Reformed Anglican Fellowship

Reformed Doctrine | Common Prayer

Reformed Doctrine | Common Prayer 

Filtering by Category: Liturgy

On the Value and Purpose of Liturgy

Familiarity and Contempt

by Carl Trueman

Excerpt:

"The Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Bucer, Knox, Cranmer) are scarcely evidence of an age lacking in 's/Spiritually substantial men' and yet each of them saw formal liturgy -- and quite elaborate liturgy, at least by English non-conformist standards -- as vitally important to intelligent, biblical worship.  And none of them advocated the 'four hymn sandwich' or any thing that comes close -- not that that makes the FHS necessarily wrong; but it might give pause for thought.

The difference is not between churches who have liturgies and churches who do not; it is between churches who have intelligent ones that are theologically informed, which they acknowledge and upon which they reflect, and those who do not.  Whether one writes them down or not, and indeed how elaborate they are, is irrelevant when it comes to the question of formalism.   Formalism is a matter of the heart, not of the written page.   After all, unless one speaks in tongues, one is probably using written liturgical tools such as psalms, hymns and spiritual songs."

Reformed Doctrine | Common Prayer