Presbyterian Worship in America
Top rate scholarship; although the field is admittedly scarce. Triumphalist in tone; it nonetheless is frank.
Taken at face value, the main current of American Presbyterian worship has traded, what the author calls "puritanical" or what conservatives call " the regulative principle of worship" (anything explicitly described as normative for worship as per the scriptures only), for a functional normative principle of worship (anything not explicitly forbidden in scripture as normative for worship). The problems that facilitated this were not imagined nor exaggerated. The solutions were not always purely pragmatic but theologized.
It seemed the main current of the church was more influenced by its immediate problems and found its own articulation through the influence of theological movements outside of its own scope (mainly high churchism). The traditional insistence on religious liberty and purity of worship grounded upon scripture morphed into an American individualism that seemingly, in the pursuit to retrace its own roots and ecclesiastical identity, caricatured its historical predecessors in order to avoid the elephant in the room; the particular practice's origin in scripture.
This went both sides of the aisle, what's termed as old and new (traditional vs non) school, but, interestingly, this book ignores the formers eventual departure from the other. The author doesn't even mention it actually but rather presses on to appreciate the ecumenism of the PCUSA and their accomplishments in uniformity of worship. I can only conclude from this silence that this departure was apparently irrelevant to not only the authors analysis but the concerns and theological conceptions of the unified church; simply that that old school/new school concerns eventually became irrelevant.
I also found interesting that, when describing the old school Southerners (particularly known for their conservatism) and stricter Scottish Presbyterian descendants, the narrative begins to plateau at a point. This plateau is explained, tellingly, as a general departure from puritanism.
That being said, I can sympathize with wanting to recapture liturgies of both the ancient and reformation age, an order of worship is indeed biblical and discernable within the scriptures, but the desire must be tempered with a balance that only scripture can give which is simplicity and sufficiency; one that the confession so carefully articulates. Hence it's generality and absence of formalized liturgy. The church, collectively and over time, had seemed to forgot that the rejection of a formalized liturgy is what had animated the writers of their own confession and what fueled the ecclesiastical debates.
The book's conclusion is that the PCUSA has this (or least had, as this work is now decades old) as their aim but I assert that they rather changed the definitions (the formulations entirely), theologized pragmatism, and have so doggedly and vainly pursued cultural relevance that they lost touch of themselves and became as fluid as their desire of ecumenism so wished them to be which is something that means nothing in the end. They that stand for anything, stand for nothing; as the saying goes. I grant that this wasn't their intention but is the only conclusion if followed consistently.
The worship of God is on HIS terms. It cannot simply be an act or aim of evangelism nor a neighborly communion. The solemnity that it demands cannot be educed or fabricated by echoes of popery and religious experientialism indistinguishable from paganism. Rather, these supposed aims are effects of the worship of God and not the worship itself.
This survey should be a cautionary tale to conservative Presbyterians. Not an influence.
https://biblebased.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/how-did-presbyterian-worship-become-episcoterian/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/presbyterian-worship-in-amerka-changing-patterns-since-1787-by-julius-melton-richmond-virginia-john-knox-press-1967-173-pp-575/C5543C251B99C0894EA44E9677069031
https://www.logcollegepress.com/blog/2019/2/17/book-highlight-presbyterian-worship-in-america-by-julius-melton
Top rate scholarship; although the field is admittedly scarce. Triumphalist in tone; it nonetheless is frank.
Taken at face value, the main current of American Presbyterian worship has traded, what the author calls "puritanical" or what conservatives call " the regulative principle of worship" (anything explicitly described as normative for worship as per the scriptures only), for a functional normative principle of worship (anything not explicitly forbidden in scripture as normative for worship). The problems that facilitated this were not imagined nor exaggerated. The solutions were not always purely pragmatic but theologized.
It seemed the main current of the church was more influenced by its immediate problems and found its own articulation through the influence of theological movements outside of its own scope (mainly high churchism). The traditional insistence on religious liberty and purity of worship grounded upon scripture morphed into an American individualism that seemingly, in the pursuit to retrace its own roots and ecclesiastical identity, caricatured its historical predecessors in order to avoid the elephant in the room; the particular practice's origin in scripture.
