Mitchell, Leonel L. "Essential worship." Anglican Theological Review 79, no. 4 (Fall97 1997): 494. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed October 14, 2010).
When I was a parish priest, I noted that there were three things that tended to get deeply confused by the parishioners:
The faith once delivered to the saints.
The Anglican Tradition.
The way the Rector Emeritus liked to do things.
Unfortunately this problem is not confined to one parish nor to the Episcopal Church. By and large, we are not very good either at helping others to sort these out, or sorting them out ourselves. We tend to confuse things which we find appealing with the core of Christian worship.
The problem becomes particularly acute when we are dealing not with one eccentric parish, but with the entire problem of cultural relationships. The late Leo Melania, Coordinator of Prayer Book Revision during the preparation of The Book of Common Prayer 1979, told me that, although he had encountered the Anglican Church of Canada in his youth, he had never seriously considered becoming an Anglican, since he was of Syrian, not English, ethnicity.
This may be an extreme example, but it is difficult for those of us who do worship in English even to imagine what it means to be a Francophone or Hispanic or Korean Anglican. How much of what we are accustomed to associate with the worship of the Episcopal Church is it necessary for a Navajo to adopt to be an Episcopalian?
The Core of Christian Worship
Vatican Council II in its seminal Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy[1] offered these directives, which are, in fact, sage advice worth listening to:
The liturgy is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These latter not only may be changed but ought to be changed with the passage of time, if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become less suitable.[2]
It went on to speak of "legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions and peoples,"[3] and recognized that possibly, "In some places and circumstances... an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed."[4]
In this context we should note two resolutions of the 1988 Lambeth Conference. Resolution 22: Christ and Culture says in part:
This Conference ... urges the Church everywhere to work at expressing the unchanging Gospel of Christ in words, actions, names, customs, liturgies, which communicate relevantly in each contemporary culture.
Resolution 47: Liturgical Freedom reads:
This Conference resolves that each Province should be free, subject to essential universal norms of worship and to a valuing of traditional liturgical materials to seek that expression of worship which is appropriate to its Christian people in their cultural context.
We might then begin by asking ourselves just what in our liturgical Tradition is of the essence of Christian worship. What is the hard core of Christian liturgy? If our standard is the same as Vatican II, then our list will be very short indeed. Divinely instituted elements in the liturgy include:
The proclamation of the gospel,
the assembling for worship,
the celebration of baptism with water,
the celebration of the eucharist with bread and wine,
the ministry of reconciliation (in some form), and
the praying of the Lord's Prayer.
You may be able to think of something else, but it is a very lean core. I would personally wish to add to that core those elements which have been a part of the Christian tradition of worship since patristic times:
The offering of daily prayer,
the weekly celebration of the Lord's Day,
the observance of at least the major festivals of the church year,
and an ordered ministry of Word and Sacrament.
Daily Prayer
The daily offices in the form in which we have them are heavily dependent on Benedictine monasticism, but the idea of daily services of prayer did not begin with the monastics. Cathedrals and large city churches had public services of psalm singing and prayer from the end of the persecutions, and much earlier Christian writers spoke of daily prayers, morning and evening, as a part of Christian life. Presumably this was a part of the Church's inheritance from the synagogue, where the eighteen benedictions were said twice daily, and individuals were obligated to recite the shema three times. This was the context in which the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and the Lord's Prayer, in addition to or instead of the shema, became the prayer of Christians.
The Lord's Day
The celebration of the Lord's day, the day of resurrection, on the first day of the week, with the celebration of the Lord's Supper probably goes back to New Testament times. The expressions "Lord's Day" and "Lord's Supper" are related. From at least the time of Justin Martyr in the second century Christians have kept the Lord's Day with a service of Word and Sacrament including the reading and preaching of the Gospel, the offering of prayers, and the celebration of the eucharist.
The Church Year
By contrast, the liturgical year was rather slow in developing. Easter and Pentecost began to be observed in the second century, and Epiphany shortly thereafter. Lent was in place by the time of the council of Nicea. Christmas, which began in Rome in the third century, spread to the rest of the Church in the fourth. Since then the Church of Scotland in the 16th century was unique among major Christian Churches in abandoning it--and they have brought it back. It is certainly possible to be a Christian without observing the church year--or there were no Christians in the apostolic Church--but it has become a stable part of Christian observance.
A serious question worth raising, however, has to do with the celebration of these feasts in the southern hemisphere. Their observance is tied to the seasons--Easter on the first full moon of spring and Christmas at the winter solstice. Should those in the southern hemisphere continue to keep the traditional dates, or should they reschedule the feasts to conform to their own seasonal calendar? As far as I know, no church has done this.
