Methodist Worship in the Post-Reformation Period

John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman who sought to bring new life to the Church of England through conversion and enthusiastic response to God in sacramental worship. In America, Wesleyan forms of worship did not survive. There Methodists tended to follow the frontier-revivalist pattern of worship.

Methodism can be seen as a counter-cultural movement in the midst of the Enlightenment. When the sacraments were on the margin of church life, early Methodism put them at the center; when religious zeal was in disrepute, Methodism made enthusiasm essential; where religion was confined to the churches, Methodism took it to the fields and streets. John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of Methodism, was a faithful son of the Church of England and never ceased in his love for its worship. The Methodists under Wesley functioned virtually as a religious order under a General Rule within the established church.

Distinctive features of early Methodist worship were “constant communion,” i.e., frequent Eucharist, fervent preaching for salvation, vigorous hymn singing (then a novelty), care of souls in small groups, and a mixture of extemporaneous and fixed prayers. Charles Wesley (1707–1788) wrote hymns by the thousands; he and John created a great treasury of 166 eucharistic hymns. John Wesley practiced pragmatic traditionalism, preferring ancient forms for modern needs when possible: vigils became the Methodist watch night, the agapē surfaced as the love feast, and the covenant service was adapted from Presbyterianism. In 1784, John Wesley published his service book for America, the Sunday Service, advocating, among other things, a weekly Eucharist.

Much of this did not survive the transit of the Atlantic, and American Methodism soon discarded Wesley’s service book but not his hymn book. Much of the sacramental life was dissipated (although the texts for the rites remained largely intact). Instead, Methodism tended to adapt many of the techniques of the frontier. Camp meetings abounded for a time and eventually resulted in a distinctive revival-type service. Fanny Crosby (1820–1915) wrote many hymns of personal devotion to the blessed Savior, while Charles A. Tindley (1856–1933) was a prolific black hymn writer.

Despite the prevalence of revival-style worship, there persisted in America a number of areas where more formal worship was preferred, such as in Birmingham and Nashville. Thomas O. Summers (1812–1882) was the leader of a nineteenth-century liturgical movement in the South which affected the reprinting of Wesley’s service book and produced a standard order of worship. Wesley’s prayer book long remained in use in England, or even The Book of Common Prayer. In general, Methodists in the nineteenth century reacted against the new ritualism of the established church in England, only to adopt some aspects of it several generations later.

Revivalism gave way to a period of aestheticism with much discussion of “enriching worship.” This, in turn, gave way to a neo-orthodox period of recovering historic liturgies, especially Wesley’s. Recent decades have seen more attention to assimilating the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic reforms, especially the lectionary. The new (1989) United Methodist Hymnal shows how far this has gone and may mark the beginning of a neo-Protestant emphasis on keeping the identity of one’s own tradition.

Quaker Worship in the Post-Reformation Period

Quaker worship, to varying degrees, is unstructured. It is characterized by silence and by the leading of the Spirit.

It is easy to identify the Quakers or Society of Friends as the most radical tradition of all in its break from late medieval forms of worship. Other groups emerging from the Reformation have clergy, the preaching of sermons, and outward and visible sacraments. The classical forms of Quaker worship have none of these, although one may detect some indirect links with medieval mysticism. Paradoxically, most Quakers have tempered their radicalism by being the most conservative in fidelity to their original forms. Roman Catholic worship has changed far more than has Quaker worship in England or on the east coast of the United States

The origins of Quaker worship lie in the soul-searching of George Fox (1624–1691) and his discovery of the “inner light” in every human. This inner light brought one closer to God than Scripture or sacraments, for it was direct access to the Spirit itself with no need for the mediation of clergy or set forms. Furthermore, such direct access was available to all, male or female, slave or free. Thus, any study of liturgy and justice must begin with the Quakers, for what they practiced in worship was what they felt compelled to practice in all of life. What F. D. Maurice (1805–1872), Percy Dearmer (1867–1936), Virgil Michel (1890–1938), and H. A. Reinhold (1897–1968) later advocated had been a common practice among Quakers for several centuries. Since all were equal before the Spirit, women had as much right to speak in worship as men, and anyone who could see the Spirit in a black person had no right to keep him or her in slavery. Since no one was marginalized in worship, it also meant no one should be honored by clothing or title in society. Decisions were to be made by the “sense of the meeting,” since a vote always means a defeat for a minority.

But though it could dispense with sermons and sacraments, the one thing Quaker worship could not surrender was the Christian community itself, the “meeting.” Hence, the most important act in worship for Quakers is coming together in Christ’s name. Quaker worship is a form of corporate mysticism in which the Spirit uses individuals to speak to the group. Greatly to be feared is putting oneself forward by rushing into words. Only after a time of “centering down” can one feel ready to speak under the compulsion of the Spirit. Quakers feel that Christ did not intend outward baptism and communion to continue any more than foot-washing, so these sacraments occur in invisible and inward ways only.

