massive processions,vestments and incense,images and relics,Passion plays and festival theatricals,as idolatrous, superstitious, unscriptural.2. For revivalist showmanshipThey enthusiastically embraced:
    protracted meetings,anxious benches and altar calls,stirring revival hymns,celebrity evangelists,large gathers where emotional preaching and music were used to press for decisions.These are defended as:
    “fervent means,”“the Spirit moving,”“revival fire,”even though they structurally:
    borrow crowd psychology and performance techniques.3. For Sunday School and children’s pageantsThey pioneered:
    Sunday School anniversaries with recitations and songs,missionary “concerts” and exercises,holiday programs (Christmas trees, Easter music, etc.).Again, all justified as:
    “harmless helps,”“ways to impress truth on young minds,”“means to reach the unconverted.”4. Why it matters for your argumentThis makes your contrast very sharp:Old School absoluters like Beebe and Trott reject both:
    Catholic/Anglican sacramental theater,andNew School/Missionary evangelical theater.New School Baptists reject Catholic pageantry while building their own parallel system of emotional and educational pageantry for evangelism and instruction.So yes, historically, they were suspicious of the Catholic style of show while simultaneously normalizing their own. ↩︎
19. What we now call “worship teams” and “praise bands” in evangelical churches really take off in the latter half of the 20th century.1. Early roots (late 19th–early 20th c.)Gospel song traditions (Moody and Sankey, etc.) and revival music introduce:
    simple, emotional songs with refrains,soloists and song leaders,choirs supporting evangelistic campaigns.This is not yet the modern band, but it’s already:
    performance-oriented music in religious settings.2. Mid–20th century: youth, folk, and charismatic influencesThe 1960s–70s bring:
    Jesus Movement (West Coast, especially): guitars and folk-rock in Christian gatherings,charismatic renewal: emphasis on extended singing, emotional openness, “praise and worship” as a distinct segment.New songwriters produce:
    choruses and praise songs meant for repetition and free singing.3. 1980s–90s: institutionalization of “praise and worship”You get:
    Integrity Hosanna! tapes, Vineyard Music, Hillsong and others,handbooks and conferences on “worship leading.”Churches begin to:
    replace or sideline choirs,add drum kits, electric guitars, keyboards,employ worship pastors whose main job is to curate the musical experience.4. 2000s onward: full pop-concert styleIt becomes normal in many evangelical settings to have:
    darkened auditoriums,stage lighting and projections,sound systems built to deliver concert-level audio,full bands running to clicks and loops,worship sets planned with production software.Hillsong, Passion, Bethel, Elevation, and others create:
    global repertoires and aesthetics;their style becomes the default “sound” of evangelical worship worldwide.5. New School logic all the way throughAt every step, the justification echoes 19th-century “means” language:
    We use whatever style speaks the people’s language,We want to remove barriers to the gospel,We want excellence in worship to honor God and attract the lost.So even though the tech is newer, the logic is old:adapt the tools of the age (folk, rock, pop, EDM) for religious purposes—just as earlier ages adapted imperial parade, Baroque theater, or school drama. ↩︎
20. Old School absoluters like Beebe and Trott generally treat evangelical musical/emotional engineering as just another version of means-ism and religious theater.1. On “means” theologyThey reject the idea that:
    the unregenerate can be brought closer to regeneration through properly applied religious means (meetings, music, appeals).For them:
    regeneration is an immediate act of God;the gospel is addressed to those who already have spiritual life;means do not produce life, they feed it.2. On emotional religionThey warn that:
    sinners can be deeply stirred, weep, make resolutions—and yet remain dead in sin;revival measures and music can easily:
    excite the passions,
    confuse natural emotion with spiritual birth.3. On theatrical worshipBeebe repeatedly lumps:
    religious concerts,showy sermons,lavish buildings,missionary “exhibitions”under the heading of:
