With Decency and in Order

By Robin G. Jordan

In a comment in response to my last article, one of my readers raised a very important question. The question had two parts: The first part is “Can we be liturgical in our worship and Protestant and Reformed in our theology?”

Thomas Cranmer, John Calvin, and John Knox thought that we could. All three Reformers devised liturgies for their respective churches, which involved the singing of praise, the reading of Scripture, preaching, recitation of the Apostles’ Creed, and intercessory and other forms of prayer, and which used set forms of prayer. How then did it come about that Anglicans abandoned Protestant and Reformed theology while retaining liturgical worship and Presbyterian and other Reformed churches gave up liturgical worship while retaining Protestant and Reformed theology? The answer is that they did not!

This answer surprises those who assume that they did. What actually happened is that only some Anglicans abandoned Protestant and Reformed theology and only some Presbyterian and Reformed churches gave up liturgical worship. The prevalence of Catholic and liberal theology in the contemporary North American Anglican churches and of so-called non-liturgical worship in North American Presbyterian and Reformed churches is what may lead us to assume that all Anglican churches have abandoned Protestant and Reformed theology and all Presbyterian and Reformed churches have given up liturgical worship.

A number of North American churches, Baptist, independent, and Methodist, as well as Presbyterian and Reformed, manifest anti-liturgical attitudes that can be traced to the Puritan movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It must be stressed that all Puritans were not opposed to the use of liturgy and a number of them like Archbishop of Amargh James Ussher used the Book of Common Prayer. But what may be described as an anti-liturgical movement emerged with the Puritan movement and to a large extent the two movements were associated with each other. Anti-liturgical sentiments were strongest in the Congregationalist and Presbyterian wings of the Puritan movement. Here it must be stressed that all Puritans did not believe that the Scriptures mandated a Presbyterian form of church government. The Puritan movement included Episcopalians and Congregationalists as well as Presbyterians.

These anti-liturgical sentiments took various forms. One form was a dislike of set forms of prayer. It was argued that extemporaneous prayer was more spiritual than set forms of prayer. Pastors should be free to give utterance to the words of the Holy Spirit instead of being tied to the words of a book. A prayer spoken extemporaneously from the heart was, not matter how poorly contrived and haltingly said, more pleasing and acceptable to God than a prayer read from a book. The same people who today raise this objection to set forms of prayer had no difficulty in singing hymns and worship songs taken from a book, as the Puritans had no qualms in singing the Psalms and Scripture paraphrases in meter.

A second form was a dislike for forms of prayer in which the congregation participated such as litanies and versicles and responses. These prayer forms the anti-liturgical movement associated with the worship of the Church of Rome and equated with the “empty phrases” or “vain repetitions” and “much speaking” or “many words” of the Gentiles against which Jesus warns in Matthew 6:7. Yet the same people who today raise this objection to these forms of prayer often show a propensity to babble in their extemporaneous prayer. Their prayers are punctuated by the frequent repetition of such phrases as “Dear Lord” and “Father God” and they do not appear to know when they should conclude praying.

A third form that these anti-liturgical sentiments took was a preference for long prayers. The anti-liturgical movement was not enamored of the brief Collect and wished to turn the litany into a single long prayer.

An attitude that accompanied these anti-liturgical sentiments was that the pastor should be the one to offer up the prayers whenever the church gathered for worship. The role of the people was envisioned as a passive one. They were to keep silent throughout each prayer and added their “Amen” at its conclusion. Over time the people did not even trouble to add their “Amen,” allowing the pastor to say “Amen” for them.

This attitude may have resulted from a misapplication of Acts 6:4: “…But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4 ESV). It perpetuates the medieval notion of the pastor as an intermediary between the church and God. It also fosters the idea that pastors have a special pipeline to God. This idea is reflected in the several contemporary practices. One is the pastoral prayer in which the pastor offers up prayer on a range of topics at each service of public worship. A related practice is that the pastor may take prayer requests and concerns from the congregation, written down on cards, and weave these intentions into the pastoral prayer. A similar practice is that the congregation may be asked to write their prayer requests and concerns on cards and turn them in with the offering in order that the pastor may include them in his prayers during the week.

There is certainly a place for the pastor to pray for the flock that God has entrusted to his care. However, he should not be the only one praying in services of public worship nor should he be the only one praying for the congregation. The members of the congregation should be praying for their pastor and each other. He needs their prayers as much as they need his.

