Reformation Liturgies

Abstract

The Reformation era was one of the most fertile times for liturgical revision in the history of Christianity between Late Antiquity and the late 20th century. New theological ideas, based on a study of the Bible and combined with humanist historical and literary scholarship, created dissatisfaction with the received medieval rites. Each of the great reformers undertook the work of liturgical reform, often producing two or more liturgical orders. Important Reformation liturgical work includes the reform proposals of Martin Luther, their implementation in official church orders, the very different approach to liturgy in the orders prepared by Ulrich Zwingli at Zürich, the worship of sectarian groups of Brethren and Anabaptists, the mediating Protestant liturgies that evolved in Strassburg and their influence on John Calvin in Strasbourg (there were German and French congregations in this city that straddled Germany and France; to indicate Bucer’s and Calvin’s liturgies, I use both the German and French spellings of the city) and Geneva, the liturgical changes that occurred in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, the work of the Scottish reformer John Knox among English exiles on the continent during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor and later in Scotland, the compromises of the Elizabethan settlement, the efforts of the Catholic Church to respond both to the Protestant attacks on traditional teachings and practices and to the frustrations of their own clergy with liturgies that had become overburdened with accretions of dubious historical veracity and literary quality and the complications of a cluttered calendar, and two final examples of Reformation liturgy among the New England Puritans and the Westminster Directory in the 17th century. The Reformation was a time of growing divisions between Christian people, especially in practices of public worship. But Protestants and Catholics were also responding in similar ways to cultural challenges that they themselves could not see. In their various ways they were turning away from rituals that concerned the body and toward doctrinal issues that engaged the mind. Reformation worship, both Protestant and Catholic, increasingly focused on informed (i.e., catechized) participation in new rites nurtured by a clear proclamation of the word and administration of the sacraments.