Cross Balance

Four Pieties

The idea for these notes really started when I read a book on prayer,
 in which the author discussed different forms of worship or piety
(Uncommon Prayer by Kenneth Swanson).
Based on old studies,
he suggested that the different styles were linked to different personalities,
as shown above.

The doer, at the end of the horizontal spectrum, was characterised by the person
who preferred to worship through the senses,
by doing physical things.

At the opposite end was the person
who found it best to withdraw from sense-based stimuli
 - eg. to be silent, to retreat.

At the top end of the vertical spectrum was the person
who worshipped through his intellect and reasoning.

And at the bottom end of this spectrum was the person
who preferred to abandon the intellect
and worship with the emotions.

The author's point in analyzing worship like this
was to suggest that in any one church,
the congregation would be made up of a whole range of temperaments,
which the form of worship should cater for.
Also,
he wanted to suggest that
those who preferred one style of worship to another
should experiment to achieve an understanding and acceptance
of others' ways of worship.

Details of the four piety types taken from Swanson’s book
are shown in the following table.