Sacred Actions In The Protestant Churches After The Reformation

The emphasis on words and the Word of God in Reformation theologies and the adoption of a fundamentally scholastic method by Protestants developed, under the impact of the Enlightenment, into modern Protestant rationalism. But Protestant scholasticism and rationalism provoked experience-based responses: Pietism (seventeenth century), Methodism and revivalism (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries), and a variety of efforts at worship renewal (nineteenth century).

Three major historical currents have shaped the Protestant understanding and practice of worship during the modern period: Pietism, Rationalism, and Restorationism. The rationalism of the Enlightenment largely determined the way in which Protestant churches elevated preaching and teaching over the actions of liturgy and sacrament. The spoken word was the preferred means for conveying religious concepts and moral instruction in the context of worship. Pietism and recurring movements of spiritual awakening, revival, and renewal countered the dominance of rationalist religion with emphasis on religious experience and spiritual regeneration. Preaching and Bible study, free prayer and hymn singing, rather than the outward actions of worship, however, were the principal means for arousing the religious affections. The rationalist religion of the head and the pietist religion of the heart both preferred the sermonic appeal to the individual over the liturgical and sacramental actions of corporate worship, and together they promoted the religious individualism that has pervaded the modern church and its worship. In the nineteenth century, there arose among Protestants as well as Roman Catholics a number of movements with the aim to renew the church as a community and to restore liturgical and sacramental worship according to historic patterns. These Restorationist movements were the precursors of the modern liturgical movement, which has been reshaping the worship of many Protestant traditions in the present century. As a result of these historical influences, contemporary Protestant churches are heir to competing tendencies—Pietist, Rationalist, and Restorationist—in their approach to the actions of worship. Pietism Pietism was a reaction in church life and theology to the sometimes stagnant orthodoxy and scholasticism of the post-Reformation period. Thus it originated prior to the modern period, but it had long-lasting effects upon worship throughout the era issuing from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Lutheran Pietism in Germany, under the leadership of Philipp Spener (1635–1705) and August Francke (1663–1727), was characterized by the gathering of small groups of Christians for the nurture of personal piety through devotional study of the Bible and the exercise of spiritual and moral discipline. The reform of public worship was not an immediate concern, but the increasing emphasis on conversion and personal piety led to a disregard for the formal structures of common worship. Among the Reformed, at first in the Netherlands and later in Germany, pietist practices had direct impact on the liturgy. Jean de Labadie (1610–1674) and his followers, for example, advocated free prayer and attacked the fixed prayers of standard Reformed liturgies as the pretense of the unconverted. Among Scotch Presbyterians, the dissolution of formal liturgical worship came about under the influence of English Puritanism. After the failure of the Puritans to establish permanently the principle of liturgical freedom in the Church of England itself, there developed an evangelical party in the church with convictions similar to those of the continental Pietists. In general, Pietist religion gave impetus to a devotional style of worship emphasizing preaching, prayer, and hymn singing and showed a lack of interest in the outward actions of liturgy and sacrament. It exalted the experience of conversion over baptism, spiritual discipline and worthiness over frequent participation in Communion, and lengthy free prayer over the structured liturgical prayer. Unwittingly, Pietism prepared the way for Rationalism and its assault upon the actions of historic Christian worship. Rationalism The eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with its rationalist critique of religious belief and practice, ushered in the modern period. The Reformation traditions had carried out various liturgical reforms based upon a theology of the Word and the authority of the Scriptures, but the fundamental practices of historic Christian worship were nonetheless passed on to succeeding generations. The rationalism of the Enlightenment subjected worship to a far more radical critique based upon the powers of human reason. The result was a rupture in the liturgical tradition arguably deeper than that of the Reformation itself. Whereas the Reformation critique of sacred action had reformed the inherited practice of worship, the Enlightenment critique dismissed the actions of worship as largely irrelevant to the essentially rational and moral purposes of religion. Worship was no longer an assembly for acts of communion with God, but rather a stage for the communication of ideas about God and the good. The forces of Rationalism effectively eliminated what remained of a sacramental piety that valued baptism and the Lord's Supper as communal enactments of God's relation to humankind, but sacramental practice did not completely disappear. A marked decline in the frequency of Eucharistic celebration and participation in Communion are apparent in every tradition. Although far from central to religious faith, the sacraments were retained in obedience to the literal command of God and for their value as symbolic memorials to Christ and aids to virtuous living. Rationalist religion eliminated useless ceremonial action in favor of formal acts of speech that instructed the mind, whether in sermon or in prayer. Much of the service was regularly conducted from an elevated pulpit, and the focus fell on preaching that communicated religious and moral ideas. The formality of fixed liturgical forms was preferred to the excessive enthusiasm of free prayer. Indeed, liturgical proposals and collections of rites proliferated, most of it captive to the new theology and spirit of Rationalism. See for example the proposals of Samuel Clark (1675–1729) to reform The Book of Common Prayer, Jean Alphonse Turretin's (1671–1737) liturgy for the Reformed church in Geneva, and the many privately produced Agenden among German Lutherans. At the same time, a more churchly direction appeared in the liturgical work of the Reformed pastor, Jean Frederic