LITURGICAL MOVEMENT, II: ANGLICAN AND PROTESTANT

Since the Reformation, the Anglican and Lutheran traditions have used and cherished liturgies that are essentially revisions of medieval Latin rites. In the Anglican churches these liturgies have always been officially and canonically prescribed; in the Lutheran churches, they have been accepted as models of proper liturgical order, but greater freedom has been allowed to local or regional churches in adapting them to particular times and circumstances. Both the Anglican and the Lutheran liturgies preserve the ancient structures of the sacramental rites—including the traditional propers of collects and readings at the Eucharist, the structure of Morning and Evening Prayer, and the celebration of the principal feasts and seasons of the liturgical year. They have also continued many of the external ceremonies and ornaments and arrangements of liturgical space that existed prior to the Reformation. Thanks to the liturgical renewal shared by all the mainline Protestant churches, and in particular, to a recovery of patristic sources, one finds other churches,e.g. those of the Reformed (Calvinistic) tradition; Methodists etc.; calling for a more frequent celebration of the Eucharist with a ritual structure (use of liturgical vesture etc.) that had largely been unknown in those churches prior to the renewal.

Led by liturgical scholars like John M. Neale, J. Wickham Legg, Walter H. Frere, and F. E. Brightman in Britain and Paul Drews, Julian Smend, and Georg Rietschel in Germany, the Liturgical Movement in Protestantism and Anglicanism focused on the same conditions and concerns that affected the affected the beginnings of liturgical renewal in Catholicism: a desire to recover the ancient liturgical tradition and heritage of the Church.

Anglican Communion. The revival of liturgical interest within Anglicanism must be viewed in light of the growth of the oxford movement with its own emphasis on the sacraments; an increased frequency in the celebration of the Eucharist; an increase in ceremonial; and a widespread favor for Gothic architecture, Gregorian chant, and popular hymnody that relied heavily on Latin and Eastern sources. The revision of the book of common prayer—the first time since the Reformation— grew within such a milieu, first with the American revision in 1892, then with revisions in Scotland, Canada, England, South Africa, and the United States in the 1920s. Interestingly, one of the leading British Anglican pioneers of the 1930s, A. Gabriel Hebert, attributed his own liturgical influence to the Roman Catholic Benedictine monks at Maria Laach in Germany.

Episcopal Church. The Liturgical Movement in the episcopal church in the United States came into its own in 1946 with the Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission. Founded by John Patterson (+1988), Rector of Grace Church, Madison, Wisconsin, in collaboration with Massey Shepherd, Samuel E. West, and John H. Keene, Episcopal priests in the movement used their parishes as testing ground for liturgical experimentation and renewal. The fundamental goal of the movement was the restoration of Sunday Eucharist as normative for Episcopal parishes, with congregational participation that included an offertory procession; the gospel proclaimed in the midst of the assembly; liturgical music that invited participation and no choir procession. Public celebrations of Morning and Evening Prayer were restored and baptisms, marriages, and funerals again became public events. Like its Catholic counterpart, Associated Parishes promoted a greater unity between liturgy and social justice. Through the publishing of pamphlets and annual conferences, this organization promoted a renewed liturgy within the Episcopal Church, paving the way for the 1979 revised Book of Common Prayer. It also served as a catalyst for ecumenical efforts by inviting Catholic speakers and others to participate in their liturgical weeks. In recent years, the Associated Parishes Movement expanded its activities to include the restoration of the catechumenate and the diaconate, as well as the defense and promotion of inclusive language within worship. Associated Parishes' quarterly journal "Open," has assisted its efforts.