The anti-liturgical movement reached its highest point of development in the Westminster Directory of Public Worship. The Prayer Book was abolished. In its place a set of guidelines for public worship and models for various types of prayers was adopted. Its use was required throughout the Church of England. The response to the Westminster Directory of Public Worship was mixed. It was much better received in the Church of Scotland, which also adopted it, than in the Church of England.

The same prejudices against liturgical worship and set forms of prayer persist to this day. Those who hold such views do not really give much thought to the arguments that they marshal in support of their views. They are arguments that have been passed down with the anti-liturgical prejudices. In some churches the Seeker Service and Seeker-Friendly Service movements have tended to reinforce these views. Both movements are inclined to view liturgical worship and set forms of prayer as unfamiliar to the unchurched and forming unnecessary barriers that they must cross in order to hear the gospel. Both movements also equate them with churchiness and Churchianity and see them as one of the main reasons that Christianity is not more attractive to the unchurched. Since they are likely to put off the unchurched, they must be avoided along with anything else that the unchurched may associate with the traditional Church. The basic premise is that liturgical worship, set forms of prayer, and the traditional Church are inherently unfriendly to the seeker.

For 50 odd years this author worshiped in liturgical churches, initially in the Church of England and then in the former Protestant Episcopal Church. I also have occasionally worshiped in Lutheran churches. For 17 years I was involved in various capacities in planning and orchestrating public services of worship. This experience has given me an appreciation for the strengths and limitations of liturgical worship and set forms of prayer. For the past 9 years I have been worshiping with Assembly of God, Methodist, and Baptist congregations that have locally developed informal liturgies. This experience has strengthened my appreciation of the good points of liturgical worship as well as given me an appreciation for the strengths and limitations of so-called non-liturgical worship.

It is my contention that there is no such thing as non-liturgical worship. All worship gatherings have a pattern. This pattern, while it may vary to some degree from gathering to gathering, is repeated at each gathering. The pattern may be formal, observant of particular forms approved by the denomination (i.e. most Anglican churches, some Congregationalist churches, most Lutheran churches, some Methodist churches, some Presbyterian and Reformed churches, all Roman Catholic churches), or informal, with the forms used determined by the local church (i.e. some Anglican churches, all Baptist churches, most Congregationalist churches, some Lutheran churches, some Methodist churches, some Presbyterian and Reformed churches). The formal pattern may include extemporaneous prayer and the locally developed informal pattern may include set forms (i.e. the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria Patria, the Apostles’ Creed, responsive readings). The extent the worship is dominated by the pastor or involves the people will vary from church to church, and generally has little to do with the kind of worship.

Contrived prayer, that is prayer that has been thought out ahead of time, is no less spiritual than extemporaneous prayer. The Holy Spirit inspires contrived prayer as much as he inspires extemporaneous prayer. Contrived prayer can also be offered up from the heart as much as extemporaneous prayer. This is true for prayers especially written for a service or taken from a Prayer Book or another manual of prayers. Here the advice of George Herbert, seventeenth century Anglican poet-priest, to the parson preaching is also applicable to the parson praying:

“Secondly, by dipping, and seasoning all our words and sentences in our hearts, before they come into our mouths, truly affecting, and cordially expressing all that we say; so that the auditors may plainly perceive that every word is heart-deep.”

The words of contrived prayers can likewise be dipped in the heart and then prayed from the heart. They can be made our heart prayer.

Extemporaneous prayer is not always fresh or from the heart. It can be repetitive and perfunctory. This is often the case when the same person is called upon to pray Sunday after Sunday. The prayer may also express sentiments with which the congregation cannot agree and to which they cannot add their “Amen.” Some prayers are min-sermons than rather prayers, directed at the congregation rather than to God.

Liturgical worship can be off-putting to the unchurched, especially when they have no past experience with that kind of worship or they have had a bad experience with it. A number of churches do a very poor job of making their liturgical services friendlier to first time worship visitors. At the same time liturgical worship can also be attractive some segments of the unchurched as a number of churches have discovered. What attracts these segments to liturgical worship is its continuity with the past, its ambience, its use of the arts, and the opportunities it provides for congregational interaction and participation. The challenge for liturgical churches that are also Protestant and Reformed in theology is ensuring what they do is consistent with what they believe and teach. The temptation is to strengthen those aspects of liturgical worship that are most attractive to the unchurched. In the process, however, a church can adopt practices that are at variance with its doctrine. The importance of congruence between what a church does and what it believes and teaches cannot be overemphasized.

