Author: Jengie

In Prayer and Praises, Nathaneal Micklem frequently uses a hymn as part of the ritual of private devotion. In so doing he is following a long line of Reformed practice. John Calvin made the translation of the psalms into metrical verse not just for public worship but for private devotion. There is a scene in Thomas Hardy where at the end of the day workers down tools and sing together a hymn or psalm. Erik Routley wrote a number of devotional commentaries on a variety of hymn. Songs sung in public worship also used for private devotion seems to be the norm within the Reformed tradition.

It may be St Augustine of Hippo  who said “He who sings prays twice” but the Reformed tradition seems to have built a whole way of being a Christian around the singing of psalms and hymns. There is something that resonates deep with Presbyterian about “Ye Gates lift up your heads” as I have found since I came to St Andrews, and have you noticed your Congregational friends often put down their hymn book to sing “When I survey the wondrous cross”. These hymn/psalm becomes part of who we are.

Then hymns speak at different levels not just the words that you sing, many people recall the hymns sung at a parent’s funeral or on their wedding day. However lots of little events equally shape our understanding of a hymn, I cannot think of “Glorious things of thee are spoken Zion city of our God” without also recalling my child hood church of Zion Wakefield, equally “We are marching in the light of God” always recalls singing it while walking around St George’s Jerusalem with a pilgrimage group.

It is often said that in the old hymns you sang theology but this is too simple. For the last rather two hundred years hymnody has been split into two strands, one appealing more to the head, the other more to heart. The mission hall hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus” by Joseph Scrivens is very much a heart song and yet I can recall as a child hearing my Grandmother sing it. The well formed Christian needs both.

I sometimes find myself humming a hymn while I am doing something else. The range is enormous, from “All people that on Earth do dwell” through Brian Wren’s “Great God, your love has called us here” and onto “When I was lost you came and rescued me” by Kate and Miles Simmonds a modern Charismatic worship song. However if I stop the hymn I am humming often captures something of my mood that I need to, in the words of the old hymn, “take it to the Lord in prayer”.

The Reformed tradition seems to always be multi-voiced. The idea of mono-vocal or multi-voiced discourses comes from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin a Russian philosopher, better known for his work on Carnival. Multi-voiced discourses are where even if only one person is speaking you can hear echoes of previous utterances by other people. Sometimes this make a cohesive voice, like a large choir all singing the melody, and sometimes they produce a polyphone of harmonising and clashing themes. The Reformed tradition appears to be one of the later.

This leads to always having a “yes but” stance which is uncomfortable. In part I think this discomfort may explain some of the Reformed tendency to splinter into smaller groups Scottish Presbyterians clearly who have this propensity, but Congregationalism just tended to do it more often with smaller numbers. Thus divisions do not appear denominational level. The aim of division was to reduce the divergent voices and thus make a more comfortable position.

This ignores the flip side, which is actually older, the tendency to seek merger and unity. If there is a single action that creates the Reformed tradition then it is the signing of the Tigurinus Consensus in 1548 between John Calvin and Heinrich Bullinger,Huldrych Zwingli’s successor in Zurich. The first cross tradition merger was between Cavlinist and Zwinglites which created the tradition.  Now the theologies of the Calvin and Zwingli are different, but there was enough common ground that they were able to acknowledge each other as part of the Church merger creates multivoicedness.

Thus Ecumenics is not a twentieth century phenomena, but finds its echoes in leaders with a Reformed heritage of such as George Macleod, Brother Roger of Taize and Tullio Vinnay (founder of Agape a centre for reconciliation in the Italian Alps) . What was new in Twentieth century was people looking beyond the wider Reformed tradition.

So if we were not splitting apart then we were coming together! There are lots of people who through time have spoken from what they perceive as a Reformed position. Some have wished to take the high ground “only if you believe this are you properly Reformed”, others have wished rather to build on common ground just as John Calvin did. The challenge is to find ways of speaking within the multitude of voices.

It may appeal to be silent, but a choir where everyone is silent is not singing in harmony, nor is it really a performance of a choir piece if only the soloist sing. So we need to find ways of speaking about what we believe. However if we are to create harmony and not discord we also need to learn to listen to other people, not necessarily to sing their tune, but see if we can’t adjust ours so that it compliments rather than clashes.

In 1972 the URC came into being and two denominational traditions collided. There are problems today that are caused not by the positions regarding wider traditions, these were both traditions dominated by the Reformed Tradition, but by the fact that the two traditions did not bother to find out how the other tradition worked, the Presbyterian assumed that with these sort of half toned Congregationalists they would find it easy to dominate, the Congregationalists assumed that they would continue doing things as they always did with a few adjustments for Presbyterians as they had done before. The Presbyterians assumed there was a meeting two dissenting traditions of which theirs was superior  because it was articulated. The Congregationalists just assumed the way they did things was the way it was to be done noy because it was Congregational but because that was how it was.

