Reforming Worship

English Reformed Principles and Practice

Julian Templeton, Keith Riglin, Templeton, Riglin

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610973205
  9781498260121
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630875794
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The Reformed tradition of worship in England has given the English-speaking world the Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God, and the hymns of Isaac Watts. In this collection of essays, scholars and ministers who are inheritors of this tradition reflect on the continuities, innovations, and tensions in Reformed worship and their lived expression in contemporary church life. Among the tensions explored is that between order and freedom in worship, and the bold contention is made that "ordered freedom" is the scriptural mark of the church's worship and the character of all good liturgy, for "order is love in regulative operation" (Anglican- Reformed International Commission). This collection of essays on the theology, history, and practice of Reformed worship also includes examples of psalmody, liturgy, and a sermon.

1

Ordered Freedom: English Reformed Worship

by Julian Templeton and Keith Riglin

The contributions to this volume originate from a conference that took place at Westminster College, Cambridge, England, in September 2007. The title of the conference was Reforming Worship: Reformed Principles and Practice. Fifty participants came, mostly from England, and of these most were ministers of the United Reformed Church.1 Over four days they listened, debated, ate, and worshipped in a college near the River Cam in the environs of the university and city of Cambridge. What drew them together was a common interest in Reformed worship. However, about what constitutes, or should constitute, Reformed worship today, much was contested. This is hardly surprising, coming from a tradition that David Cornick argues, “. . . was polyphonous, maybe even cacophonous, from its birth.”2 Due to England’s peculiar religious and political history, these many and competing voices have, if anything, been amplified. Whilst acknowledging that an agreement about what constitutes Reformed worship in England is more of an aspiration than a reality; as editors, we have nonetheless discerned in the contributions to this collection some common threads that we shall consider under the heading of Ordered Freedom.

The content and form of worship has been at the forefront of reforms of the Western church for at least the past 500 years, from the Protestant Reformation, the “Counter-Reformation” in the Church of Rome, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, to the ecumenical liturgical cross-fertilization evident in the twentieth century. The fact that worship has been the vanguard of reform is not surprising, since the worship of God is the central and defining activity of the church. Worship is the act in which the church encounters and glorifies the triune God who creates, redeems, and reconciles the world. This is why worship is the hub from which all other aspects of the church’s life radiate.

The majority of the contributors to this collection of essays identify with the Reformed stream of the church that commonly found its expression in the English-speaking world under the titles Congregational and Presbyterian.3 Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, John Calvin in Geneva, Thomas Cranmer and other Anglican divines in England,4 and John Knox in Scotland were all much-influenced by the German reformer Martin Luther. They led and inspired thoroughgoing reforms of the church, centered on worship. The Reformed approach is perhaps best encapsulated in the phrase, Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda, “The church reformed, always to be reformed” according to the Word of God.5 Semper reformanda gives rise to the title of this collection of essays: Reforming Worship. We believe that one of the contributions of Reformed Christians to the church catholic is a tradition of worship reformed in ever-new obedience to the Word of God and leading of the Holy Spirit. This reforming of worship is the demanding task of discerning how best to be faithful to the Word of God in the ever-changing confluence of culture and time.6 By the “Word of God” the Reformed have meant, in the first instance, the Scriptures. Thus the reading and preaching of the Scriptures is central to Reformed worship.

For many years Reformed worshippers sang only the Scriptures (almost exclusively, the Psalms: see essay by Barbara Douglas).7 However, it was the English Congregationalist minister, Isaac Watts, who in his paraphrases of the Psalms for singing in worship, felt free to “. . . teach my author to speak like a Christian.” Watts is a pivotal figure in the enlargement of the English-speaking churches’ sung repertoire to include non-Psalm-based hymns.

