Knox

History of Psalmody

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Whereas Martin Luther would admit any suitable text to be sung in worship unless it was unbiblical, John Calvin would allow only those texts which came from Scripture. Calvin commissioned poets to write metrical settings of the Psalms for the congregations in Strassburg and Geneva. Calvinist churches throughout Europe developed large repertories of psalmody, especially churches in England and Scotland.

By about 1532 the French court poet Clement Marot (c. 1497–1544) had already translated some of the Psalms into French verse. These translations were shared at court and sung by an ever increasing circle of admirers. John Calvin selected twelve of Marot’s metrical translations along with five of his own to be printed in his first Psalter, the Aulcunes Pseaulmes et Cantiques Mys En Chant. This was published in Strassburg in 1539. After Marot’s death, the work of translation was continued with the expert aid of Theodore Beza (1519–1605), who moved to Geneva in 1547. A complete Psalter of 150 translations was published in Paris in 1562. It had 125 tunes, 70 of which were composed by Louis Bourgeois (c. 1510–1561), a capable musician and music editor. Today, his best-known tune is old hundredth, which is now sung to the text “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” and commonly known in many churches as the “Doxology.” This 1562 Genevan Psalter was widely accepted and often imitated in the 225 similar publications that appeared within the following one hundred years.

In England, the first Protestant hymnal was Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalms and Spiritual Songes Drawn Out of the Holy Scripture (c. 1539). However, this book, with its translations of German chorales, was prohibited by Henry VIII. Thus, the adoption of chorale singing in England was thwarted, while the practice of psalm-singing found acceptance. At first, the metrical psalms of Henry VIII’s wardrobe attendant, Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549), gained the king’s favor. After Sternhold’s death, his disciple, John Hopkins (d. 1570), carried on the work. In 1547, the first edition of nineteen psalms was printed. This was followed by an edition with music in 1556. Intended to be sung to familiar ballad tunes of the day, most of the texts were written in a common meter of two or four lines of fourteen syllables each (8686 or 8686 doubled).

Eventually, the complete Psalter, published in 1562 as The Whole Book of Psalms, came to be known as the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter. At least one edition or revision appeared each year for the next one hundred years, the first harmonized version being the one by John Day (1563), with sixty-five harmonized tunes.

The Sternhold and Hopkins series was replaced by A New Version of the Psalms of David by the poets Nahum Tate and Nicolas Brady. The former was the Poet Laureate to William III, and the latter was a Royal Chaplain. The New Version was published in 1696 and became, in spite of some fierce opposition, a tremendously influential work over a period of more than one hundred years.

Other English and Scottish Psalters

A number of publications retained the metrical psalms of the older Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter with different music. The 1579 edition by William Damon contained a large number of common meter (8686) tunes as well as the short meter (6686) tune, Southwell, often used for the text, “Lord Jesus Think on Me.” Among the composers represented in Thomas Este’s musical edition were the leading composers John Dowland, John Farmer, and Giles Fornaby. This volume also included George Kirbye’s harmonization of the familiar tune, Winchester old, sung today with the Nahum Tate text, “While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night.” An even more extensive collection of tunes, sung throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and the Continent, was Thomas Ravenscroft’s 1621 The Whole Book of Psalms. From this book, modern hymnbook editors have selected the popular tune, Dundee, and placed it with William Cowper’s profound text, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”

After John Knox returned from Geneva in 1559, he gave oversight to the publication of the Scottish Psalter in 1564. This particular Psalter had the distinction of including more French psalm tunes than any of the English Psalters. By the time the 1615 Scottish Psalter came into print, the practice of including psalm tunes without a designation to any specific psalm was accepted. This was in contrast to the German custom of assigning one “proper” tune to each text. Thus, the English and Scottish Psalters allowed any given “common” tune to be used with many different texts in the same meter. In the 1635 Scottish Psalter more tunes were provided by Scottish musicians. Finally, the authorized 1650 Scottish Psalter appeared without any music. It introduced the most beloved of all English metrical psalms, the twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want.”

Reformed Worship in the Reformation Era

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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.

