Liturgical Renaissance

At St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Chicago, Christmas was marked seven years ago by what the pastor, the Rev. J. Stephen Bremer, calls "two rather nondescript services," on Christmas Eve. Next week the Rev. Mr. Bremer and his congregation will celebrate the birth of Christ with four choral Eucharists, at which all the prayers and responses will be sung in plain chant. Instead of the austere black robe that his predecessor wore, the Rev. Mr. Bremer will dress in full Eucharistic vestments--alb, stole, maniple and chasuble, all in white. St. Mark's altar will bear six candles instead of two; candles, as well as a Cross, will be carried in processions that begin and end the services.

The ceremonies at St. Mark's, a member of the Illinois Synod, are no once-a-year ritual. With the approval of his church council and the congregation, Stephen Bremer has instituted daily morning prayer. Communion service on Sundays and saints' days, an evening vigil at Easter; private confession is available to any parishioner who wants it. Nor is St. Mark's an isolated example. Across the country among Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans, a radical reform in both the form and content of religious services is now under way. It is a liturgical revival that both goes back to primitive Christianity in its emphasis on the Communion service as the central sacrament of worship and, at the same time, is immensely sophisticated in welcoming back much of the traditional richness of the church. "The revival," says Dr. Edgar S. Brown Jr., executive director of the department of worship for the United Lutheran Church in America, "has made the church aware that there is a unity of the order of worship that includes both preaching and the Lord's Supper, and that these two cannot be divorced."

Back to the Altar. Rebelling against what were thought to be abuses in the Roman Catholic Mass, the Protestant Reformation emphasized the preaching of God's word in sermons at the expense of sacramental worship. This emphasis was heightened in the U.S., argues Lutheran Brown, where "the development of Protestantism in the 18th and early 19th centuries was primarily that of the Methodist and Baptist kind of fervent expression of religion.'' Even in churches with strong liturgical traditions--such as the Lutherans and Episcopalians--hymns placed more emphasis upon individual piety than on praise of God. In church architecture, the pulpit replaced the altar as the focus of congregational interest.

But U.S. Protestantism, notably since World War II, has begun to turn sharply away from this kind of religious individualism. "We were trying to put religion in everyday clothes," says Dr. Henry C. Kodh of Washington's United Church of Christ, "until finally we found that we had put everyday clothes on Sunday." Adds Dr. Earl Waldrop of San Antonio's Central Christian Church: "We began to realize that for no reason other than prejudice, we had discarded some of the beautiful aspects of worship. We had become more a meeting of fellowship than a group of worshipers." According to Dr. Samuel Miller, dean of Harvard Divinity School, ecumenicism has been a major influence in the liturgical revival.

"With the move toward church unity, everybody is becoming aware of the value of symbols and order in worship. People are looking for unity and order in religion, which, .because of these anxious times, they cannot find elsewhere in life."

Return to Cassocks. Though the sermon still remains the focus of most Protestant services, the most notable sign of the liturgical times is restoration of Communion services to a central place in the order of worship. At the Redford Presbyterian Church in Detroit, Communion is now monthly instead of four times a year; the church is considering whether to make the service weekly. At the Travis Park Methodist Church in San Antonio, the congregation recently asked their pastor to offer Communion every Sunday, instead of once a month. Many Lutheran churches have revived the sung "German Mass," according to the original ritual of Martin Luther. The Rev. Franklin Senger of Washington's Holy Comforter Church uses plain chant at all his Sunday services; about half of his congregation genuflect. Even in denominations where Communion is still rare (such as the Congregational), ministers have restored the ecclesiastical calendar to use, preaching on themes appropriate to the seasons of Lent, Advent or Pentecost.

The new formality in religious service has been accompanied by a formality in clerical dress. In the New England Council of the United Churches of Christ, whose ministers a few years ago seldom wore anything more ecclesiastical than a discreet dark suit, more than half of the ministers now use a clerical collar. In 1941, according to a survey conducted by the United Lutheran Church in America, 1.500 out of 2,000 of their ministers wore either a simple black robe or no robe at all at services; now two-thirds of them dress in either cassock, surplice and stole or full Eucharistic vestments. In San Francisco, Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike is urging his priests to don chasubles of traditional liturgical color for Communion services.

Liturgy has brought significant changes to church architecture (TIME, Dec. 26, 1960). In Boston Unitarians are moving their pulpits from a central position to one side, placing the new focus on the Communion table. In Cincinnati's new Kenwood Baptist Church, a Communion table surmounted by a wooden Cross is at the center, with the pulpit off to one side. "This is unusual for Baptists," admits the pastor, the Rev. J. Stanley Mathews. "It's a move on our part to create a worship center and a dignified approach to worship." The First Baptist Church in Washington has stained-glass windows depicting outstanding figures of the Christian past. Says the Rev. Edwin Hughes Pruden: "I doubt if 25 years ago I could have built such a church."

Work & Worship. When the meaning of liturgical changes has been explained to them, most congregations have taken favorably to the restoration of form and ceremony. "They rebel at first," admits the Rev. Jans van der Graaf of

Normandy Methodist Church in St. Louis, "but once you explain the meaning of the symbols, they get used to them and they like it." Not all Protestants, however, welcome the new trend. Notable standouts in opposition: the Quakers and Pentecostals. Many clergymen still feel that any emphasis on ritual represents a dangerous leaning toward Roman Catholicism, which is in the midst of a similar liturgical revival all its own. Says the Rev. Robert E. Lee of Atlanta's Lutheran Church of the Redeemer: "I'm highly suspicious of those who hide behind the liturgical form. It's often the minister who has nothing to say in preaching who tries to cover it up with colorful vestments.''

Protestant liturgists argue in rebuttal that the revival of ritual is much more than empty formalism. "We're not looking for gimmicks to glamorize the service," insists the Rev. Donald Roberts of the Los Angeles' Covenant Presbyterian Church. "We are restudying the heart of our faith. We are getting back to the concept of the church as a fellowship." The renewal of sacramental worship, adds Dr. Robert McAfee Brown of Union Theological Seminary, "is not just a matter of trying to do it now as they did it then. It is an attempt to gain a totality of Christian worship in modern terms. The critics would say that having failed to deal with the social and religious problems of the world, the church is turning inside itself and occupying itself with niceties inside the club. My answer would be that it has been the concern of the liturgical revival to relate liturgy to what goes on outside. Liturgy is derived from the Greek word meaning 'the work of the people.' The work they do in worshiping God in the church is ultimately related to the work they do for God in the world."

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