Continuity and Change in Christian Worship: Papers Read at the 1997 Summer Meeting and the 1998 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society

by R.N. Swanson

Collection of papers read at the 1997 Summer Meeting and the 1998 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society.

Worship is at the heart of the Christian tradition, its history marked by both continuity and change, by stability and upheaval. Its centrality to Christian experience, particularly as codified in liturgy, makes it a focal point of conflict: it can be manipulated to recreate the past, or to establish new forms supposedly more in tune with contemporary needs and perceptions. Liturgical traditions contribute to an individual Christian's identity, particularly since the sixteenth century and the proliferation of denominations with their own forms of worship. This collection addresses aspects of the many issues raised by the evolution of worship in Christian history, from the first to the twentieth century and moving from Christianity's ancient heartlands to the missionary stations of Uganda and Rwanda. While texts and actions are central to liturgical practice, and are considered in detail, these essays show the need to set worship in context, and to appreciate historical and contemporary forces working within the Church to support continuity and to stimulate change.

Contents:
Continuity and change in early eucharistic practice: shifting scholarly perspectives / Paul F. Bradshaw. --
The Song of Songs and the liturgy of the velatio in the fourth century: from literary metaphor to liturgical reality / Nathalie Henry. --
The Carolingian liturgical experience / Donald Bullough. --
Change and change back: the development of English parish church chancels / Carol F. Davidson. --
The 'sample week' in the medieval Latin divine office / R.W. Pfaff. --
Message, celebration, offering: the place of twelfth-and early thirteenth-century liturgical drama as 'missionary theatre' / Brenda Bolton. --
The altars in York Minister in the early sixteenth century / W.J. Sheils. --
'One heart and one soul': the changing nature of public worship in Augsberg, 1524-1548 / Philip Broadhead. --
Trancendence and community in Zwinglian worship: the liturgy of 1525 in Zurich / Bruce Gordon. --
Evaluating liturgical continuity and change at the Reformation: a case study of Thomas Muntzer, Martin Luther, and Thomas Cranmer / Bryan D. Spinks. The traditio instrumentorum in the reform of ordination rites in the sixteenth century / Kenneth W.T. Carleton. --
Expedient and experiment: the Elizabethan lay reader / Brett Usher. --
Giving tridentine worship back its history / Simon Ditchfield. --
From David's Psalms to Watt's hymns: the development of hymnody among dissenters following the toleration act / David L. Wykes. --
Patristics and reform: Thomas Rattray and the Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem / Stuart G. Hall. --
The mirage of authenticity: Scottish independence and the reconstruction of a New Testament order of worship, 1799-1808 / Deryck Lovegrove. --
'Shut in with thee': the morning meeting among Scottish Open Brethren, 1840s-1960s / Neil Dickson. --
Goths and Romans: Daniel Rock, Augustus Welby Pugin, and nineteenth-century English worship / Judith F. Champ. --
'The rector presents his compliments': worship, fabric, and furnishings of the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfielf, 1828-1938 / Martin Dudley. --
Prosper Guéranger O.S.B. (1805-1875) and the struggle for liturgical unity / Peter Raedts. A 'fluffy-minded prayer-book fundamentalist'? F.D. Maurice and the Anglican liturgy / J.N. Morris. --
A new broom in the augean stable: Robert Gregory and liturgical changes at St Paul's Cathedral, London, 1868-1890 / Penelope J. Cadle. --
A broad churchman and the prayer book: the Reverend Charles Voysey / Garth Turner. --
'This Romish business' --
ritual innovation and parish life in late nineteenth-century Lincolnshire / R.W. Ambler. --
Continuity and change in the liturgical revival in Scotland: John MacLeod and the Duns case, 1875-6 / Douglas M. Murray. --
Anglican worship in late nineteenth-century Wales: a Montgomeryshire case study / Francis Knight. --
'Walking in the light': the liturgy of fellowship in the early years of the East African revival / Emma L. Wild. --
"Austere ritual": the reformation of worship in inter-war English congregationalism / Ian M. Randall. --
Reservation under pressure: ritual in the prayer book crisis, 1927-1928 / Ian Machin. --
Reservation of the sacrament at Winchester Cathedral, 1931-1935 / T.E. Daykin. --
'The catechumenate for adults is to be restored': Patristic adaptation in the rite for the Christian initiation of adults / Edward Yarnold.

524 pages, Hardcover

First published December 23, 1999

About the author

Robert N. Swanson is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Birmingham.

After studying for an undergraduate degree in History at Cambridge University, graduating in 1972, Swanson stayed at Cambridge for his doctoral research on the activities of European universities in the crisis caused by the division in the papacy between 1378 and 1417.

In 1975 he was appointed Assistant Archivist at the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research in York, moving to Birmingham as Lecturer in Medieval History in 1979. In 2001 he became Professor of Medieval Ecclesiastical History, and in 2005 Professor of Medieval History. In 2003 he was awarded the title of Guest Professor at Renmin University of China (Beijing), and at Tianjin Normal University, and in 2010 was made Guest Professor at Wuhan University. He has also lectured elsewhere in China. He held a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2005-6, part of which overlapped with a Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In Spring 2010 he was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

His initial research interests on papal and university history were broadened and transformed by contact with the ecclesiastical archives at York, which stimulated his investigations of the role of the church in late medieval English society (c.1350 to the Reformation). This developed further at Birmingham, to become a major area of teaching; it remains a significant element in his work, leading (for instance) to his work on parishes and parochial incomes, and his investigation of the role of indulgences in late medieval English religion. The social aspect of church history is complemented by an interest in the history of medieval spirituality, which expands beyond England to the rest of western Europe. This interest is primarily reflected in his book on Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515 (1995). (1995).

Robert Swanson has been an active member of the Ecclesiastical History Society for several years, as committee member and office holder. He was President of the Society for 2007-8. Since 2007 he has been President of the British sub-commission of the Commission internationale d’histoire et d’etudes du christianisme (the international umbrella body for ecclesiastical history). From 1994 to 2001 he was editor of Studies in Church History, overseeing the publication of eight volumes of the series, overseeing the publication of eight volumes of the series.