This went both sides of the aisle, what's termed as old and new (traditional vs non) school, but, interestingly, this book ignores the formers eventual departure from the other. The author doesn't even mention it actually but rather presses on to appreciate the ecumenism of the PCUSA and their accomplishments in uniformity of worship. I can only conclude from this silence that this departure was apparently irrelevant to not only the authors analysis but the concerns and theological conceptions of the unified church; simply that that old school/new school concerns eventually became irrelevant.
It seemed the main current of the church was more influenced by its immediate problems and found its own articulation through the influence of theological movements outside of its own scope (mainly high churchism). The traditional insistence on religious liberty and purity of worship grounded upon scripture morphed into an American individualism that seemingly, in the pursuit to retrace its own roots and ecclesiastical identity, caricatured its historical predecessors in order to avoid the elephant in the room; the particular practice's origin in scripture.
This went both sides of the aisle, what's termed as old and new (traditional vs non) school, but, interestingly, this book ignores the formers eventual departure from the other. The author doesn't even mention it actually but rather presses on to appreciate the ecumenism of the PCUSA and their accomplishments in uniformity of worship. I can only conclude from this silence that this departure was apparently irrelevant to not only the authors analysis but the concerns and theological conceptions of the unified church; simply that that old school/new school concerns eventually became irrelevant.
I also found interesting that, when describing the old school Southerners (particularly known for their conservatism) and stricter Scottish Presbyterian descendants, the narrative begins to plateau at a point. This plateau is explained, tellingly, as a general departure from puritanism.
That being said, I can sympathize with wanting to recapture liturgies of both the ancient and reformation age, an order of worship is indeed biblical and discernable within the scriptures, but the desire must be tempered with a balance that only scripture can give which is simplicity and sufficiency; one that the confession so carefully articulates. Hence it's generality and absence of formalized liturgy. The church, collectively and over time, had seemed to forgot that the rejection of a formalized liturgy is what had animated the writers of their own confession and what fueled the ecclesiastical debates.
That being said, I can sympathize with wanting to recapture liturgies of both the ancient and reformation age, an order of worship is indeed biblical and discernable within the scriptures, but the desire must be tempered with a balance that only scripture can give which is simplicity and sufficiency; one that the confession so carefully articulates. Hence it's generality and absence of formalized liturgy. The church, collectively and over time, had seemed to forgot that the rejection of a formalized liturgy is what had animated the writers of their own confession and what fueled the ecclesiastical debates.
The book's conclusion is that the PCUSA has this (or least had, as this work is now decades old) as their aim but I assert that they rather changed the definitions (the formulations entirely), theologized pragmatism, and have so doggedly and vainly pursued cultural relevance that they lost touch of themselves and became as fluid as their desire of ecumenism so wished them to be which is something that means nothing in the end. They that stand for anything, stand for nothing; as the saying goes. I grant that this wasn't their intention but is the only conclusion if followed consistently.
The worship of God is on HIS terms. It cannot simply be an act or aim of evangelism nor a neighborly communion. The solemnity that it demands cannot be educed or fabricated by echoes of popery and religious experientialism indistinguishable from paganism. Rather, these supposed aims are effects of the worship of God and not the worship itself.
The worship of God is on HIS terms. It cannot simply be an act or aim of evangelism nor a neighborly communion. The solemnity that it demands cannot be educed or fabricated by echoes of popery and religious experientialism indistinguishable from paganism. Rather, these supposed aims are effects of the worship of God and not the worship itself.
This survey should be a cautionary tale to conservative Presbyterians. Not an influence.
https://biblebased.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/how-did-presbyterian-worship-become-episcoterian/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/presbyterian-worship-in-amerka-changing-patterns-since-1787-by-julius-melton-richmond-virginia-john-knox-press-1967-173-pp-575/C5543C251B99C0894EA44E9677069031
https://www.logcollegepress.com/blog/2019/2/17/book-highlight-presbyterian-worship-in-america-by-julius-melton
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