Beating the Bounds, Beating the Boundaries

"O LORD, you are my portion and my cup; it is you who uphold my lot. My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage." — Psalm 16:5–6 (Book of Common Prayer)

IN THIS AGE OF DIGITAL EVERYTHING, one of the most seemingly out-of-touch observances on the Episcopal liturgical calendar must be the Rogation Days — the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day. On these days, we ask (rogare in Latin) God's blessing on agriculture and, more recently, on wider expressions of commerce and industry. The practice comes from imperial Rome, when citizens would walk to a grove outside the city to pray to the god Robigus to protect their crops. As Christianity syncretized Roman practices, the Christian God took Robigus's place in the ritual. In the fifth century, the bishop of Vienne in Gaul introduced a three-day rite seeking God's protection after a series of earthquakes. The priest would lead his people into the fields to beg God's blessing on the land and their crops. The observance spread in Europe, taking place on the three days before Ascension Day. Pope Gregory the Great formalized the observance and fixed a date of April 25; and in 707, the Council of Cloveshoo introduced the Rogation Days into English liturgical life. After prayers at the parish church, the priest led the people through their village and literally around the geographic parish, singing hymns and offering Scripture readings and homilies. Crosses, banners, and standards led the people in procession (Stilgoe 49).

In England, the festival morphed from a liturgical to a geographic exercise as well, combining supplication and thanksgiving with the practicalities of marking parish boundaries in a day before surveying. During the processions, people would literally beat the bounds, striking trees, rocks, and pathways to remind themselves, and those in neighboring parishes, where the boundaries lay (di Bonaventura 117). Participants in the festivities would also bump children against significant boundary-marking trees, hit them on the head, or dunk them head first into rivers as aids to memory; and villagers would play tug-of-war with people from neighboring parishes across boundary streams. Clerical instruction included not just God's sovereignty over the land but the sin of moving human boundary markers, illustrated through passages like Deuteronomy 27:17. Each parish vicar had a stake in the process: Defining the parish boundaries, and preventing encroachment by other parishes, made clear which tithes he would be entitled to receive (Stilgoe 50). By the seventeenth century, with increasing population and common land being threatened by the enclosure movement, careful boundary definitions became even more important. As landscape historian John R. Stilgoe notes, "Religion, law, and folk custom all served to define the village outline and secure the community landscape from old and new forms of external disruption. ... Rogation perambulations ensured every villager of his particular location within the kingdom; they defined his community space and sanctified his personal property" (Stilgoe 51).

Today, beating the bounds in a Rogation procession carries theological weight as a sign of our enduring connection with, and responsibility for, the good earth God has given us. It's also a great opportunity for some quaint reveling in Anglican tradition — what longtime Episcopalian or Anglican doesn't love a good procession? And it's even more fun outside. Churches in England and the United States have renewed the practice and shared it with the world on social media. (Search for "beating the bounds" and "rogation procession" on YouTube.) Like our English spiritual forebears, perhaps we value knowing where our boundaries lie as God's people in a given place, with our space clearly defined and pleasingly sanctified. Of course, the shadow side of well-defined boundaries is the temptation to remain within them, seemingly safe (or at least shielded) from forces that threaten the church from outside.

Despite the rural heritage of western Missouri, where I serve, the Rogation Days aren't a highlight on most churches' liturgical calendars. In my first congregation — Church of the Good Shepherd, a small mission in Springfield, Missouri — I decided we'd try it. I donned a cassock and surplice, took up the processional cross, and led several intrepid members around the church grounds. We stopped along the way to hear Scripture, thank God for the abundance of creation, and pray for seasonable weather and the fruits of the earth. What I remember most was feeling exceptionally self-conscious as we pretended to be a quaint English country church marking its parish boundaries. Our neighbors, in this buckle on the Bible Belt, probably thought we were crazy. Or, more likely, they never noticed at all.

What I missed at Good Shepherd was the opportunity to teach about our little liturgical procession. Beyond naming our role as stewards of creation and celebrating "all good gifts around us," we were living out DNA we didn't even know we had. That mission congregation had been founded eleven years before I arrived. Its initial energy had been about using praise music, charismatic worship, and the Alpha course to attract people who didn't know the Episcopal tradition. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, that energy had dissipated into a small circle of comfort where most of the congregation was happy to receive the blessings of healing and community without much interest in reaching anyone else. We tried to attract new members to worship and special events, and the parishioners were very welcoming when outsiders arrived. But they were content to open their doors rather than moving outside them. The mindset mirrored our quaint little Rogation procession: Our "boundaries enclose[d] a pleasant land" (Psalm 16:6, BCP), and the congregation was happy staying within them. Not surprisingly, Good Shepherd closed a couple of years later.

It's a mindset common in liturgical sacramental congregations, Episcopal and otherwise. We do what we do; we're happy when others come by; and we're proud when we do a good job of welcoming them on a Sunday morning. That's absolutely vital, and hard, work — and it's only a good start. We can't just open the doors to let people in; we have to see our boundaries — physical and emotional — as starting lines for moving out to engage the people around us. And the mission field is ripe. The end of American Christendom has left a remarkable percentage of the population at work, in bed, or at soccer on Sunday mornings. The "churchless" comprise 43 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Barna Group. That breaks down into 33 percent of the population being de-churched (having left a church at some point) and 10...