Hello again brethren. It has been quite awhile since I last logged in. This past year has been one day of being blackballed after another. Sadly, by people I once looked to as mentors in a particular denomination... But, God brought me through it all, even though it brought more brusies and cuts.
The question I wanted to pose for discussion, and ask out of personal curiosity, is this.
What protestant denominations are the most oriented to church masterworks and oratorio-leaning worship? While also practicing the regulative principle to a degree.
And, which of those denominations, faithful to the scriptures, would be most prominent in Germany?
I am very interested and excited to hear your responses. If I do not reply immediately, it is because I live in the backwoods of Montana right now, and it is two hours to any city with cell service.
Shalom,
Nathan Webster
I love a good oratorio as much as the next guy, but for the life of me I can't do more than conjecture about what you mean by oratorio-leaning worship!
Assuming that you are referring to a church service that regularly features some sort of performance aspect of a major sacred choral work such as an oratorio or cantata, when it comes to the regulative principle you might as well be asking which type of apple most looks and tastes like an orange. The notion of any sort of musical performance in worship is inimical to the regulative principle.
Now, in the US, you will find a variety of approaches to the regulative principle. I'm a PCA guy so I know that you can find PCA churches with "traditional" worship on a grand scale - organ, choirs, etc. Places like Trinity Pres in Montgomery, AL; or St Andrew's Chapel in central Florida; or Park Cities Pres in Dallas. There may be some influence of the regulative principle in that the order and elements of worship as listed in the bulletin will have a Reformed flavor, while at the same time the service may routinely feature choral works by Bach, Brahms, Rutter, Parry, etc. You may have end of the year choral concerts or even services where the choir does some sort of more extensive work such as one of the shorter Bach cantatas, or the seasonally appropriate (lol) portion of Handel's "Messiah".
But it must be said that whatever claims are made about the regulative principle in such a church, that aesthetic is very far from what our Reformed forefathers would have envisioned as being compatible with the concept. At that point, the regulative principle is going to mainly apply at best to the order of worship and the doctrinal content. In other words, you're not going to have the Kyrie-Gloria-Credo setup of a Catholic mass and the lyrics of the hymns and anthems will hopefully put forward a monergistic view of salvation. But the look and feel of the worship service will be driven by ideas drawn from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions more than anything else, and while a lot of good theology has come from those traditions, they don't really have a notion of the regulative principle.
Where to find such a church in Germany? Again, based on what I've said above, I don't imagine such a thing exists there. You might find a Lutheran church with a really good music program, where the liturgy itself is still faithful to what Lutherans have always done, but as far as I know, the Lutheran Church in Europe has been almost entirely vitiated by liberalism of the worst sort. There are various Reformed and evangelical church plants in Germany, but they are going to be small, and even if they don't particularly care about the regulative principle, none of them are going to have the resources for what I imagine you mean by oratorio leaning worship.