    “will-worship” (Col. 2:23),works of the flesh, andhuman inventions designed to make religion palatable to the carnal mind.Swap the 19th-century organ and choir for a 21st-century band and lights, and the principle is the same:they see it as trust in crafted experience, not in the Spirit’s sovereign application of the Word.4. On true worshipFor them, Scriptural worship is:
    simple,
    local-church-based,
    centered on preaching, prayer, and congregational song without show.The more a practice:
    requires a stage,tech gear,a team of semi-professional performers,the more suspicious they become that it reflects:
    the spirit of the age, not the apostolic pattern. ↩︎
21. Summing together the various strands we’ve traced:1. Ancient and medieval pageantry is driven by:
    the instinct to honor God like a king (borrowing imperial and civic ceremonial),the need to teach a largely illiterate populace using images and drama,belief that senses should be engaged and sanctified (sight, sound, smell, movement).2. Early evangelical/New School pageantry is driven by:
    the instinct to win souls with any lawful means (revivals, music, Sunday Schools),the desire to adapt religion to the culture’s current forms (camp meetings, gospel songs),belief that emotional impact and engagement help open hearts to the message.3. Modern evangelical theater (bands, productions, media) is driven by:
    a market-shaped instinct to keep people coming and “connected,”the competition with entertainment culture outside the church,the idea that excellence and immersive experience honor God and reach seekers.All three share:
    confidence in crafted religious experiences,hope that God will especially work through those crafted experiences,assumption that the apostolic pattern is a starting point, not a detailed blueprint.4. Old School absoluter critique across the boardFrom early liturgical drama to Baroque altars to evangelical bands, Beebe and Trott’s logic would brand them all as:
    human additions to worship,rooted in unbelief about the sufficiency of God’s ordained means,temptations to mistake sensory impact for spiritual life. ↩︎
22. This is, of course, a working theory of the “deep pattern,” not a divine oracle—but it helps organize the chaos:1. Worship as encounter vs. worship as obedienceOver and over, you see two instincts:Those who emphasize “encounter” ask:
    “How can we help people feel God’s presence?”They turn to:
    processions,incense,music,dark rooms and spotlights,drama, etc.Those who emphasize “obedience” ask:
    “What has God actually commanded the church to do when it gathers?”They stick to:
    Word, prayer, ordinances, simple song, mutual edification.2. Worship as spectacle vs. worship as assemblyIn the spectacle model:
    many watch, few act;platform specialists orchestrate;architecture and ritual/presentation dominate the experience.In the assembly model:
    the whole body is active (praying, singing, hearing, exhorting),the components are simple enough that small, un-resourced churches can do them.3. Worship as spiritual theater vs. spiritual realityIn religious-theater modes:
    there is a constant risk that the appearance of holiness (sound, image, costume, mood) is confused with its reality:faith working by love,truth in the inward parts,Christ formed in the people.For Old School absoluters, the safer path is:
    strip the worship down to what Christ gave,trust the Spirit to make it effectual in His people,refuse to “help” with props and stagecraft.4. How this reads your paperYour piece on religious theater doesn’t just compare two eras; it pokes at this deeper question:Will the church trust the foolishness of preaching and simple ordinances,
    or will it constantly re-clothe herself in the costume of whatever empire or entertainment industry seems most effective at the moment?That’s the question Beebe, Trott, and their absolutist descendants keep asking—standing in the wings while the rest of the religious world rehearses yet another show. ↩︎
23. Ratzinger/Benedict is basically the “beauty + continuity” version of a critique that overlaps at points with Old School concerns.1. Where he overlapsHe warns against:
    self-made liturgy (priests and communities improvising on the fly),banal, entertainment-shaped worship,loss of transcendence in flattened, horizontal services.He insists that:
    worship is first of all about God, not us;liturgy is received, not invented anew each week.2. Where he divergesFor Ratzinger, the solution is:
    a renewed, faithful reading of the Roman liturgical tradition,more Latin, chant, ad orientem, rich symbol.In other words:
