A conservative. . .

According to the dictionary,  conservative is an adjective meaning favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change or traditional or restrained or moderate; cautious.  The root of it all is that word conserve.  The problem is what to conserve.  The temptation is to pick one moment in history as either the starting point of the decline or the final moment of sanity.  But when?  When is that pristine moment which is the pure moment unspoiled by the advance of modernity or the corruption of values?  I know that conservatives would pick different dates just as I presume that liberals would be hard-pressed to agree on one date that defines their movement or their perspective.  For them it would seem the moment is still coming while for the conservative it remains somewhere in the past.

That is the problem in liturgical scholarship.  Some presume that the goal of liturgical scholarship is to find that pristine liturgy, that perfect and simple root without the flowering of modernity which has become like a treasure hunt except that none of our maps actually agree.  Ancient history is not the arena in which we hunt for the perfect moment but the revelation one truth in a thousand different ways along a linear path.  There are better moments and worse moments but that which endures are the grounding principles that endure through changes.  The problem of the liturgical scholars who were behind much of what changed in the post-Vatican II Mass is that they were looking for a perfect moment in history, a simple and yet profound glimpse through history to the unspoiled liturgy.  Most liturgical folks in other churches joined in the search assuming that there was such a pristine liturgy to be found.  In the end it was merely an excuse for burdening the rest of us with the liturgical preferences of the few.  Conservative liturgical scholarship disagreed with the date chosen.  Is that all conservatism is?  Is it a calendar matter?  One group choose 75 AD and another 600 AD and another 1563?  Who is the true conservative?

That same problem happens in Lutheranism.  Some chose 1941 as the date that governs everything good, right, and salutary and others choose 1888 and still others some other date when the kirchenordnung was unspoiled.  Others presume that a modern form (1978 or 2006 or later) is a better preservation of the ancient form than any other.  Is that all conservatism is -- the choice of a different date than the liberal or progressive?  Or, is there a body of things that go with and perhaps govern that choice of date?  A conservative is not a reactionary but neither is he opposed to everything modern.  It is a matter of principle.  The principles govern the conservative.  He is not like the liberal who things all things new are better but neither is he a curmudgeon who insists that everything old was perfect.  Instead the conservative sifts the history letting principle define goodness and not a snapshot of a moment in time.

I lived with an outhouse and do not wish to exchange my master bath for a rickety wooden building over a hole in the ground.  No conservative does.  But a conservative uses principles to suggest that those with male reproductive organs belong in the same bathroom no matter what gender the person feels at the moment.  What governs is not a date in time but a principle that goes well beyond the level of plumbing that has been installed in the room.