Quaker worship always has involved a great sense of personal restraint. Even great Quaker saints such as John Woolman (1720–1772) worried after first-day meeting (Sunday) that they might have spoken from the self rather than the Spirit. A high degree of biblical literacy is also presupposed. The Spirit, after all, is the author of Scripture too and will not contradict itself whether in the Bible or in reason.

On the American frontier, like so many other traditions, some Quakers adopted frontier forms of worship, especially in Indiana. Thus, services evolved with structured worship, paid clergy, and even outward sacraments. Sometimes unstructured or unprogrammed worship could be integrated into services that were basically structured. But many East Coast and English Quakers worship still in ways that would not astonish George Fox, so stable has Quaker worship been.

Anabaptist Worship in the Reformation Era

Anabaptists argued for a pure church and a radical discipleship in absolute obedience to Scripture. They refused to countenance any form of worship that could not be substantiated by Scripture.

It is not easy to generalize about the Anabaptist elements of the radical Reformation, known largely today as Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites, but we can trace some common features. Surprisingly, the more radical traditions tend also to be most conservative when it comes to stabilizing and continuing the same worship forms across the centuries.

The earliest Anabaptists, the Swiss Brethren, began in contact with Zwingli in Zurich. But they took his biblicism a step further than he was willing to and argued vehemently against the baptism of any but believers. Their basic premise came to be the need for a pure church of believers who led holy lives. This was impossible to reconcile with the magisterial reformation that relied upon state support. Both Protestants and Catholics vied with each other to persecute Anabaptists, or “rebaptizers” as they came to be known, because of their refusal to accept their own baptisms as infants. Immersion was not an issue, and most of these groups baptized by pouring or sprinkling.

A variety of leaders arose with small groups of followers. The typical congregations met in a secluded spot under a leader called and ordained by the congregation. Because persecution was so constant, martyrdom was frequent and a rich hymnody of martyrdom developed, some of it still in use. For the church to be kept pure, not only must the entrance be narrow in the form of baptism for believers only, but members not living a holy life were expelled by the ban and shunned in accordance with biblical precept (1 Cor. 5:13).

Despite their radical origins, several Anabaptist groups have kept faithful to genuine conservatism. The Old Order (Amish) worship in private homes much as their ancestors did, the Hutterite communities even retain the use of sixteenth-century sermons, and even the larger Mennonite groups resisted most nineteenth-century American influences by remaining relatively isolated communities. Although their numbers continue to be small, the disciplined lifestyle of these people makes them much admired.

Anglican Worship in the Reformation Era

Anglican worship has a variegated history, having fluctuated between worship forms similar to those of Catholicism and worship influenced by the Puritans. This accounts in part for the variations in worship within the Anglican communion of today. Nevertheless, The Book of Common Prayer is basic to all Anglican churches.

The Anglican tradition is ambiguous: what started off as a fairly moderate reformation, and remained so for three centuries, reversed itself in the nineteenth century and moved to reappropriate a great deal of the medieval cultus. To modern observers, Anglican worship seems more conservative than Lutheran; but the theological origins are far more liberal. Anglican liturgy began with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s (1489–1556) two editions of The Book of Common Prayer, that of 1549 and the much more radical 1552 book. Using the latest technology, Cranmer sought to put all the services in the hands of everyone by translating, condensing, and revising them before publishing them in popular versions under a price ceiling.

Cranmer succeeded in recovering daily services of public prayer, which became a staple of Anglican worship. Many of the ceremonies associated with the sacraments and other rites disappeared from the 1552 edition and the theology became much more unambiguously Zwinglian. Martin Bucer (1491–1551) provided much of the structure for the ordination rite, but Cranmer was not prepared to accept as high a view of the Eucharist as Bucer and Calvin. A great ornament of the book was Cranmer’s linguistic ability to cast traditional Latin prayers in the language of his contemporaries.

After the brief regression of the Marian years, Anglican worship tended to stabilize during the long reign of Elizabeth I. As a political settlement, episcopal forms of church government were retained, as well as something of the appearance of public worship, although there had been much iconoclasm even before the rise of Puritanism. Weekly communion proved to be too radical a step for most people, and canon law eventually settled for a minimum of three celebrations a year. The normal Sunday service came to be morning prayer, litany, ante-communion, and sermon. Popular hymnody was lacking, but magnificent choral daily services characterized worship in the cathedrals. The poet-priest George Herbert (1593–1633) offered an example of Anglican parish ministry at its best.