Christian Initiation
The liturgical seasons have also been integrated since at least the fourth century into the celebration of Christian Initiation, with preparation of candidates for baptism during Lent, baptism at the Great Vigil of Easter, and the fifty days of Eastertide as the time of mystagogia in which the neophytes were incorporated into the sacramental life of the Church.
The Lima Document, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, makes a valuable distinction between those things which are necessary for baptism and those which should find a place in a comprehensive service of Christian Initiation. In the first category we place baptism with water and the confession of faith in the Triune God, in the second, things like making specific promises, blessing the water, anointing with chrism, and laying on of hands. These make clear the meaning of what we are doing, but they are not strictly necessary for "full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit."
The Ministry of Word and Sacrament
Although we no longer claim that, "It is evident to all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church,--Bishops, Priests, and Deacons,"[5] as Cranmer's preface to the Ordinal of 1550 asserted, yet we do say:
The Holy Scriptures and ancient Christian writers make it clear that from the apostles' time there have been different ministries within the Church. In particular, since the time of the New Testament, three distinct orders of ordained ministers have been characteristic of Christ's holy catholic Church.[6]
Christians have traditionally been ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament by the laying on of hands with prayer. This ministry has traditionally, but not universally, been called the priesthood or presbyterate. This ministry has included presiding at the community's liturgy and preaching the Gospel. It has also included, in some way, the ministry of reconciliation. Frederick Denison Maurice reminded us that even those churches which say that the only function of the minister is to preach the Gospel say this because they believe that preaching is the way to absolve sinners.
The ministry of episkope or episcopal oversight has been exercised in some way within the Church, although not always by people we would call bishops, and men and women have been ordained to a ministry of diakonia. I would like to say something about the diaconate, but, unfortunately, our theology and practice of diakonia is sufficiently confused to make it difficult to say exactly what the Christian tradition of the diaconate is, or ought to be. Certainly, it is an area in which all of our churches today have fallen short of our theological standard.
A Minimum Standard
A sort of minimum standard for Christian worship, then, Would include:
The celebration of the Lord's Day with a service of Word and Sacrament,
the celebration of Christian Initiation by water and the Holy Spirit,
the offering of daily prayer morning and evening (whether corporately or individually), including the Lord's Prayer,
the observance of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and the seasons of Lent and Eastertide,
a ministry for the reconciliation of penitents,
the ordination of persons to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, by the laying on of hands with prayer,
an ordered ministry of episkope and diakonia.
A Church which ordered its liturgical life in this way would, without doubt, be Christian--and worshipping in accordance with Christian tradition. In fact, one of the truly remarkable ecumenical breakthroughs of the twentieth century has been the recognition, exemplified by the Lima Document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, of these principles by a wide spectrum of Christian theologians and churches.
The Anglican Tradition
If we consider the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral as a defining statement for Anglicanism, then the only necessary addition is the insistence that episkope be exercised by bishops and ordinations be under their presidency. Of course, we should not be surprised to find that we have added so little to the basic core of Christian worship. The Quadrilateral itself describes its four points as "the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which principles we believe to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world."[7] Anglicanism has often described itself as having no distinctive doctrines or practices, but holding the faith of the undivided Catholic Church. If it is true that Anglicanism is simply a particular expression of the Catholic Church, then we shall be hard pressed to find things which are distinctively and essentially Anglican.
What then is the Anglican tradition in worship? If there is a single thing which might be termed characteristic of Anglican worship it is that it be in the language of the people. Unfortunately, this principle has been stated more frequently than it has been implemented. A few years ago, for example, only one parish in the Diocese of La Platte, in Argentina, had any services in Spanish. Of course the American Prayer Book, or portions of it, does exist in Spanish, French, Korean, Lakota, and Navajo--but they are translations of the English words into that language. The "language of the people" is more than words which are comprehensible. It must use the thought forms of the people. It must be compatible with the culture. As the preface to the Canadian Book of Alternative Services says:
Liturgy is not the gospel but it is a principal process by which the Church and the gospel are brought together for the sake of the life of the world. It is consequently vital that its form wear the idiom, the cadence, the worldview, the imagery of the people who are engaged in that process in every generation.[8]
I would add, "in every place," for we offer our thanks and praise, in the words of the Rite I eucharistic preface, "at all times, and in all places."