Unscriptural doctrine can piggyback on practices adopted from earlier periods of Church history or from other denominations. Those seeking to change doctrine can do so through the introduction of practices that embody the change desired. This is what happened in the former Protestant Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century and in the Reformed Episcopal Church in the twentieth century.

The Ancient-Future movement has had the same affect on charismatics and evangelicals in Anglican Church in North America in the twenty-first century. The late Robert Webber who inspired the Ancient-Future movement with his writings often recommended practices due to their antiquity and what he thought would be the benefits to the worship of the local church. He neglected to consider whether the practices he recommended were really compatible with the doctrinal tradition in which the local church stood. As a result the Ancient-Future movement, also known as the Convergence movement, has a tendency to emphasize common practice—not only in worship but also ecclesiastical governance--over shared doctrine on the premise that common practice will eventually lead to a new doctrinal synthesis—a bringing together of scriptural, Pentecostal, and sacramental traditions. In actuality, it has fostered a drift toward unreformed Catholicism.

This leads to the second part of the question. “And if so, where?” At the present time this part of the question is the hardest to answer. The Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in North America, and The Episcopal Church are far from the ideal environments for liturgical worship that is Protestant and Reformed. But neither are the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. This is in part due to the anti-liturgical sentiments in the latter churches. But it is also in part due to the origin of the liturgical services in these churches. The Church of England was the one Reformed Church of the sixteenth century that based its liturgical services on the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Holy Communion. The Genevan and Scottish liturgies were based on the prone—a Medieval preaching service that was inserted into the Mass. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the Anglican Book of Common Prayer would influence a new generation of Reformed liturgies in the Church of Scotland and the Free Churches. These Reformed service books are a rich treasury of prayer. I cannot see any liturgically minded Presbyterian or Reformed church adopting the Anglican Prayer Book when it has the wider heritage of Reformed service books from which it can draw.

I am admittedly attached to the classical Anglican Prayer Book. At the same time I recognize its shortcomings. John Cheeseman and others have drawn attention to the need for revision of the Prayer of Humble Access, the Baptismal Service, the Visitation of the Sick, and the Commintation.[1] For liturgical worship that is Protestant and Reformed but also Anglican, an Anglican church that is Protestant and Reformed would be the ideal environment. Here I must add a proviso: It must be an Anglican church that uses services from a conservative revision of the classical Anglican Prayer Book that is Protestant and Reformed in its theological content and must use liturgical practices that are compatible with the theology of that book. But where we are to find such a church in North America is the challenge.

As I noted in my previous article, there is throughout Canada and the United States a scattering of congregations and clergy that uphold the faith of the reformed Church of England and its formularies. Very few of these congregations and clergy, however, use a service book that is Protestant and Reformed in its theological content. The six service books in widest use in North America—the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, the 1985 Canadian Book of Alternative Services, the 2005 REC Book of Common Prayer, and the 2008 AMiA-Prayer Book Society USA’s An Anglican Prayer Book do not meet this requirement. These service books are far too Catholic and unreformed in their theology. I anticipate that new ACNA Prayer Book, when it is completed, will follow in their footsteps.

As for liturgical practices, the worship of this scattering of congregations and clergy is for the most part a testimony to the pervasiveness of ritualism in North America. Even clergy who think of themselves as evangelical Low Churchmen walk in procession behind acolytes dressed like Roman Catholic altar boys in white cottas and red cassocks and carrying processional crosses and torches. They wear stoles and stand in front of communion tables decked with candlesticks, crosses, and flowers, their backs turned to the congregation. Forgotten are the days when such shining lights of North American evangelical Anglicanism as Bishop George David Cummins, Canon Dyson Hague, and Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine condemned such practices for what they were—evidence of the pernicious influence of “Oxfordism” in the North American Church.

In future articles I am going to offer some proposals for alternative wording and forms for the classical Anglican Prayer Book. This includes examples of services from that book that have been translated into today’s English for modern congregations. I will also examine what liturgical practices are compatible with the faith of the reformed Church of England and its formularies and those that are incompatible with that faith.

Endnotes:

[1] John Cheeseman, "Time to Take Off the Blinkers: Doctrinal Deficiencies in The Book of Common Prayer," Cross+Way Issue Summer 1982 No. 006, article on the Internet at: http://www.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/Cway_006_Cheeseman.pdf