E. J. Dionne has a column arguing that religious influence goes in cycles and that, based on the relatively secular candidates now vying for president, the culture wars are over.

Do you think that’s right? I think this grand announcement could prove highly ironic. If California starts persecuting homeschoolers, the culture wars will explode.

The “Washington Post” published an article on how many evangelical churches are now, in a big departure for many of them, practicing Lent. The article went on to deal with an bigger phenomenon, that cutting-edge congregations are abandoning the baby boomer church growth movement in favor of what they are callingancient-future worship:

This increasing connection with Christianity’s classical traditions goes beyond Lent. Some evangelical churches offer confession and weekly communion. They distribute ashes on Ash Wednesday and light Advent calendars at Christmastime. Others have formed monastic communities, such as Casa Chirilagua in Alexandria, modeled on the monasteries that arose in Christianity’s early years.

This represents a “major sea change in evangelical life,” according to D.H. Williams, professor of patristics and historical theology at Baylor University. “Evangelicalism is coming to point where the early church has become the newest staple of its diet.”

Experts say most who have taken on such practices have grown disillusioned with the contemporary, shopping-center feel of the megachurches embraced by baby boomers, with their casually dressed ministers and rock-band praise music.

Instead, evangelicals — many of them young — are adopting a trend that has come to be known as “worship renewal” or “ancient-future worship.”

Those familiar with the trend say it is practiced mostly by small, avant-garde evangelical churches, though not always. Last summer, the national convention of the 2.5 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, an evangelical wing of the Lutheran denomination, voted to revive private confession.

“I definitely sense a hunger for acknowledgment of life’s mysteries and of the mystery and beauty of God,” said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich., which recently hosted a “worship renewal” conference for 1,500 people. “There’s a hunger for deeper engagement — ‘Don’t just sell me a product at church, but really put me in touch with the mystery and beauty of God.’ “

Right, the LCMS is a BIG avant-garde evangelical church! Actually, we have ALWAYS had confession and absolution, as codified in our 16th century doctrinal statements, though it has fallen into disuse among many congregations (but by no means all). Anyway, I’ll let that go. I realize that this gets tied up with the “Emerging church” movement, which has problems of its own. The point, though–that “the contemporary, shopping-center feel of the megachurches” will not satisfy for long and will produce a hunger for historic Christianity–is what I have been writing about and predicting for a long time.

There is a “future” dimension, though, to that Ancient-Future worship phenomenon that some of us just-ancient worshippers might find problematic:

For the most part, though, young evangelicals aren’t just reviving ancient traditions. They are stamping them with their own updated brand.

Confession — a staple of Catholicism — is appearing in different formats.Thousands of people, for example, have posted anonymous online confessions on church-run Web sites like mysecret.tv, and ivescrewedup.com. Those posting have confided feelings of guilt over abortions or their homosexuality, while others have confessed to extramarital affairs, stealing, eating disorders, addictions — even murder.

“We do believe there is value in confessing our sins to each other,” said Bobby Gruenewald, pastor at Lifechurch.tv, an Oklahoma-based megachurch that runs mysecret.tv, which has received 7,500 confessions since it started in 2006. Ministers and volunteers pray over the confessions as they come in. “This process may be a more modern way of people discovering the value of that tradition.”

Now, my first reaction is to dismiss this sort of thing. But while my first reaction may be correct, I wonder if we could think through this a little bit in search of ways that maybe the church CAN use the new technology to advance its ancient agendas.

The problem with on-line confession as described on these open web sites is that they are divorced from true pastoral care and from a congregation that exercises, through its pastor, the Office of the Keys. And yet notice that these sites are, in fact, run by churches. What if a congregation had a closed, pass-word protected site that included an online confessional booth, as it were. Members of the congregation could confess the sins that trouble them to their pastor, who could then absolve them.

I ask, especially you pastors and theologians, would that be valid? If not, would a confession over telephone lines or a video-feed be valid? What would be necessary to make an online confession valid? Could the confession be anonymous, or would the sinner have to identify himself? (Weren’t the old confessionals in churches, with their separate doors and screens, trying to promote anonymity?) Could this high-tech practice help coax reluctant sinners into the extraordinarily beneficial practice of confessing their sins and receiving Christ’s forgiveness from their pastor and perhaps be a bridge to recovering the best practice of the in-person rite? Or is another kind of “real presence” necessary;namely, the real presence of sinner and pastor together in an actual, not virtual, church?

Barack Obama has been pursuing a brilliant strategy for the primaries, but it may hide a weakness in the main election. According to this article, Obama has been picking up many of his wins in states that usually go Republican. That means they have fewer Democrats to vote in the primaries, but their delegates are easier for Obama to harvest. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is getting the big states, but Obama remains ahead.

This MIGHT mean that Obama’s strength is in the states that will go Republican anyway, which heralds well for John McCain.

This is the argument the Clintons are making with the superdelegates. Do you think it holds water?