Somewhere in Chesterton there's a passage that compares the Protestant Reformation to a shipwreck, and it closes with the observation that, as with a real wreck, the survivors are always going back to the wreckage to retrieve something. I thought of that when I read this story about an evangelical group which is practicing perpetual worship.
I certainly wish them well, and their devotion is impressive. But I fear for them a little: all that fervor, and the central role of a charismatic leader–it's easy for that sort of thing to go off the rails. It's easy enough within an institution like the Catholic Church, where there are plenty of forces to balance and correct a single person's vision. Sometimes, of course, the institution opposes someone it should support, but those problems generally correct themselves with time, and most often either the eccentric visionary doesn't stray too far from the Church's long-studied point of view, or the Church realizes the visionary is really a prophet or a saint, and supports him. As recent scandals have shown, this doesn't always work out, but when there is no institutional weight the danger is greater, I think–I don't necessarily mean the danger of some great scandal, but the danger of souls being led astray, into false or insupportable doctrines that end up damaging them. You can see the possibility with this group, involving the all-too-common prediction that the Second Coming will be quite soon.
Meanwhile, of course, the Catholic Church (and, I assume, the Orthodox) has hundreds of years of experience with this idea of perpetual worship. Right up the road from me is Christ the King parish in Daphne, which instituted Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration on this past Ash Wednesday. Every hour of every day there is at least one person in the little chapel set aside for the purpose. For many years there was Adoration from Thursday evening till Sunday morning. I had the 10:00pm Thursday hour, and it has been an anchor of my faith. Now my wife and I have Friday at 11pm, because they were having trouble filling that hour and there was no reason why we couldn't do it. There are hundreds of people involved: just ordinary middle-class people, young and old, married and single. The woman who organized it told me that when she called the local police to tell them that people would be in and out of the church at, literally, all hours, the person she talked to was intrigued. "Well, I'm Baptist. Can I come?" Of course she can. I hope she does.
Light On Dark Water 
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