Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #278: A History of Christian Worship Part Seven - The English Refo

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. I am so glad to have you here with me today. We are ready for another week, I hope, of the history of Christian worship. Can't believe that we are already going to be getting into part 7 today. And wow, have I been busy. Even right now, it's— let's see, my time, it's 10:39 at night. And I'm getting ready to record this podcast, something that I can put out the next day. It's been a busy time. I've been doing a lot of traveling, spending a lot of time in Indiana, and it turns out that I'll be spending some more time traveling in Indiana fairly soon, doing some different things, everything from concerts to seminars and speaking at churches and different events. So it's been a good time, a very rich time, but I'm also doing my responsibilities as the I'm the music pastor at First Church of the Nazarene, or as we call it, Home Road Nazarene, because we are on Home Road in Springfield, Ohio. It has just been a real busy time. Getting ready to send my son to kindergarten. Very first time being in the big public school. So pray for us. Lots of stuff going on in the James household right now. My wife is getting ready to go back to school. I am getting ready to put out a new album which I have been talking about for months. Little things are coming together more and more every week. But for now, let's just sit back and settle in and enjoy the time that we have together. And I'm going to talk to you a bit about the English Reformation in this session 7 of A History of Christian Worship. I hope you're enjoying this. I'm really glad that you can be here on this journey with me, and I hope that you're finding some things enlightening. It was a lot of research and study and time of getting all this ready, but here we go. Before I start, I'm gonna have a quick sip of mint tea, one of my favorite teas in the evening. Just one moment. Mmm, makes for terrible radio, but man, that's good. Alright, well, let's dive right into it today. While the Reformation was taking place in Europe, the Church in England was becoming the Church of England. While Henry VIII wanted everyone to believe that he had broken with the church over theology, In reality, the break was political in nature. The theology and the doctrine of the English church changed very little, but the governance of the church changed from the Pope to the English. In fact, until Henry died in 1547, this new English version of the Catholic Church changed very little. As liberal as Henry VIII was in his sexual improprieties, When it came to matters of doctrine and theology, he was very conservative and made few changes to the church. Edward VI came to power when Henry died, and Englishmen who were longing for a Reformation saw their chance to create a Reformed Church in England. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Nicholas Ridley London's future bishop, led a middle-of-the-road kind of Reformation. Like Calvin, Cranmer and Ridley were opposed to the doctrines of Mass as sacrifice and the doctrine of transubstantiation. Unlike Calvin, however, they were not at all opposed to the idea that the real presence of Christ was present in the Eucharist as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Cranmer and Ridley also strayed from Calvin in that they believed in the validity of the priesthood and that the church should be governed by bishops. They were no fans of medieval ceremony but did not wish to do away with ceremony altogether. They were not as conservative as Henry, in that they had no love for medieval practices, but they were also unlike the extreme Protestants who were doctrinally Calvinist but liturgically Zwinglian. You'll remember last week's episode if you're wondering about those terms. However, though the extreme Protestants were a minority, they were quite dedicated, and over a matter of time they would gain control of the government and change English worship in a significant way. A perfect liturgical storm was brewing in 1547 when Scripture began to be read in English during High Mass. Also at this time, Parliament decreed that both bread and wine ought to be received by communicants at the Mass. This created problems for the church because the cup had been withheld from laypeople in the church since the 1200s. This dilemma led Archbishop Cranmer to present a Reformed order of communion in English. This new order included instructions regarding the proper preparation for receiving Holy Communion. An invitation, confession, absolution, comfortable words, which are scripture passages that emphasized forgiveness of sins, and Cranmer's humble— or prayer of humble access. And that prayer went like this: We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table: but thou art the same Lord whose property it is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him as he in us.

Amen.

