I seem to come across a number of Anglican Churches which pride themselves as being “traditional”. From what I can glean, this means that to the untrained eye, their practices seem to be high. This is the first thing I’d like to refute, as to the more trained eye, the practices turn out to be, in fact, positively Romish, but this is all beside the point.
I have long since realised that I occasionally use the description of Anglican wrongly. I was at one point about to say that my mentor during my time away was one of the least Anglican Anglican ministers that I’d met, until I stopped myself and thought again, and realised that he is a liturgically aware and biblical centred person, placing him surely at or near the top of the most Anglican people I know. The combination of these two experiences has led me to reconsider what I think about Anglicanism as a whole, and particularly has led to a consideration of the liturgical nature of the church, to which I would like to sketch my thoughts.
When I read through the Book of Common Prayer, I see in Cranmer many aspects that I would admire in a non-Conformist. His work on the order of Holy Communion is an attempt to remove any magic that is present at that service and move away from the making of a ritual. The placement of the word at the centre of service and the clear implications that all else is either a preparation to hear God speak through the scriptures or a response to hearing that word is a model that all church congregations should pay careful attention to. So, as I read, one question comes to mind, why have the liturgy at all? Why risk the misinterpretation of the liturgy as being a ritual in itself in the process of abolishing ritual from the act of Christian worship?
The answer, I believe comes from looking at the state of the church at the time of the early reformation, the church for which Cranmer is writing his prayer book for. Many of the ministers serving different assemblies in England have a level of ignorance of the basics of the gospel that would be considered an embarrassment for even the most immature in faith among bible believing Christians today. There was definitely a need to ensure that the spiritual feeding of a congregation was not dependant on the competency of the minister, otherwise large portions of the Christian church would effectively be starved. For this reason, providing a step by step guide to how to lead a reformed and biblical service ensured that even the least able minister (or even a literate lay person) could effectively minister a flock. There were even sermons provided, in the form of the Book of Homilies, to ensure that all church congregations could benefit from solid teaching based on God’s word.
Today, the majority of evangelical churches have at their lead biblical hearted men, who understand the importance not only of preaching God’s word but structuring all meetings of the saints in such a way as to place hearing God’s voice through His scriptures in the proper place as the centre of Christian corporate worship, and so there is less need for strict following of liturgical order, and those that do so are still living very much in the tradition of Cranmer and the great evangelical reformers of England. But even the non-Conformists among us (of which I’d like to make clear, I number myself among) must be careful not to make small the importance of set liturgical order. Experiencing life in a community where a large number of minister do indeed not have the basic understanding of the gospel, the need for sound, reformed liturgy is incredibly important. To finish, I’ll mention one of the ministers that I’ve come across. He really shouldn’t be a minister at all, there is a definite absence of any of the gifts that are generally necessary for ministry, but because of his job, he is expected to preach every so often. Every time his turn on the rota comes up, he would panic, and start to desperately ask around for something to preach on. Eventually, someone bought him the set of J.C. Ryle’s “Expository Thoughts on the Gospels”, and each time he preaches, he reads a section from that. When I found out about that, it served a joyful reminder of Cranmer’s original intent (this practice certainly sounds similar to Cranmer’s intention in writing the Book of Homilies), because I attended one of the meetings he was presiding over, and saw an incompetent minister still feed the flock. For this reason, we are to rejoice that there is such a thing as liturgical order.
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