    better and more authentic liturgical theater.Old School absoluters want:
    less theater altogether;no vestments, no complex rites, just simple, apostolic order.3. Constructive reading for youHis critiques of:
    “fabricated liturgy,” and“community-focused celebration”give you language to show that even within Catholicism, there is awareness that worship can become:
    more about us and our creativity than about God’s act.But his answer will always be:
    go back to the deep, traditional script;don’t leave the stage.Hardline Old School Baptists will always say:
    leave the stage and go back to the upper room and the village meetinghouse. ↩︎
24. Yes—evangelicals talk constantly about being “Spirit-led” in worship, but their practice often reveals a quiet confidence in atmospherics.1. The rhetoric“Worship leaders” say things like:
    “We’re creating space for God to move,”“We’re preparing hearts for the Word,”“Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to come,”“We want you to encounter God tonight.”The implication is that:
    if the set is spiritually and emotionally ‘right’,people will be more open to the Spirit.2. The methodIn practice, many services use:
    progression from upbeat song → mid-tempo → slow/intimate,“spontaneous” repetition of bridges and choruses,lights dimming as emotion intensifies,key changes or drops to heighten effect.All of this is:
    deliberately arranged, often rehearsed,engineered to produce:
    a sense of intimacy,brokenness, surrender.3. The feedback loopWhen people say afterward:
    “Worship was powerful tonight,”they often mean:
    “I felt a lot,”and what drove that was:
    the music, pacing, environment, and crowd energy.Sermons or doctrinal content may be relatively thin, but the worship is rated as “amazing” if the band was on point.4. How this parallels high-church pageantryBoth:
    high liturgy and evangelical worship sets are defended as:
    vehicles for encountering God,Settings where God “shows up” in a special way.In both cases, what’s actually being controlled is:
    the environment and performance,not the sovereign Spirit.Evangelicals tend to deny they have a liturgy or a theater, but their weekly pattern is as repeatable and predictable as any missal:3–4 songs, prayer, sermon, response.5. Old School takeAn Old School absoluter would say:
    The Spirit is not tied to your lighting rig or your bridge progression.He works where and when He pleases, through the Word He has ordained.The more you trust emotional engineering, the less you’re really trusting the bare proclamation of Christ crucified.This is why, in your frame, evangelical band culture and Baroque Catholic spectacle are just cousins in the same family of religious theater. ↩︎
25. Short answer: yes—New School / Missionary Baptists were historically very wary of Catholic pageantry but quite happy to build their own “evangelical theater.”1. Against Catholic pageantryThey:
    preached and published against “Romish pomp and ceremony,”denounced:
    massive processions,vestments and incense,images and relics,Passion plays and festival theatricals,as idolatrous, superstitious, unscriptural.2. For revivalist showmanshipThey enthusiastically embraced:
    protracted meetings,anxious benches and altar calls,stirring revival hymns,celebrity evangelists,large gathers where emotional preaching and music were used to press for decisions.These are defended as:
    “fervent means,”“the Spirit moving,”“revival fire,”even though they structurally:
    borrow crowd psychology and performance techniques.3. For Sunday School and children’s pageantsThey pioneered:
    Sunday School anniversaries with recitations and songs,missionary “concerts” and exercises,holiday programs (Christmas trees, Easter music, etc.).Again, all justified as:
    “harmless helps,”“ways to impress truth on young minds,”“means to reach the unconverted.”4. Why it matters for your argumentThis makes your contrast very sharp:Old School absoluters like Beebe and Trott reject both:
    Catholic/Anglican sacramental theater,andNew School/Missionary evangelical theater.New School Baptists reject Catholic pageantry while building their own parallel system of emotional and educational pageantry for evangelism and instruction.So yes, historically, they were suspicious of the Catholic style of show while simultaneously normalizing their own. ↩︎

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