Communion, both bread and wine followed by a blessing, took place after the prayer. The rest of the worship service followed the ending of the Latin Mass with little or no variation at all. This service and Gutenberg's invention of the printing press prepared the way for the writing of a full book of services and prayers called the Book of Common Prayer, something that I still use quite often. This book has undergone many revisions over the years, but has remained an important part of Anglican worship because of the way it condenses numerous cumbersome worship books which only priests had been using and placed them into the hands of worshipers. There was the 1549 prayer book. In 1549, the use of the First Book of Common Prayer became a requirement for English churches. Cranmer's book drew upon resources from the early church fathers, Lutheran church orders, a Spanish cardinal's breviary, liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Old Gaelic rites, and more. The guiding principles for Cranmer in his selection of material for the book were as follows: 1. It needed to be grounded in Holy Scripture. 2. It had to be agreeable to the order of the primitive church.

3.

Had to be unifying, or yeah, unifying to the kingdom. And 4th, had to be edifying to the people. Like his fellow English Reformers, Cranmer wanted his service to be grounded in Holy Scripture and agreeable to the order of the primitive church. The book simplified the language of the Mass, making it more direct. In Cranmer's service of the Supper of the Lorde, Lorde, Old English people, his emphasis was primarily on the benefits of communion and the necessity of the people to receive it. The Eucharist was never to be offered where only the priest communed. This was a welcome correction, enabling the people to participate in the Mass once again. The 1549 prayer book also left no room for being stingy when it came to receiving from the Lord's table. The larger, thicker wafers were to be used in the Eucharist because God's grace is given in abundance. In the original version, the bread was to be placed in people's mouths so that they could not carry it out of the church and put it to superstitious use, but later prayer books decreed that the bread was to be placed in the people's hands. The size of pitchers used for the wine was also large comparatively, and thus larger amounts of wine were consumed. In the book's baptismal service, Cranmer deleted the breathing on the child, the giving of salt, certain anointing, and the gift of the candle. He kept the making of the sign of the cross on the forehead and the vesting of the newly baptized person in a white gown. Confirmation was also retained, but with simply the laying on of hands instead of the medieval practice of anointing. One of the main reasons that Cranmer's 1954 Book of Common Prayer was important is that it sought a common ground in the middle of an England which was deeply divided on religious matters. Henry VIII's attempt to unify the church through doctrinal unity had failed, and Cranmer didn't want to make the same mistake. Cranmer sought a better way, seeking to unite the church through worship rather than by doctrinal consensus. I'm sorry, having trouble reading tonight. Let me read that sentence again. Cranmer sought a better way, seeking to unite the church through through worship rather than by doctrinal consensus. He knew his prayer book needed to be acceptable to as many people as possible, and he was successful in achieving his goal. Possibly Cranmer's most creative contribution to the Church of England was morning and evening prayer. In monastic communities, corporate prayer, or the Divine Office, was offered 8 times a day. As monasticism flourished during the 4th century, the monks created daily corporate worship services to correspond with these prayer times. Mostly consisting of psalms and prayers, the entire Book of Psalms would be recited during these services. By the close of the Middle Ages, even the secular clergy and some laypeople read these services daily, either alone or in groups. The services were not a substitute for the Eucharist. They were additional opportunities for worship, a correction to the medieval service of the word alone. Cranmer drew heavily upon these monastic prayer services in his 1549 prayer book, formulating them into morning and evening prayer, Matins and Evensong. Because Cranmer wanted to reinforce the Reformation belief in priesthood of the laity, he hoped to release the Divine Office from the dominance of clerics and monastics. Through morning and evening prayer, the laity filled a void that had been created when monasticism was outlawed in the 1530s. In these additional opportunities for worship, the laity could lead the service even if the minister was not present. Though Cranmer desired that lay people would meet every day for worship, it never fully happened. Much of the reason for this is the time that it required of lay people to worship twice daily in their local parishes. As a result, the morning and evening prayer services became primarily for members of the clergy with infrequent participation from the laity. However, morning and evening prayer on Sundays became almost too successful. Since the English Christians only received Communion once a year in the old medieval model, the