Lutheran Churches. A similar development can be seen within the Lutheran movement, with its recovery of liturgical orders inspired by the Kirchenordnungen of the Reformation era as a reaction against attempts to downplay those orders in the 18th and early 19th centuries, thanks to Pietism and rationalism. Wilhelm Loehe (1808–72) and Theodor Kliefoth (1810–95) led the revival. Loehe's writings influenced those in the United States who produced the 1888 Common Service (revised in 1917). By the beginning of the 20th century, Lutherans on both sides of the Atlantic were already forming societies and institutes for the study and reform of liturgy, e.g., the Lutheran Liturgical Association (1907); the Hochkirchliche Vereinigung, founded by Friedrich Heiler (1919); the Berneuchen Circle (1923), from which came the Michaelsbruderschaft (1931) and the Alpirscbacher Circle (1933). Similar societies have emerged in Scandinavia. In the United States, Lutheran liturgical renewal took shape in the 1950s, e.g. with altars being turned toward the people for the Eucharistic celebration. The revised Lutheran Book of Worship, (1978) bears testimony to years of fruitful pioneering in Lutheran circles. More recently, the text, With One Voice: A Lutheran Resource for Worship (Minneapolis 1995) brings the renewal to full stature.

Reformed Churches. The Reformed (Calvinistic) churches experienced their own liturgical renewal, beginning in the 1840s and 1850s, with the Liturgical Movement of the German Reformed Church in the United States led by Philip Schaaf (+1893) and John Williamson Nevin (+1886) at the seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. In 1865, the Church Service Society was founded in the Church of Scotland. Its Euchologion (many editions since 1867) was quite influential, culminating in the 1928 Book of Common Order (revised 1940). Its counterpart among American Presbyterians was the Book of Common Worship (1905; revised 1931, 1946). The recently revised edition of 1993 is consistent with the liturgical structure found in the United Church of Christ's 1986 Book of Common Worship, the United Methodists' 1992 Book of Worship, and the revised service books of the other churches.

Characteristics. The recovery of traditional liturgical structures in the churches separated at the Reformation era was matched during the 20th century by widespread adoption within the "free" Protestant churches of more formal rituals and ceremonials borrowed or adopted from the ancient and classical rites. Most of the major Protestant denominations had official worship commissions responsible for the revision and production of service books and hymnals. As Sunday celebrations of the Eucharist became more frequent, so, too, was the observance of traditional feasts and liturgical seasons (e.g., the celebration of Ash Wednesdays with the imposition of ashes). Standards of liturgical music were greatly improved. The prejudice against formalized worship significantly diminished.

The contribution of biblical scholarship to the Liturgical Movement was significant in the Protestant liturgical renewal as well as regarding ecumenical liturgical collaboration. By 2000 there was much greater agreement among Catholic and Protestant biblical and liturgical scholars on the meaning of worship in the Christian Scriptures and the Patristic period than ever before. Influential Protestant and Anglican leaders included Hans Lietzmann, Joachim Jeremias, Oscar Cullman, Gregory dix, and Charles H. Dodd. Research produced consensus in two significant areas: 1) the inseparable relationship between word and sacrament as the normative pattern of Christian worship; and 2) the eschatological understanding of sacraments in the context of the Christian scriptures.

Liturgical societies formed in most of the Protestant and Anglican churches in Europe and North America. A long list of Protestant and Anglican liturgical leaders had significant influence on the liturgical reforms of their respective churches, among them Massey Shepherd, Thomas Talley, Geoffrey Wainright, Kenneth Stevenson, Brian Spinks, Paul Bradshaw, James White, Don Saliers, Hoyt Hickman, S. Anita Stauffer, Gordon Lathrop, Frank Senn, and Horace Allen.

Bibliography: r. k. fenwick and b. d. spinks, Worship in Transition: Highlights of the Liturgical Movement (Edinburgh 1995). d. gray, Earth and Altar (Norwich 1986). a. g. hebert, Liturgy and Society (London 1935). m. h. shepherd, "The Liturgical Movement in American Protestantism," Yearbook of Liturgical Studies 3 (1962) 35–61. m. j. taylor, The Protestant Liturgical Renewal (Westminster, Maryland 1963). j. f. white, Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition (Louisville 1989).

[m. h. shepherd jr./

k. f. pecklers]