Scottish Reformation

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In Scotland prior to the Reformation immoral conduct among the clergy was worse than in most countries. In time they provoked a reaction in Scotland as elsewhere. Protestant influences began to seep through from the Continent by way of trade routes and the universities. Books and pamphlets, ballads and plays, teaching and preaching, had each sown seeds of religious revolt. Parliamentary prohibitions of Protestant literature were ineffective. Patrick Hamilton, a university-bred Scotch noble, gave his life for the faith. George Wishart was another convert who preached until he too was seized, tried, and burned. A companion of Wishart on his preaching tours was John Knox. Born in Haddington, Scotland, and educated at the University of Glasgow, Knox was originally a Roman Catholic priest. In 1543 he converted to Protestantism and spread the message of the Reformation until his capture by the French in 1547 when they attacked Saint Andrews. He was forced to labor in a French galley for almost two years until Edward VI, the king of England, secured his release. He moved to England and became the royal chaplain in 1551. When Catholic Queen Mary took the throne in 1553 he fled to Frankfurt and later to Geneva. Here he met Calvin and began studying his doctrines. He preached widely throughout Europe for a number of years until his return to Scotland in 1559. He denounced the Catholic Church and Scotland’s Catholic regent, Mary of Guise. He supported the Protestant revolt against the regency, a hopeless cause until England’s Elizabeth I, who had succeeded her half-sister Mary, agreed to support them. After the death of Mary of Guise, the Protestants took control of the Scottish government, and Knox’s Confession of Faith was adopted by the Parliament. Control was lost briefly upon the return of yet another Catholic Mary, Mary Stuart, who reigned from 1560 to 1567. She had Knox arrested for treason, although he was later acquitted. He spent his remaining years after Mary’s death preaching and writing.

Impact: From Scotland, Calvinism was spread around the world through aggressive mission activities.

Knox, John

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John Knox (c. 1514-1572) was born in Haddington, Scotland and educated at the University of Glasgow. He was originally a Roman Catholic priest. In 1543 he converted to Protestantism due, primarily, to the preaching of the reformer George Wishart. Although Wishart was eventually executed for heresy, Knox continued preaching until his capture by the French in 1547 when they attacked Saint Andrews. He was forced to labor in a French galley for almost two years until Edward VI, the king of England, secured his release. He moved to England and became the royal chaplain in 1551. When Catholic Queen Mary took the throne in 1553 he fled to Frankfurt and later to Geneva. Here he met Calvin and began studying his doctrines. He preached widely throughout Europe for a number of years until his return to Scotland in 1559. He denounced the Catholic Church and Scotland’s Catholic regent, Mary of Guise. He supported the Protestant revolt against the regency, a hopeless cause until England’s Elizabeth I, who had succeeded her half-sister Mary, agreed to support them. After the death of Mary of Guise, the Protestants took control of the Scottish government and Knox’s Confession of Faith was adopted by the Parliament. Control was lost briefly upon the return of yet another Catholic Mary, Mary Stuart, who reigned from 1560 to 1567. She had Knox arrested for treason, although he was later acquitted. He spent his remaining years after Mary’s death preaching and writing. He was the father of the Scottish Reformation and the architect of various branches of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches that exist today.

Sunday Worship in Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) Churches

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Several historic streams have shaped the worship of the relatively young Reformed denomination known as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). John Knox, father of Presbyterianism, came under the influence of John Calvin at Geneva and later wrote a liturgy known as “The Form of Prayer” (1556). Knox’s spiritual descendants in the next century met at Westminster Abbey in London to produce the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, which form the theological basis for the PCA, as well as the Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God (1645). This directory included general rubrics and principles rather than a set liturgy. In 1661, however, Richard Baxter did produce a widely used liturgy known as the Savoy Liturgy. Out of these influences came the Book of Common Worship (1906, 1932, 1946), which has set the stage for modern American Presbyterian worship.

Historic Characteristics

One general characteristic of Presbyterian worship has been adherence to the rubric provision method in contrast both to free liturgy and to a prescribed liturgy such as that of The Book of Common Prayer. This approach has provided some latitude for contemporary attempts at renewal. The Westminster Directory is condensed and updated in the PCA’s Directory for the Worship of God, which claims to be “an approved guide and should be taken seriously as the mind of the Church agreeable to the Standards. However, it does not have the force of law and is not to be considered obligatory in all its parts.” Consequently one finds great variety in the worship of PCA churches within the accepted framework of Reformed covenantal theology.

A related characteristic has been adherence to the regulative principle of worship. This principle is found in chapter 21 of the Westminster Confession summarized in the Directory of Worship as follows: “Since the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the principles of public worship must be derived from the Bible, and from no other source. The Scriptures forbid the worshipping of God by images, or in any other way not appointed in his Word, and requires the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in His Word (S.C. 51, 50)” (Directory 47.1). Whereas church leaders can agree in principle that the elements of worship services must have biblical warrant, in practice there is difference of opinion as to how this principle should be implemented.