people lost the tradition of regular lay Communion. Cranmer's insistence that the congregation should receive the Eucharist each week was never followed. Much to Cranmer's disappointment, Sunday worship in the Anglican Church took on the following non-Eucharistic pattern: pattern. It followed more— it had morning prayer, the litany or the responsive prayer, the antecommunion, which is the first part of the service up to the offertory, a sermon, prayer. Then the full communion service was celebrated only 3 times a year in most cases. It is ironic that the service that Cranmer— Cranmer, that's so hard to say for me, sorry everybody— The service that Cranmer designed to bring the people back to daily worship became the thing that kept the people from regular Sunday communion for the next 300 years. That is ironic. While the 1549 Book of Common Prayer became the model and the source for all subsequent revisions in the future of the Anglican Church, in its own time, it was a failure. For those who were Reformation-minded, the book was unacceptable because it didn't delete all suggestion of sacrifice and Eucharistic presence. Anglicans, and it allowed the retention of vestments and some ceremony. Extremists of the Protestant movement, if they used the Book at all, modified it to fit their own leanings. Conservatives resisted the Book for the exact opposite reason. As the political winds began to shift decidedly in favor of the Protestants in England, a new prayer book was demanded. In 1552, after much hesitation, When the bishops approached Cranmer to produce a new and more Protestant book, they found him already hard at work writing one. And this brings us to the 1552 prayer book. Excuse me for one more sip of this hot mint tea. Ah, that stuff is so good. Put a little honey in it and you're set. All right, the 1552 prayer book. Cranmer's new Book of Common Prayer, in response to many criticisms, many criticisms of his old one, was heavily influenced by the New Zwinglian liturgies that had been brought over by European Protestant protesters when they fled to England. Protestant protesters seems like a repeat. Doesn't it? But anyway, there is a calculated move to the theological and doctrinal left in the 1552 book. Sadly, the new book was not very well constructed, even in its approach, and confused in its application of incompatible theological principles. The main problem of the book was its major revision of the order for the Lord's Supper. The designation of Mass had been eliminated. The book was a noble effort, but it had far too many flaws to last. Even though it was made compulsory by a second Act of Conformity, it lasted only a year. Under the rule of Queen Mary, the Second Prayer Book was swept away, sending Reformers like Cranmer either to their death or to another continent where their zeal for Protestantism grew. Imagine if you're writing a book If it didn't go over well, you were sent to your death. We'd have a lot better books out today, wouldn't we? Well, in 1559, the political winds would change again. With Queen Bess now seated on the throne, so again were the Protestants back in the place of power. A more reformed but truthfully less creative and less unified prayer book was now forced upon England, leaving conservative Catholics still unsatisfied in their worship, and also Puritans too. The Catholics at this time, by the way, were persecuted and inconsequential, and Puritans were gaining strength, but all of them were unsatisfied in their worship. So let's get into the Puritans. The Puritan party in Anglicanism lay in wait. They were looking for a time when they could finish the English Reformation. In 1556, exiled reformer John Knox issued a Reformed English liturgy called the Forme of Prayers. That's F-O-R-M-E of Prayers. Again, Old English. Knox introduced the book when we returned to Scotland from— sorry, when he returned to Scotland from exile following the death of Mary Tudor. Under the leadership of Knox, the Kirk of Scotland was formed. A marrying of Presbyterian church governance, Calvinist doctrine, and Puritan worship. The Puritan party, also influenced by Knox, gained strength in the Church of England, seeking to purify English worship of all non-biblical buildup. However, Queen Elizabeth, quite a formidable theologian in her own right, resisted the effort of the Puritans, believing that the realm was in desperate need of the unity that a common book of worship could bring. At first, Puritans resisted the book, the prayer book, and its old holdovers such as kneeling for communion, observance of saints' days, and communion of the sick because they deemed them unbiblical. Later, under the influence of Independence, the Puritans developed a more free church approach and sought to abolish the prayer book altogether. When Elizabeth died in 1603 and King James came to power—yes, that King James—the Puritans welcomed him since he had been a Presbyterian in Scotland and a fellow Reformer. However, when James authorized a new version of the Bible in 1604, as well as a new prayer book, the Puritans changed their tune and lost their enthusiasm for their new king. The new prayer book of 1604 was basically an updated edition of the 1552 book and did little to appease the Puritans who had been so influenced by John Knox. Now to High Churchmen and Low Churchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, under the rule of James's son, Charles I, led a group within Anglicanism called the High Churchmen. The High Churchmen had a high view of church doctrine, the ministry, and the sacraments, claiming that they had a divine origin and should be given the utmost prominence in the church. Their opponents, aptly called Low Churchmen, believing that the sacraments were man-made creations, were more concerned about the matters of personal morality, individual piety, and good deeds. The High Churchmen also known as Laudians, remained theologically within the Reformed tradition, mainly being concerned with the revision of worship practices and patterns rather than changing the prayer book. Laudians advocated for more ceremony and reverence for Holy Communion. In many places, they were successful in instituting monthly celebrations of Communion. The Laudians replaced the communion tables of the Low Churchmen with altars. Where railings were erected to enclose the chancel. These were architectural ways of expressing the high Eucharistic theology of the Laudians. The Laudians also helped to bring about a bitter religious war between Scotland and England, an actual worship war. In the 1620s and 1630s, a group of radically conservative Scots created a prayer book for the Church of Scotland,. It was more traditionally Catholic than Cranmer's, and King Charles was warned by Archbishop Laud not to try imposing such a radical revision upon the Scots. Charles did not heed the warnings, and on July 23, 1637, he imposed the Book on the Scots. On that day, the Dean of Edinburgh used the new Book and tried to conduct the services at John Knox's old church, St. Giles'. When the dean began reading from the new book, a young Scottish woman, Jenny Geddes, flung a stool at his head. The congregation turned into a mob so riotous that the dean was forced to make a rapid retreat. A bitter religious war broke out between Scotland and England, becoming the first civil war of the 1640s. Ultimately, the Puritan party won the day. Both the First Lord and King Charles were beheaded. Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell from 1649 to 1658, the official religion became a conglomeration of Presbyterians and Independents. Anglicanism and Catholicism were banned. Catholicism— I don't know why I said Catholicism. Well, Cromwell's Parliament, without Anglicanism or the Book of Common Prayer, issued a Directory for Public Worship of God. Rather, it was called A Directory for the Public Worship of God. It came to be called the Westminster Directory. The Directory was a worship book composed entirely of Puritan instructions and suggestions for corporate worship. It forbade vestments, creeds, the Lord's Prayer in the Eucharist, discouraged any congregational participation in public worship, and like the early Nazarene church that I'm a part of, it forbade wearing wedding rings. Cromwell died in 1658, and with him the Directory and the Commonwealth. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 with Charles II, the Book of Common Prayer and Anglicanism were both officially re-established. A new edition of the prayer book was issued in 1662, which was— simply the 1552 book reissued with a few additional teachings and alterations. For all intents and purposes, the Puritans were forced out of the Church of England by the new Act of Uniformity, which forbade any local church variations in prayer book worship. Many dissenters from the Anglican Church fled to Holland among the Separatists, Among the Separatists was a former Anglican priest named John Smyth, or Smyth rather, S-M-Y-T-H, but you might pronounce it Smith, I'm not sure. Smyth, Smyth, Smyth Smith, believed that the Church of England had become corrupt, and he sought out to find the root of that corruption. His conclusion was that child baptism by the Anglican Church was the source of the corruption. His belief was simple: since the Church of England was not a real church, then its baptism was not a real baptism. Because of this, Smythe baptized himself as a true Christian and then administered baptism to others in his group, therefore forming what many believe to be the origins of present-day Baptists. In Holland, Smythe's congregation abandoned Puritan Calvinist doctrines of salvation, instead adopting the thought of a more generous Dutchman named Arminius. Unlike Calvinists, Arminius believed that humanity has the freedom to reject or accept God's offer of salvation. For Smythe and Arminius, there is a general election by God of all people, and baptism is interpreted as a free and conscious commitment of faith. Faith, a rite of initiation. This Arminian position led Baptists to the conclusion that worship is a primarily human response to God, rather than God's activity toward humanity. For Baptists, baptism was not a means of grace. It is a sign of a prior adult response to God, signifying God's prior act. Of salvation. Excuse me, it's getting late and I'm tired, everyone. I apologize. One more sip of tea here. In 1638, a Separatist congregation in London rejected infant baptism, in essence following the reasoning of Smythe and his congregation. Through contact with an Anabaptist group, they also recovered the death-life baptismal image of Paul, and thus adopted a practice