Ostervald (1663–1747) at Neuchatel, Switzerland, and that of the Erlangen professor and Lutheran church leader, Georg Friedrich Seiler (1733–1807). Moravians, Methodists, and Revivalism The Pietistic impulse in worship continued throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, manifesting itself in many contexts, including the worship of the Moravian Brethren, the Methodist movement, and the outbreaks of religious awakening and revival. The Moravian Brethren, who established themselves at Herrnhut under the leadership of the Lutheran Pietist leader, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), developed a communitarian Pietism that placed great stress on worship in small groups and in common. The gatherings of this warm fellowship were very devotional and noteworthy for their music and hymnody. Their worship often resonated with ancient actions—love feasts, foot washings, vigils, and litanies—in a new setting that nurtured a deep piety of personal communion with the crucified Savior. The Anglican priest and Methodist leader John Wesley (1703–1791) was himself greatly influenced by the Pietism of the Moravian Brethren, and he introduced a number of Moravian practices, including love feasts, watch nights (vigils), and the informal worship of small groups to nurture religious experience. He also devised an annual act of covenant renewal. Preaching services with free prayer and an abundance of hymns were the essentials of Methodist worship, and field preaching was adopted as a means for reaching the unchurched masses. Against the prevailing tendencies of the Enlightenment, Wesley also attempted to restore the practice of sacramental worship. He held to an understanding of the Lord's Supper as a means of grace and encouraged frequent participation in Communion. Wesley's traditional concern for the fundamental actions of worship is evident in his Sunday Service for Methodists of North America (1784), a revision of The Book of Common Prayer. In America, Methodists quickly abandoned Wesley's regard for liturgy and sacrament in favor of simple services of preaching, free prayer, and hymnody in conformity with the sensibilities of the American frontier. Rooted in the religious awakenings of the eighteenth century, Revivalism established a distinctive practice of worship on the nineteenth-century American frontier. In contrast to the historic practices of Christian worship fashioned for a community of the converted, revivalist religion aimed at the unconverted. The camp meetings of the frontier (derived from the practice of sacramental seasons among Scottish Presbyterians) were the occasion for evangelistic preaching, free prayer, and song extending over several days and concluding with the baptism of new converts and the Lord's Supper. The sacraments had an important place in revivalist religion, but they were understood from a rationalist perspective as human acts of commitment and remembrance that prompted upright behavior. New practices involving the mourner's bench or anxious seat, the altar call, and emotional behavior all served the principal aim of worship: to produce repentance and conversion. Revivalist patterns affected the worship of most Protestant churches in America (including the black churches), particularly Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and the new denominations of the frontier, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Churches of Christ. Charles G. Finney (1792–1875) effectively promoted these new measures with the argument that they worked. Such liturgical pragmatism became a powerful force shaping Protestant worship in America. Restorationism In the nineteenth century, there arose a number of movements seeking to restore the common life of the church, including its worship, according to historic models. Under the influence of Romanticism and in the midst of the social dislocation and political ferment of the Industrial age, these Restorationist movements acted against the rationalistic ethos dominating the churches and their worship and equally against the inwardness of Pietistic religion. In England, Anglo-Catholics fostered the liturgical revival. Edward B. Pusey (1800–1882), a leader in the Oxford Movement, advocated the restoration of eucharistic worship and the use of medieval ceremonial in the parish churches that came under his influence. John Mason Neale (1818–1866) wrote hymns based on Greek and Latin texts and founded the Cambridge Camden Society to further both ritual concerns and the Gothic revival in church architecture. American Episcopalians also felt the influence of Anglo-Catholic liturgical practice. In Germany, interest in liturgical and sacramental worship accompanied the rise of Lutheran confessionalism. From his parish in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872) promoted a recovery of the evangelical Mass and a full range of liturgical concerns based upon his study of earlier Lutheran practice and the witness of the early church. Through his one Agende and the work of his missionaries among German immigrants, Löhe's liturgical ideas spread to North America. Theodor Kliefoth (1810–1895) advanced similar liturgical interests in the Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg. In Denmark, Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) inspired a renewal of sacramental worship. Out of Scottish Presbyterianism came the Catholic Apostolic Church, with its elaborate ceremonial and eucharistic liturgy based upon patristic sources. Among the German Reformed in America, the Mercersburg theology of John W. Nevin (1803–1886) and Philip Schaff (1819–1893) encouraged a renewal of sacramental life and produced a liturgy that reflected both their Catholic interests and their adherence to the Reformation. The common concern of these Restorationist movements for the communal character of the church in contrast to the religious individualism of both Rationalist and Pietist religion generated serious attention to liturgical and sacramental action. Preaching was not forsaken, but the Eucharist gained a central place in the theology and practice of worship. The sacraments in the context of worship were understood as a locus of divine action and a means of communion with God. The appreciation for ritual and ceremony corresponded to a heightened concern for the visibility of the church. Whether they appealed to the early church, to the Middle Ages, or to more conservative reforms at the time of the Reformation, the movements for ecclesial restoration shared a common conviction: The restored actions of worship constituted a relation to the historic Christian community that would revitalize the church's identity in the modern world.