The generalization that the Scriptures shape the content of Reformed worship to a substantial extent still holds true today. That said, none of the early Reformed leaders subscribed to the view, held by some, that being faithful to the Scriptures necessarily involved the abolition of all the traditions of the church catholic. Rather, they believed the church needed to reform and purify those accretions and abuses that obscured the gospel.8 The reform of worship according to the Scriptures was where many started. Martin Bucer and John Calvin advocated (from Acts 2:42) that all worship should consist of (i) reading and teaching the scriptures, (ii) fellowship and almsgiving, (iii) the “breaking of bread” or baptism, (iv) prayer and praise. This brings us to the first mark of Reformed worship: orderliness. Reformed worshippers have taken the apostle Paul’s exhortation to the church at Corinth that their worship should proceed “. . . decently and in order”9 as a maxim. Reformed worship is ordered worship. This is not to suggest that its sequence is always the same—though often it is—it is to say that in Reformed worship certain essential elements will always be present. The Scriptures will be read and preached; praise and prayer will be offered; money will be collected for particular needs; the common life of the fellowship will be renewed; and the Lord’s Supper, even when not celebrated, sounds its dominant note of thanksgiving.

Within this order there is much scope for the second mark of Reformed worship: freedom. Reformed worshippers have taken as a maxim another of the apostle’s reflections, “. . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”10 Reformed worshippers have not strictly adhered to a standard written liturgy or prayer book.11 This is because the Reformed believe that worshippers and presiders at worship should be free to respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit. In saying this, however, we would not wish to give the impression that spontaneity predominates. Rather, it means that Reformed leaders of worship are free to prepare and use newly-composed prayers and liturgies for each act of worship, often shaped by the theme of the sermon, which is itself shaped by the scriptural message.

Reformed worship, then, is characterized by an ordered freedom. Whilst order and freedom in worship are sometimes thought to be opposed, there is nonetheless a necessary symbiosis between them. Order without freedom risks becoming boring and stifling. Freedom without order risks becoming confusing and chaotic. Ordered worship provides the framework, and therefore the freedom, within which worshippers may both encounter and respond to the living God. Reformed worship in the English-speaking world has mostly steered a middle course between the standard liturgies of the liturgical churches and the spontaneous freedom of the independent churches. The ordered freedom of Reformed worship is, however, not without its tensions. These tensions are exemplified by the Westminster Assembly’s 1645 Directory for the Public Worship of God. The Directory attempted to regulate worship in England, Scotland, and Ireland by combining “. . . order and liberty, form and the spirit, unity and variety, hitherto deemed incompatible and certainly estranged.”12 It is essentially a compromise between the Presbyterian concern for order and the Independent demand for freedom. The tension involved in maintaining this compromise can be evidenced in this: what began as a revision of the Book of Common Prayer ended as a directory that “. . . consists of nothing but rubrics.”13

Many of the essays in this collection bear witness to the on-going tension between freedom and order. Ernest Marvin argues that Scripture provides the Reformed with principles of order that temper the exercise of freedom in worship, with the warning: “When the church is careless of form and order, unnecessary distractions enter in and the descent into kitsch is close at hand.”14 In Julian Templeton’s analysis of a recent liturgical resource produced by the United Reformed Church, he discerns a tension between the order of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine, on the one hand; and the freedom to make references to God gender-inclusive, on the other. Keith Riglin’s essay15 exposes the disorder—justified in the name of freedom—caused by inadvertent or deliberate laxity about w...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Ordered Freedom: English Reformed Worship
• Chapter 2: Shaping Up: Re-forming Reformed Worship
• Chapter 3: Looking Back: A Historical Overview of Reformed Worship
• Chapter 4: What’s the Problem with God the Father?
• Chapter 5: Who Does What? Presidency at the Sacraments in the Reformed Tradition
• Chapter 6: Can a Sermon be Boring? Metaphor and Meaning
• Chapter 7: Holy Fear or Holy Communion in the Reformed Tradition
• Chapter 8: Is there a Place for Eucharistic Sacrifice in Reformed Worship?
• Chapter 9: Why Should I Sing the Psalms?
• Chapter 10: A Sermon
• Chapter 11: Evening and Morning Liturgies
• Bibliography