495 - Freedom or Order? The Eucharistic Liturgy in English Congregationalism 1645-1980.

Freedom or Order? The Eucharistic Liturgy
in English Congregationalism 1645-1980.
By Bryan D. Spinks
Allison Parks, Pa., Pickwick Publications, 1984. 290 pp. $22.50.

This is an intriguing, even a surprising book on three accounts. First, this study of liturgical and often unstructured worship ways of English Congregational Churches is written by an Anglican priest who is chaplain of Churchill College, Cambridge University and the Secretary of the English Society of Liturgical Studies. In view of the past adversarial relationships between the Church of England and the English Free or Dissenting Churches (Baptist, Congregational, and Methodist) this is surprising.

Furthermore, its author has completed a companion volume whose theme is even more remote from liturgical Anglicanism. This was recently published in the Bibliotheca "Ephemerides Liturgicae" Subsidia Series in Rome. Its title is: From the Lord and "the best" Reformed Churches, with the sub-title, A Study of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the English Puritan and Separatist Traditions, 1550-1633.

The explanation for the timeliness of this comprehensive study is another surprise. In the providence of God the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches have approximated the Reformed Churches in realizing that variety and flexibility in public worship are as much gifts of the Holy Spirit as decency and order, and that unity does not require a formulaic uniformity and rigidity such as were presupposed by Tridentine worship and the Book of Common Prayer until its 1980 Alternative Order.

The title of Bryan Spinks's book highlights one major historical issue that divided Christendom by asking whether Divine worship is better served by free (or better "conceived") prayers of a single minister than by the ordered product of a committee officially appointed by a denomination. But the title is a historical oversimplification. The main issue for the Puritans of Presbyterian and Independent persuasions who combined to produce the first manual for Protestant ministers, The Westminster Directory, was to provide "Ordinances" (note the imperative implicit in the noun) faithful to the Gospel, and to refuse such

496 - Freedom or Order? The Eucharistic Liturgy in English Congregationalism 1645-1980.

"idolatrous" ceremonies not required by Scripture, as kneeling for reception of the Lord's Supper (implying transubstantiation), the signing of the cross in baptism, and the use of the ring in marriage, all of which although supposedly "adiaphora" of indifferent ceremonies were demanded in the Book of Common Prayer. The Presbyterian advocates of a "purified" worship, in common with other Reformed Churches, did not object to a liturgy as such, provided there was also a place for supplementary free prayer as in Calvin's Genevan liturgy, itself the parent of John Knox's Genevan Service Book and its successors, the Scottish Books of Common Order. The Independent Puritans (future Congregationalists) approved of conceived prayer for two reasons other than a wish for liberty. They believed that Romans 8:26 demanded it as a holy ordinance, and they believed that the Lord's Prayer was a pattern for prayer, not a prescribed form of prayer.

Apart from the sub-title and the emphasis given to this modern formulation in the earlier sections of the book, a few errata in printing, and some bibliographical updating necessary, I find this a most impressive scholarly achievement.

This study has notable chapters on the Westminster Directory where incidentally it corrects both E. C. Ratcliff and myself for equating the prayer for the Holy Spirit in the Lord's Supper order with an epiklesis of the Eastern Orthodox type. Richard Baxter's The Reformed Liturgy possibly warrants another chapter even if no Congregationalist took part in the Savoy Conference between Anglicans and Presbyterians. Another chapter deals with the obscure period between 1658 and 1800, and yet another with nineteenth century Congregational worship.

While John Hunter's Devotional Services for Public Worship deserves a chapter for its many editions and impact, W. E. Orchard's Divine Service was more of a succés de scandale on the part of a Presbyterian minister and future Catholic priest celebrating a quasiTridentine Mass in the only Congregational Church in the West End of London, and receives unwarranted attention.

Ensuing chapters analyze the official Congregational Union books of 1920 (to which P. T. Forsyth contributed) and 1936; such worship books as were produced between l909 and 1930 by individuals; and the Neo-Orthodox or "Genevan" liturgies of 1949-1969.

The four final chapters bring the story up to the present, including an analysis of "A United Reform Eucharist," which reached definitive form in A Book of Services, 1980, and is the service book of the United Reformed Church in England in which ex-Presbyterians and exCongregationalists are now united. Last of all are three pithy pages of "Concluding Observations and Remarks" and an extensive bibliography of nineteen pages.

For such objectivity and fairness in scholarship and ecumenical dedication as are amply exhibited in this learned volume one can only feel respect for the author and his publisher, Dr. Dikran Hadidian of

498 - Freedom or Order? The Eucharistic Liturgy in English Congregationalism 1645-1980.

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, whose Dickensian alias is "Pickwick."

Horton Davies
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey