The orders of worship I posted from a few minister’s manuals stemmed from a happenstance find in Christian Hymnary. I was not prepared to see the absence of the Lord’s Supper among proposed orders of Sunday worship in a major book used among the Christian Church (former ‘Christian Connexion’). Actually that itself was a diversion. I went looking for an old Philip Doddridge paraphrase. And before I knew it I was chasing leads.
The bigger point is that I am writing again, and not just here. But the writing here is a way to keep the pump primed.
That’s the point.
The Doddridge errand, and the order of worship diversion, are just icing on the cake. Neither, by itself, is the point. Close to the point, but neither is the point. The point is writing again. The memory of blogging about this kind of thing is slowly emerging again and I am warming to it.
To put a bow on the order-of-worship errand, what I see from these sources is that there is no agreed-upon or standard order of worship among the Christian Churches or Churches of Christ in the latter half of the nineteenth century, nor in the first half of the twentieth. The placement of the Lord’s Supper varies, the accompaniment of the offering alongside or apart from the Lord’s Supper also varies. The flow of worship, if these proposals are any indication, varies as much from place to place as it does from generation to generation. From what little I have seen, I cannot discern a trajectory.
One could begin much earlier, go much farther, and cast a wider net. Probably the place I would begin is with the Scottish Presbyterian and Congregational orders of worship from the late eighteenth century. Those are the immediate backgrounds for the Campbells and Walter Scott. I can see much value in spending time with Baptist worship as it was practiced in the East, then applied in the trans-appalachian frontier. Much of the Campbell movement derived its membership from former Baptists. So as much as the European orders of worship will be useful, I cannot see how neglecting Baptist worship can be of any benefit. The O’Kelly Republican Methodist movement emerged from Carolina and Virginia Methodism (which itself came out of Episcopal practice). All of those leads are worth chasing, in my mind at least.
The Presbyterians and Scotch Independents might shed some light on the proposed model worship service Alexander Campbell proposed in Christian System. That model probably is as close as we might get to uniformity, but I know first hand that source materials which will prove it are scarce to non-existent. Congregations simply did not print orders of worship or bulletins much before the 1890s, and even there they tend to survive from the largest city churches (Disciples), which betray a sensitivity to high churchliness that the country congregations simply did not share. Bulletins and orders of worship which might tease out a hypothesis will survive here and there for Christian Churches, but much less so for Churches of Christ. And if they do, they will be representative only for that congregation at that time in its life. My hunch is as soon as a new minister arrived, the game could change.
But enough about upstream influence. There are other avenues to explore, such as Standard Publishing Company’s volume On the Lord’s Day designed to provide congregations with just sort of these resources. So there was a perceived need (or market) for this and that book will be useful. There also is F. W. Emmons views on the order of worship, and that raises the angle of looking at Biblical texts, specifically Acts 2:42. There is a strand of interpretation that has not been mined, in print, that I am aware of. There are tracts here and there (and I resist every urge to go look for them). Then there is periodical literature searches on a variety of keywords and topics which might yield some articles. And more minister’s manuals (such as George DeHoff’s), and hymnals such as Gloria in Excelsis. Maybe they have more to say? After all, those hymnals are in the pew racks and certainly available for congregational leaders to use for ideas and guidance.
This could easily be a thesis. A thesis which I do not intend to write here a post at a time.
Maybe someone will take this up.
eScriptorium 