Thus in a few PCA churches one can find liturgical dance, whereas most would strongly reject such a practice. Some churches make abundant use of colorful, symbolic liturgical banners in the sanctuary, whereas other sanctuaries reflect more Puritan and Zwinglian visual simplicity. Nevertheless the regulative principle, though ignored and forgotten in some quarters, serves as a lodestar to guide attempts at liturgical renewal in the PCA.

Presbyterian worship traditionally has been characterized as emphasizing the verbal rather than the visual. Thus some have considered it very cerebral, appealing to literate congregations served by highly educated clergy. Some renewal efforts have attempted to recover more balance with activities designed to appeal to the emotional side of the worshipers.

Another characteristic has been a confessional element in the liturgy. This arises out of the Reformed theological emphasis on human depravity and unworthiness in the presence of a transcendent, holy God. Thus prayers of confession have formed an important part of traditional Presbyterian liturgy.

Perhaps the strongest characteristic of this Reformation denomination has been an emphasis on the preaching of the Word as central in the liturgy. This emphasis has been seen architecturally in the common use of a pulpit as the visual focal point at the center of the chancel. Historically these pulpits were large in size and elaborate in style. Prescribed lectionaries were replaced by the lectio continua method of Calvin and Knox, in which consecutive passages of Scripture were read and preached from as the dominant component of the worship service. The PCA has emphasized a seminary educated clergy equipped to undertake preaching, which is an ordinance of God. “Preaching requires much study, meditation, and prayer, and ministers should prepare their sermons with care, and not indulge themselves in loose, extemporary harangues, nor serve God with that which costs them naught” (Directory 53.5).

Current Trends

Diversity increasingly marks worship in the more than one thousand churches constituting the PCA. Worship styles range from the more traditional televised services of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, pastored by D. James Kennedy, to the more innovative services of several of the New Life Presbyterian churches and the New City Fellowship of Chattanooga. Nevertheless several general trends can be discerned.

Greater musical variety, in terms of style and range of instruments used, is evident across the country. The Reformed heritage, which once emphasized singing of Psalms exclusively, has broadened even beyond hymns and gospel songs to include contemporary choruses, praise songs, and Scripture songs. Some churches have introduced a time of praise singing for the first five or ten minutes of the service whereas others have incorporated such music into the service itself in deference to the changing preferences of the younger generations of parishioners. This has caused tensions in some congregations. Even the denomination’s Trinity Hymnal (Philadelphia: Great Commission Publications; the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) in its 1990 edition includes numerous Scripture songs and contemporary praise choruses, some with guitar chords. The denomination’s Christian Education and Publications department sponsors an annual national conference on “Music in Worship” to help raise church leaders’ level of music competence.

Another trend is increased congregational participation in worship services. This includes open sharing and participatory prayer by worshipers, as well as increased use of lay people in leading services. Some PCA congregations use laity to assist the pastor as worship service planners.

The question of the participation of children in Communion has received considerable recent attention. Whereas the PCA is committed confessionally to baptism of the covenant children of believing parents, children have generally not partaken of Communion until they have come to understand the gospel and are admitted by the Session (elders) to the Lord’s Supper, having made a public profession of their faith. Whereas this age can’t be fixed it has traditionally been thought to be at least junior-high age. A study committee of the denomination explored this issue in recent years with a minority report arguing for pedo-Communion. The majority report concluded Communion should be open only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves (1 Cor. 11:26–27).

Perhaps the most dominant trend in recent years in the PCA is increasing homogenization with evangelical Protestantism. The result is fewer denominational distinctives that distinguish a PCA worship service from that of any other evangelical church. Several factors may account for this. Rapid church growth, including a concerted effort to plant new churches, contributes to a blurring of distinctives. The PCA was organized in 1973 with 240 churches and by 1990 had over 1000 churches. For several years in the 1980s it was the fastest growing denomination in the United States. This growth, added to the mobility of parishioners, makes for increasing pluralism as people from many denominational backgrounds find their way into PCA churches with a few having had a Presbyterian background. This is accompanied by a lack of understanding of the historic distinctives of Presbyterianism on the part of the average worshiper.

More influential than historical precedents are cultural influences including religious radio and television. Worshipers from many denominations are exposed to the same contemporary Christian music and watch some of the same televangelists and religious programming. Parishioners bring these influences with them into their church worship services. On top of this one finds little emphasis on worship in the curricula of seminaries that train ministers for the PCA. Most of these seminaries offer only one liturgical course, and that often an elective.

All this contributes to the loss of denominational distinctives. It is a trend that is likely to continue into the next century as coming generations interact with cultural influences in seeking worship forms that enable parishioners to glorify God and enjoy him forever.