In the recent book The Identity of Anglican Worship, David Stancliffe, now the Bishop of Salisbury, came up with three ingredients which he felt could be labelled "Anglican":
First, there is an integrated feel about Anglican liturgy which has its origins in the union of heart and mind, of word and sacrament, of text and ceremonial. Our worship is earthed in a theology which is incarnational, and a sacramentality which is organic and affirmative. ... Our liturgy is ordered, not regimented, and it is related to how we think and how we live.
Second, and closely related, we are people of the book, or rather, of a family of books. In spite of cultural differences, the revised books for worship produced by the Churches in the family of the Anglican Communion still show a remarkable family likeness. This is also true of ceremonial. ... Our tradition does not exist in the abstract: it needs to find its own climate and memory in order to embody its dignity.
And third, there is an elusive but very distinctive Anglican style, which has a lot to do with the acceptance and integration of a number of different layers, which create a sense of unity by inclusion, rather than of uniformity.[9]
These ingredients seem to me archetypically Anglican. When you hear them you say, "Oh, yes! Quite so!" but you find them difficult to exegete and apply. This does not mean that they are not true.
Perhaps his most important statement is, "Our tradition does not exist in the abstract: it needs to find its own climate and memory in order to embody its dignity." Anglicanism only exists in actual congregations in the member churches of the Anglican Communion, which means that it must be different from time to time and place to place.
Cultural Diversity
Over the last century Anglicans have become used to a great deal of diversity in liturgical celebration. Initially it was diversity from parish to parish, or diocese to diocese, but now it is diversity within the same congregation. I remember one parish bulletin which included both Morning Prayer and Sermon at 11 a.m. on Sundays, and Rosary and Benediction in the evening, sponsored by the parish chapter of the Society of the Living Rosary of Our Lady and St. Dominic. And this was before the 1979 Prayer Book appeared! Today charismatic folk masses, stately choral eucharists, and family celebrations with children's hymns and multi-media sermons may all co-exist in one parish.
This same diversity is possible among cultures, both within the multicultural context of the United States and internationally. We recognize that Chinese Anglicans may not choose to sing Anglican chant, and readily make allowance for cultural diversity in music and art. We need also to make allowances for it in prayer forms and ritual gestures. In spite of its great beauty, the Roman collect form as rendered into Cranmerian English is not the only possible prayer form for Anglicans. Some Native Americans, for example, choose to pass a pipe during the exchange of the peace. The pipe is a sacred symbol in their culture, and its use at the peace is important to some congregations. For others it is a part of the "old way" which they left behind when they accepted Christianity. If Anglicanism is Catholic Christianity, then it must be possible to be genuinely Anglican and authentically Lakota, or Syrian, or African American, or Japanese. We all understand this, and, I am sure subscribe to it in theory. In practice we are often not really certain that congregations which do not wish to use "traditional" Anglican church music, or wear "traditional" Anglican vestments are genuinely Episcopalian. But if we take our own theology seriously, and believe in the Incarnation of the Word of God and in the catholicity of the Church, then not only Christianity, but Anglicanism is set free from its bondage to any one cultural expression. In fact, an Anglican liturgy rooted and grounded in the Gospel and in the indigenous culture is more Anglican than an imitation of Canterbury Cathedral in Ghana or of King's College, Cambridge, in Fiji.
Perhaps, the question we really need to ask is what should American Anglican liturgy look like? In 1790, the answer was clear. It was to look like English Anglicanism without the prayers for the king, just as American society was English society without the king. Today the United States is no longer an extension of England, nor is the Episcopal Church simply the Church of England in America. The Book of Common Prayer 1979 has moved us in new and different directions, directions in which the other Anglican Churches appear to wish to follow us, or to set their own parallel course. But we are not a homogenous culture. We are a polyglot multicultural nation, and it is only if the Episcopal Church is prepared to be multicultural that we can truly be an American Church.
The Prayer Book
The Book of Common Prayer in its multiple national, regional, and linguistic identities, along with the various Alternative Service Books of those churches which have not revised their Prayer Book, are distinctively Anglican. It is not simply having a service book. The Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Lutherans have service books, but they are simply books, tools to be used in the celebration of the liturgy, not objects of quasi-reverence. To an extent unparalleled in other churches, Anglican identity is formed by the Prayer Book--a book of common prayer for the people of God, not an altar book for the minister.
The Anglican Prayer Books do have a family resemblance, but they are not identical twins. Some of that resemblance comes from our sharing of the common Christian core of worship, but it is more than that. Even when the overtones of Cranmer's mellifluous English are replaced by Maori or Tongan, the New Zealand Prayer Book remains undeniably Anglican, as do Zanzibar's Swahili Mass and the Eastern Orthodox-like Liturgy for India. It has been said many times, but it is the use of the Prayer Book as a primary theological source which makes it distinctive.
