The Lord's Supper Among Radical Protestants (1525–1900)

A cluster of believers' church movements offered an alternative view of Protestant approaches to the Lord's Supper. Although most of them espoused a nonsacramental, memorialist understanding of Christ's presence (more precisely, absence) in the bread and wine, they nonetheless developed intense forms of Communion piety. Much of their practice was inspired by an attempt to return to primitive Christian practice, which they were convinced had been memorialistic rather than sacramental.

Different approaches to the Lord's Table often reflect different understandings as to where and how Christ is present in its celebration. For medieval Catholicism, Christ's body and blood were directly present in the bread and wine. This took place through an act, transubstantiation, which priests alone could perform. The Reformation rejected so direct an identity, along with the priority it granted priests over the laity. Still, the largest Reformation traditions preserved Christ's presence in the elements in modified form. For Lutherans, Christ's body was "?in, with, and under?" the bread and wine. For Calvinists, the Holy Spirit imbued them with the risen Christ's spiritual reality. Only for Zwinglians, who emphasized the Supper's memorial character, was Christ perhaps absent from the elements themselves. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, brought increasing emphasis on the rational, over against the aesthetic and ceremonial, aspects of faith. Under the Enlightenment's influence, talk of supernatural presence in physical elements sounded increasingly superstitious. In nineteenth-century North America, faith was spread largely through popular evangelical movements whose informality often clashed with sacramentalism. In practice, if not in theory, many Protestants were experiencing something like Christ's real absence from the Table by early in this century. Yet there are numerous indications that Christ was experienced quite intensely during the Supper in movements outside the main streams. Since these movements, which came to clearest expression as free churches, formally affirmed Zwinglian memorialism and developed little explicit eucharistic theology, they often appear to affirm absence, too. Reexamined in light of today's revived liturgical interests, however, they offer unexpected insights into Christ's presence at the Table. Space permits examination of only a few and several surprising comparisons with current Catholic emphases. Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists For the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, the Communion bread and wine were simply bread and wine. The Lord's Table was a simple fellowship meal which memorialized Jesus' death. Yet Anabaptists denied Christ's physical presence in the elements in order to stress his deeper mystical presence throughout the whole celebration. The bread, said Melchior Hoffman, functions like the ring a bridegroom gives his bride; it conveys and enacts his desire to become one flesh, one spirit, one passion with her. As Christ gives himself for spiritual feeding, our nature is transformed by his, much as physical food is assimilated by ours. For Anabaptists, Christ's presence was also communal. As Jesus shares himself through bread and wine, we are sharing them with each other. This means pledging to live and die for each other, as Jesus did for us. The Table thus binds us together as one body (1 Cor. 10:17). Sometimes it was accompanied, as at the Last Supper, by footwashing, a symbol of mutual servanthood (John 13:1–20) and the kiss of peace. For true unity to reign, conflicts had to be settled before or during the celebration (Matt. 5:23–24; 18:15–17). Severe persecution soon drove Anabaptists into remote areas. On the other hand, Europe's non-Catholic population gathered into Lutheran and Reformed state churches. However these Protestant state churches' increasing formalism and rationalism left many spiritually dry. Within these churches the Pietist movement developed, stressing experiential and practical Christianity over formal ceremony and theology. The Pietist movement spawned two free churches that revitalized the Lord's Table. The Church of the Brethren (Dunkers) The German Baptist Brethren movement, originating among Radical Pietists in the German Palatinate in 1708, consciously placed itself in the Anabaptist stream of thought. Biblical study convinced them that the original Supper had been a three-part ceremony held in the evening and that it, therefore, must always be celebrated that way. Due to its complexity, this ceremony, collectively called the love feast, took place infrequently—often just once a year. Yet this rendered it more, rather than less, significant. Participants often traveled great distances for a weekend of fellowship and nurture. A prior deacon's visit or preparatory service sought to make everyone right with God and their fellows. (North American Mennonites also adopted some of these patterns.) Since about 1770, the order of the love feast, held as a Saturday event, has been as follows: First comes footwashing, symbolizing cleansing and commitment to mutual servanthood. It concludes with the kiss of peace or the right hand of fellowship. Second comes what Brethren call the Lord's Supper, a simple but adequate communal meal (others usually call it an agape meal), preceded by a simple grace. Third is Communion, the sharing of bread and wine. Brethren call it a memorial and a proclamation, and state that Christ is not literally in the elements. These affirmations, however, are rarely discussed. Emphasis falls on breaking pieces from flat loaves of unleavened bread and serving each other from a common cup (individual cups are now commonly used). The brethren then pledge to live in peace and unity, following the Cross until the end. Several decades later, Pietist impulses helped form the Moravian Church, so named because it incorporated remnants of the fifteenth-century Czech Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), whose eucharistic understandings resembled the Reformed. Later contacts with Reformed churches and American evangelicalism strengthened a memorialist emphasis. Initially, however, Moravians sought to be a Pietist fellowship within the Lutheran church, celebrating the Lord's Table in those congregations. Moravians continue, like Luther, to encourage taking "?this is my body?" at face value—yet adding that memorialism, consubstantiation, and even transubstantiation can be valid interpretations. At bottom, as among Anabaptists and the Brethren, the Lord's Table, for the Moravians, is to be experienced and lived out, not extensively thought about. Early Moravians prepared carefully for Communion, especially through speaking about their spiritual state to spiritual leaders—not dissimilar to the Brethren's visit of a deacon. Since they usually communicated in Lutheran churches, their own Communions were often simple, including singing, spontaneous prayers, the kiss of peace, and hymns of unity. Their distinctive communal lifestyle, however, gave rise to other services which eventually influenced the Lord's Table. Moravians developed love feasts, which recall the New Testament agape meals, as occasions for sharing food, songs, sometimes foot washing, and usually experiences. Often these were held in choirs, groups of one's peers which were especially close knit. Moravian hymnody and worship stressed the Lamb's blood and the body's unity, so that love feasts, though they could center on many themes, often emphasized these. When the Moravians became an independent church, Communion occurred every fourth Sunday. Love feasts came on preceding Saturdays, becoming preparatory services for Communion which included concerns such as the preparatory speaking. Though love feasts remained separate and nonsacramental occasions, the Moravians' frequent spiritual absorption in Jesus' sufferings and the body's unity at these occasions markedly shaped the overall experience of the Lord's Table. The Disciples of Christ The North American Restoration, or Disciples movement, arising in the early nineteenth century from Presbyterianism, stressed the Lord's Table as a memorial and a proclamation. Yet, Alexander Campbell's careful biblical investigations highlighted additional elements (including the mandate that the Table be celebrated every Sunday, the day of the Resurrection—a custom quite dissimilar to that of the Brethren). Campbell insisted that one whole loaf be used—that it actually be broken and that it be passed among the participants as one cup later would be. Without this decisive emphasis, the ceremony would be lost: the actual breaking and outpouring of Jesus' body and blood, and hence his radical self-giving; the direct, joint participation of each member in the benefits of Jesus' sacrifice; and the essential oneness of Jesus' body, and therefore of the church. These Communion acts led into prayers for fellow Christians, the poor, and evangelization; a collection for the needy; and sharing for mutual edification. In calling the Table a remembrance, Campbell meant the biblical anamnesis, which brings the realities concerned into the present. In calling for its weekly celebration, he stressed our need for regular nourishment from the Table. Commonalities Though the four above traditions differ, each regards the Lord's Table as a series of acts in which the whole community participates. If Christ does not reside directly in the elements, this hardly means that he is not really present. Those who concentrate on the elements (or the words of institution or the individual's faith alone) are looking in the wrong places. For Christ is surely present among the participants—present in the breaking, sharing, eating, drinking, and mutual pledging. Christ is personally and actively present: self-bestowing, cleansing, energizing, challenging, healing, and uniting. Strikingly similar emphases are heard among some recent Catholic theologians. Transubstantiation, they argue, misconstrued Christ's Real Presence as a presence in particular objects. Medieval Catholicism, they continue, turned the Eucharist into a priestly act, distant from the worshiping congregation. However, Christ is present throughout worship, among all the participants, bestowing himself from the beginning, and not only present when the elements are raised. Many of these Catholic theologians call Jesus' presence in the elements transignification. They point out that when an object (e.g., a ring) takes on a unique function in a relationship (e.g., a marriage), this object can validly be called something else (e.g., the bridegroom's heart or self) without physically changing. The object's signification alters radically, though its material substance remains the same. The sixteenth-century Anabaptist Melchior Hoffman, comparing Communion bread with a wedding ring, noted that it functioned like this. Due to formalism, rationalism, and their own Zwinglian memorialism, the free churches discussed here, similar to many Protestants, often experience Christ's eucharistic absence. Liturgical renewal among more sacramental churches, however, has aroused the free churches to be concerned about this absence. These theologically articulate groups sometimes suggest that Christ might be present amid the actions and the participants around the Table—the very sort of presence often richly experienced in these free-church traditions.