‘Austere Ritual’: the Reformation of Worship in Inter-War English Congregationalism

Abstract

Writing in 196s, Horton Davies, in his magisterial examination of worship and theology in England, gave a glowing account of advances made in Free Churches over previous decades towards ‘a worship that is deeply reverent, sacramentally rich, ecumenically comprehensive, and theologically faithful’. This study examines the pressure for reformation in worship which emerged, particularly in the 1930s, within English Congregationalism. Pressure came from an exploration of the Reformed and Puritan roots of the denomination and from the influence of wider forms of corporate devotion. By 1943, Nathaniel Micklem (1888-1976), Principal from 1932 of Mansfield College, Oxford, and the most formative theologian espousing new versions of Reformed thought, could write Congregationalism and the Church Catholic, affirming that ‘by the faithful preaching of the Word, the believing celebration of the sacraments and the exercise of Gospel discipline, the Church is kept in the doctrine and fellowship of the apostles and stands in true succession’. The inter-war years, a period of marked Anglo-Catholic dominance, saw Anglican and Free Church leaders who had been shaped by evangelical theology re-examining their practices in the light of higher forms of worship. In Congregationalism, which with almost 300,000 members in England was the largest of the older Dissenting denominations, this process had distinctive features deriving from its own history.