Why I Don't Recite Creeds in Christian Worship Services

Before I launch into explaining why I don't like (and don't recite) creeds, I want to acknowledge that creeds aren't strictly a bad thing.  There are benefits and rationales to them, including to reciting them in worship services.  I respect people who recite creeds and I think it's a valid personal choice to recite them.  And I don't assume people who recite them disagree with all the concerns I raise about them.

One of the rationales behind using creeds is that it promotes a sort of unity among Christians, both across time and across many (but not all) denominations.  The Episcopal church has a page on creeds which explains: "...we join Christians throughout the ages in affirming our faith..."  With all the major differences between the different branches of Christianity, I think it is significant that the Catholic church and most Protestant churches share the Nicene and Apostles' creed in common.  The Nicene creed is also shared in common with the Eastern Orthodox church.

Creeds can also play a positive role in reinforcing people's beliefs.  The act of repeatedly reciting something can help to reaffirm or strengthen people's commitment to those beliefs, which can be a good thing if people want to strengthen or reinforce that commitment.

One of the main reasons I don't like creeds is that reciting a creed in a worship service creates social pressure for people to recite the creed.  This provides an extrinsic motivator, which can interfere with people's intrinsic motivations.  The pressure may seem relatively mild, but I still have a problem with it.

Several problems I see:

• Pressuring people to read a statement of faith, when they're uncertain about whether or not they want to make the profession of their own initiative, can interfere with their ability to discern what they really want.  In some cases, people might start to feel like they want something, when deeper down, they don't want it.  In other cases, people might react against the pressure and feel like they don't want to agree with the statement, even if they would agree if they were free of such pressure.
• People may make a conscious choice to recite the creed, even though they don't agree with it.  This sets up a pattern of making a statement that they don't believe or agree with.
• People may have a bad feeling about the social pressure to recite the creed, and this negative feeling could be a factor contributing to souring their impression of the church congregation, denomination, or even religion as a whole.

People don't always react this way to creeds, but I think the possibility of it, and the fact that the stakes are relatively high relative to the act of recitation (a person becoming confused about their belief system, a person being drawn into insincere profession of faith, or a person who otherwise might like a church, becoming alienated from it) warrants consideration.

Personally, I feel all of the concerns here, although in my case they are relatively mild.  I have known examples of people who have struggled with each of these problems to a much greater degree than I did.

A lot of churches, like the Episcopal church I cited above, emphasize how creeds produce or connect with a certain unity of Christians.  But I like to ask a tough question: is this unity genuine, deep, or divinely sanctioned?  Or is it the result of an arbitrary political process, one which was carried out by humans, and which involved coercion and suppression of alternate viewpoints?

I studied early Christianity in college, and I was fascinated to find that early Christians had a much wider range of beliefs than mainstream Christians do.  They also had a much wider range of holy texts as well.  The Bible in its current form was not sanctioned by Jesus; it was a political process of people, several generations later, that canonized the Bible.  Some of the texts that didn't make it into the Bible have theological ideas in them that contrast with the ideas in the creeds used by most of the dominant Christian denominations.  The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library brought back many such texts.

The Nicene creed was the result of the First Council of Nicaea, in AD 325.  Prior to this time, there was no consensus in the early Christian churches about certain theological points, including the relationship of Jesus to God.

But even prior to this council, theological differences had sometimes been resolved by force, with people not adhering to mainstream church stances being labelled as heretics.  Gnosticism was one such group that was shut out.

Even the way Jesus is depicted in the canonized Bible, I think there's little evidence that strict adherence to doctrine is in any way advocated by Jesus.

For example, in Mark 1:17 or Matthew 4:19, when Jesus calls his first disciples, he says: "Follow me.", and does not ask or demand of them to agree to any doctrine or beliefs.  Later, in Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus describes how the ideas of loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, are the commandments on which all the other religious laws hang.  Jesus is also frequently depicted as clashing with religious leaders of the time, often breaking many rules himself.

I recognize that different people and different denominations have different traditions of interpreting the Bible.  But, to me, Jesus seems to be a big picture kind of guy, and seems to be consistently advocating for looking for the deeper meaning behind religious rules, and then sincerely living out that meaning, even if you end up breaking the letter of those rules here and there.

I hope that I have helped you gain some insight into why someone would object to creeds.

Hopefully, now, if you choose to recite them, you can do so consciously and mindfully, with awareness of the ways in which they can be misused or create unhealthy social pressures.  You can choose to recite them if you believe them, or if you want to reinforce the beliefs in them, or you can choose to consciously take them with a grain of salt but recite them out of tradition or because you appreciate them for some other reason.

And I hope that if you feel uncomfortable with creeds for the reasons I gave here, or any other reasons, that you have gained new confidence that will help you feel better about choosing to not recite them, or even considering the possibility of omitting them if you are responsible for designing or structuring your church's liturgy or worship services.