Liturgy in the Age of Reason: Worship and Sacraments in England and Scotland 1662ûc.1800

by Spinks,Bryan D.

• ISBN13: 9780754660897
• ISBN10: 0754660893
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Worship has always been affected by its surrounding culture. This book examines the changing perspectives in and discussions on worship styles and practices from the Restoration to the death of Wesley, in England and Scotland. Moving beyond the text, Spinks grounds the discussion within the changing cultural and intellectual framework of the period referred to as the Enlightenment. The focus is the end of the early modern period, when already the upheaval of the English Civil War, the methods of the Cambridge Platonists, and the thinking of Descartes and Spinoza were making the period one of transition and Newtonian thought and the thought of John Locke impacted theological thought and worship forms. It is against this framework that the worship in England and Scotland will be described and assessed. As well as published and unpublished liturgical documents, this book draws on contemporary accounts and descriptions of worship, catechisms, sermons and theological works, and contemporary diaries. Musical and architectural changes are also noted, particularly the late seventeenth century hymns of Richard Davies of Rothwell, Joseph Stennett and Benjamin Keach.This book places worship in the society which it served, and from which changes sprang, exploring the interaction of cultural thought and worship and drawing parallels between the Enlightenment period and problems of late modernity and the worship wars of the late twentieth century.

Author Biography

Bryan D. Spinks is Goddard Professor of Liturgical Studies and Pastoral Theology at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, USA

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Restoration settlement of worship in the established Churches of England and Scotland

Restoration sacramental teaching South and North of the border

The Glorious Revolution and liturgical plurality

Singing God's praises from the margins: worship and hymns of late 17th-century dissent

Ancien régime and patristic authority

High Church, nonjuring and Jacobite liturgical experiments

Newtonian and Lockean theology, liturgical revision and rational sacraments

Affectionate worship: the evangelical revival

'Common or garden' liturgy: worship and sacraments in later Georgian England

Some aspects of worship and sacramental instruction in the Georgian Kirk

Glimpses of dissenting worship - old, new and curious

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Worship has always been affected by its surrounding culture. This book examines the changing perspectives in and discussions on worship styles and practices from the Restoration to the death of Wesley, in England and Scotland. Moving beyond the text, Spinks grounds the discussion within the changing cultural and intellectual framework of the period referred to as the Enlightenment.