The Puritan takeover of the Church of England from 1644 to 1660 moved things leftward in a radical direction, but only temporarily. The restoration period afterward attempted to return to the status quo of 1604, as the prayer book of 1662 showed. Despite the survival of high church traditions (without much ceremonial), most Anglicans were comfortable in a tradition that avoided the excesses of either Catholicism or Puritanism. In the eighteenth century, this meant worship that was edifying and moralistic but with little concern for the sacraments or anything overtly supernatural.

In the nineteenth century, reactions came in the form of a recovery of patristic theology (the Oxford Movement, Tractarianism, Puseyism) and to a full-scale recovery of late medieval ceremonial (the Cambridge Movement, Ritualism). These brought back weekly celebrations of the Eucharist at just the same time this was occurring among Disciples of Christ, Mormons, Plymouth Brethren, and the Catholic Apostolic Church. A new emphasis was placed on baptism, penance, and the revival of medieval architecture, liturgical arts, and choral music. Congregational hymnody also made its advent.

The twentieth century has seen an indigenous liturgical movement in the Church of England, manifesting itself as the parish communion movement in the 1930s. Recent years have seen a wholesale revision of Anglican prayer books around the world, usually either following the patters of Cranmer or trading in such later medieval forms for the third-century model of Hippolytus.

Reformed Worship in the Reformation Era

Calvin argued that only practices explicitly taught in Scripture could be used in worship. For this reason, churches influenced by Calvin have been less inclined to restore pre-Reformation practices of worship perceived as unbiblical or “Catholic.”

The Reformed tradition has several roots: Zurich, Basel, Strassburg, and Geneva. In some ways, it preserved more than its share of the penitential strain of late medieval piety. In other respects, however, it moved beyond the forms in which Lutheranism and Anglicanism were content to continue. In time it was largely seduced by the Puritan tradition (in Great Britain) and the frontier tradition (in America).

Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) began his reformation of Zurich heavily influenced by humanistic studies and a thorough biblicism. He was anxious to return worship to its biblical roots and eager to make it more spiritual, reflecting the gap he saw between the physical and the spiritual. Although a fine musician, he rejected music in worship as distracting one from spiritual worship. Iconoclasm in Zurich purified or devastated the churches, according to one’s viewpoint. Zwingli retained the four Sundays or festivals when his people were accustomed to receiving communion or the Eucharist, a preaching service being held on the other Sundays. These four occasions saw a drastically simplified rite that focused on the transubstantiation of the people, not the elements.

Martin Bucer in Strassburg and John Oecolampadius (1482–1531) in Basel began experimenting with vernacular services. At Strassburg, this included daily prayer services and a Sunday service derived from the Mass. Bucer’s influence was spread further by a visiting preacher out of a job, John Calvin (1509–1564). While serving temporarily a French-speaking congregation in Strassburg, Calvin adapted the German rite Bucer was using. Calvin brought this rite to Geneva, and from 1542 on it became the model for much of the Reformed tradition. Although deriving its structure from the Mass via Bucer, it had moved to highlight the penitential aspects of worship and was highly didactic and moralistic. Relief from this somber mood was wrought by encouraging the congregation to sing metrical paraphrases of the psalms, which they did with fervor. Such devotion to psalmody (and the exclusion of hymnody) marked Reformed worship for several centuries and still does in some churches.

Calvin’s low esteem for human nature was balanced by a high view of God’s Word and of the sacraments. (Although almost all Protestants considered baptism and the Eucharist as sacraments, Luther was willing to include penance, Calvin possibly ordination, and Zinzendorf marriage.) Calvin’s doctrine of eucharistic feeding on Christ through the operation of the Holy Spirit, although certainly not without problems, was the most sophisticated Reformation eucharistic doctrine but was largely lost by his heirs.

John Knox (c. 1505–1572) transmitted this tradition to Scotland as others brought it to France, the Netherlands, and the Germanic countries. Knox’s liturgy, renamed the Book of Common Order, flourished in Scotland for eighty years after 1564. Only then did the Scots yield to the Puritan effort to achieve national unity in worship through the Westminster Directory of 1645. This moved away from set forms to more permissive patterns, yet the Directory remained vaguely normative in later editions in America. On the American frontier, the newly emerging frontier patterns of worship tended to engulf the Reformed tradition.

A pattern of recovery slowly eventuated in America. Charles W. Baird (1828–1887) led the way in 1855 with a title many thought oxymoronic, Presbyterian Liturgies. German Reformed Christians experienced a recovery of both theology and liturgy in the so-called Mercersburg movement. Eventually, an American service book, the Book of Common Worship, followed in 1906, as did service books in the Kirk of Scotland. In recent years, Presbyterians have followed closely in the same post-Vatican II ecumenical mainstream as other traditions of the right and center, signified by the publication of their Supplemental Liturgical Resources.