Anglican Style
There is also "an elusive but very distinctive Anglican style." It is, in fact, so elusive, that it is almost impossible to talk about. Let me try. In 1972 the Lutheran Liturgical Conference at Valparaiso University celebrated the then brand-new Rite Two liturgy of the Episcopal Church from Prayer Book Studies 19 as a part of their conference. As good Missouri Synod Lutherans, they did not invite any Episcopalians to participate in the celebration except as members of the congregation. It was in many ways a most interesting service. But none of the Episcopalians present experienced it as anything but a Lutheran service. They followed the rubrics. When they were unclear what was intended, they telephoned me and asked for advice. They sang better than most Episcopalians! But when 'all was said and done, "The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hands were the hands of Esau." The elusive "style" was Lutheran.
It is precisely at this point that we tend to get into trouble, because what we often mean when we say that something is not authentically Anglican is that it wasn't "our kind" of Anglican. It didn't fit our cultural expectations. We weren't expecting a mariachi band for lessons and carols!
We confuse our picture of an ideal Anglican liturgy with the essence of Anglican worship, but our picture is hopelessly culturally conditioned, whether it be English cathedral liturgy, solemn mass at St. Mary the Virgin's, or the family eucharist at a suburban parish. The examples of cultural imperialism masquerading as Christian missionary activity are too numerous and well-known to need repetition, but the offense is seldom deliberate. Often the cultural components are an integral part of our vision of the Church, and just as frequently, the cultural elements are quite attractive to the potential converts. One common aspect of this experience was expressed this way by an Asian Christian:
Fascinated by the new Christian faith and associating it with the "advanced" western culture (technology, in particular), Asian converts have probably idealized and absolutized [western] Christian values. ... Unfortunately, it led to a denial of native culture and values; Christians became alienated from their own people. They were eager to learn and adapt the new Christian expression, including liturgies and music. Eventually, they became so attached to these forms that they regarded them as the absolutely authentic way of Christian expression.[10]
The conversion of the barbarian tribes of Europe to Christianity in late antiquity was in one sense as much their initiation into Roman culture as it was into Christianity. The Roman Church did not impose a Latin liturgy on unwilling barbarians. They adopted it gladly as evidence that they had become a part of "the mainstream" of Roman culture. There was little market for mass in Gothic. It was only when missionaries encountered the ancient civilizations of China and India that the question of adapting Christianity to non-Western cultures was seriously raised. Today "inculturation" is an important concept for global Christianity. The Indian theologian D. S. Amalorpavadass has reminded us:
The church cannot be truly catholic or universal until it is truly incarnated in a people and inculturated according to various cultures. The task and responsibility of realizing inculturation in all aspects and areas of its life and society and evolving a theology of inculturation belongs to the local church whose task is preaching the gospel.[11]
This is a crucial principle. It is not the job of white middle-class liturgists in the Episcopal Church to attempt to decide what kind of liturgy is appropriate for a convent in Tanzania or a country church in Haiti. It is the local church which celebrates liturgy which ultimately determines what its liturgy will be. Our task is much more modest, but not unimportant. We need to bear witness to the Tradition which has been passed on to us, so that inculturation does not become the distortion, not only of the liturgy but of the gospel which it celebrates. How a local church incarnates that Tradition is not something that can be dictated from outside. Our task is to educate and to set guidelines, so that the local church may know that its liturgy is indeed Christian and Anglican. More than this we cannot accomplish and should not attempt.
Sacrosanctum Concilium. December 4, 1963.
Op.cit. section 21.
Op.cit. section 38.
Op.cit. section 40.
The Book of Common Prayer 1928, 529.
The Book of Common Prayer 1979, 510.
The Book of Common Prayer 1979, 877.
The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1985), 10.
The Identity of Anglican Worship, edited by Kenneth Stevenson and Bryan Spinks (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1991), 132f.
I-to Loh, "Contemporary Issues in Inculturation: Arts and Liturgy: Music," address to 12th International Congress, Societas Liturgica, York, 1989.
D.S. Amalorpavadass, "Theological Reflections on Inculturation," address to 12th International Congress, Societas Liturgica, York, 1989.
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By LEONEL L. MITCHELL
Leonel L. Mitchell is Professor of Liturgics Emeritus at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. This material was originally presented as an address to the Association of Diocesan Liturgy and Music Commissions meeting in Chicago, November 1994.
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