now embraced by nearly all groups of Baptists—total immersion. Many Baptists did observe the Lord's Supper at least monthly, but non-members were dismissed before communion. Communion elements were passed to the pews by ministers or deacons of the congregation. These diverse groups of Baptists fled to America where they enjoyed religious freedom and have had a major impact upon religious life. One of the most radical groups to emerge from this period was the Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends. All outward forms—all outward ordinances and sacraments—even words themselves were eliminated from their worship in favor of silent waiting upon God. They did this in order to be fully open to the leadings of the Spirit. Quakers felt that the sermons and prayers of the Puritans were still human inventions, and that the Spirit and its inspirations should be the central facts of public worship, even more than Scripture itself. The leader of the Quakers, George Fox, suffered persecution from both the Puritans and the Anglicans. My, there was a lot of persecution the church did to itself. Well, let's get to the conclusion of tonight, and we'll start wrapping up this show. The 1662 Prayer Book continued as the Anglican Book of Worship until the reforms of the 1900s. The 1662 Prayer Book stressed the Eucharist above preaching and corporate scripturally grounded prayer above everything. In practice, however, Anglicans failed to restore the Eucharist to a central place in worship, nor did it truly learn to involve people in the common worship. For the next two centuries, English worship consisted of long, dull, moralistic preaching and dry, overly wordy, pedestrian, colorless, non-sacramental liturgy. Puritanism was in many ways an attempt to enliven the dullness of established worship, hoping to add the warm feelings, fellowship, and vivid preaching that Anglicanism lacked. The Puritans These concerns were now transported to the New World by Baptists and Congregationalists, who took root and shaped the worship of American Protestantism in influential ways. Unfortunately, many English people, dismayed by century-long reforms and counterreforms, adopted neither Anglicanism nor Puritanism. Many of the people simply withdrew from Sunday worship at the end of the 18th century. This is a chilling lesson in the ineffectiveness of reform by political force. Well, that's a lot to think about tonight. I've been talking for nearly half hour, and I think that's enough for us to think about. But I find it interesting that I feel like there were a lot of similarities in that time as there are in our own. The 18th century, you know, when that closing statement that I made about it being a chilling lesson on the ineffectiveness of reform by political force, I think of how just this week Jeff Sessions announced the— I believe it's the Religious Freedom Act or something like that, which is again another effort to, by political force, force Christianity on everybody.— which is something that drives me crazy because I feel like the church will find its way best when it stays out of those types of realms and actually just lives out the Kingdom of God. It is just interesting. I do not want to make too much about it tonight, but it is always a bad thing when the church decides that political force has more power than the Holy Spirit. We seem to be in a place like that today, unfortunately, in many of our realms. So it's a lesson we can learn from history. It's a lesson we can learn from this time of the English Reformation. Maybe some things we can steer clear from in the coming days. Boy, I learned something tonight. When you're reading it out loud, Thomas Cranmer is a really hard word to say again and again. It's that M-N combination. So I hope you stuck with me to the end. I'm proud of you. Being able to be here with me each week. I wanna let you know I've been recording some really great conversations with some wonderful guests over the few weeks while I've been doing this. We're already up to session 7. I'm gonna go ahead and make it to session 10 before I start sharing those interviews because I don't wanna break them up. So next week will be session 8, then we'll have 9, then we'll have 10, and then we'll get to our interviews with people like John Tibbs and David Dalt and some just really brilliant people. That's it for tonight though. Hope you guys have a great week. Thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head, and I'll see you next time.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @rickleejames, like my artist page at facebook.com/RickLeeJames and keep up to date on what I'm writing on my author page on Amazon. There's also the Voices in My Head Facebook community found at facebook.com/VoicesPodcast. And if you want to follow my alter ego on Twitter, follow my popular Mr. Rogers quote account found @MrRogersSay. Also, make sure to follow You can follow my appearance schedule on my website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website at rickleejames.com/bookings. And it would mean the world to me if you would write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction. May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen you in your inner being for every good work, and may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.