The mistake was made in thinking that within English Congretationalism there was a named tradition that in some way is comparable to the Presbyterian tradition of the Presbyterian Church of England. This Presbyterian tradition is that of a clear dissenting tradition that stands against the mainstream. It says “We do this BECAUSE we are PRESBYTERIAN”. It is clear and defined. English Congregationalism on the whole found no need for such a tradition. Indeed may have found problems with having it. Rather with respect to tradition it relates as a dominant discourse, the tradition has no name (or rarely is named) but is referenced by how “We do it”.

I suspect that this has several roots. Firstly the obvious one, the tradition is not a single strand but a loosely woven rope of many strands that are not always compatible. It is true that the Reformed strand is the core one but there are plenty of other bits. It has to be seen as an grouping that specialises in bringing the disparate together. What is more with the Independent part, for most congregations “the tradition” is primarily the tradition of that congregation and only secondarily draws on the wider experience of other congregations and the wider church. When you talk about the wider context few members have any interest. Thus there is a need to have a way of talking and holding things together without setting people’s backs up. Names tend to carry baggage with them, so it is convenient if their is no name for anyone to object to.

Secondly in England there was an indicator name change I suspect at the end of the nineteenth Century. Before that all Congregational churches tended to be called Independent and Congregational used only after then. Traditions are conservative by nature, I suspect that there is a strong streek of people who still think of themselves as going to the Independent Chapel despite this. To add to this the change seems to coincide with the NonConformist Ascendancy in Late Victorian times. There were places in England where Congregationalism was the dominant tradition, so naturally it took the dominant form.

The result is that former English Congregationalists are not concious of their Congregational heritage but they are secure in it, assuming it is the way things ought to be done by any rational person. They have not had a name and feel no need for a name. For them the question was how the Presbyterians will alter the way we do things. It is a tradition based around absorbing not fracturing.

The former Presbyterians, as do former Congregational Church of Scotland, (I have not idea what former Churches of Christ do) find that what happens is that instead of their nice named dissenting tradition, they are faced with a nameless mesh of ideas that somehow resists their attempts to say what it should be like.  What is worse it uses the first person plural “We” of itself so your choice is to join it or dissent from belonging. This is not tradition as they know it, yet it assumes the dominant position.

This is the story of a piece of folk liturgy within the Reformed tradition that is so common that we don’t even see it as there. It is nice because it is tidy story that covers Reformed tradition from start to current day and probably is most influential in creating the Ecumenical movement

The story starts off in Geneva with John Calvin. John Calvin in quite a dramatic way fenced the table from libertines. His document Treatise against the Anabaptist and Libertines does suggest some more moderation:

“That is, that none be so hardy to approach to this holy table, which is not verily of the body of Jesus Christ, worshiping one God with all faithful men, and serving him in good lawful vocation. But where they come to make declaration  in their fourth Article, how a man ought to separate himself from all pollutions of the world to join himself to God: there they begin to deprave [turn out of the way] altogether”

Note that piety is indeed required but separation from all pollution is not.

However in Scotland under Presbyterianism and fencing the table got out of hand. In the song Cameronian Cat, you get the story of a cat found catching a mouse on the Sabbath day and the dire consequences it suffers. James Hogg, author of  “A Private Memoir and Confession of a Justified Sinner” writes about this song in his collection of songs called Jacobite Reliques:
” It is by some called The Presbyterian Cat, but generally as above; and is always sung by the wags in mockery of the great pretended strictness of the Covenanters, which is certainly, in some cases, carried to an extremity rather ludicrous.  I have heard them myself, when distributing the sacrament, formally debar from the table the king and all his ministers; all witches and warlocks; all who had committed or attempted suicide; all who played at cards and dice; all the men that had ever danced opposite to a woman, and every woman that had danced with her face toward a man; all the men who looked at their cattle or crops, and all the women who pulled green kail or scraped potatoes, on the Sabbath-day; and I have been told, that in former days they debarred all who used fanners for cleaning their oats, instead of God’s natural wind.” 

From what had been a sensible practice the barring has become as ridiculous in its strictness as the anabaptists practice that John Calvin wrote against.

Now let us move to the end of 19th Century   and to the pastor of Trinity Congregational Church Edinburgh, one John Hunter. Now Congregationalists in Scotland often struggled to find their position with respect to the strong Presbyterian culture. A Reformed church that was not Presbyterian in structure just seemed odd.

Equally at the time in Scotland there is renewed interest in written liturgy with the forming of the Church Service Society and the work towards a new Book of Common Order for the Church of Scotland. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that John Hunter who has an interest in liturgy writes his own Service book.

Now Reformed churches did not do much beyond basic liturgy whether Congregational or Presbyterian but John Hunter takes the prohibitions that are used by the Presbyterians and changes them around  in his address by the minister to the people. This change is described Horton Davies  as John Hunter’s “… greatest single liturgical invention” [Davies, H.(1962) Worship and Theology in England: From Newman to Martineau; Oxford University Press p232].

“Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbours and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of the God and walking henceforth in his holy ways; draw near with reverence, faith and thanksgiving, and take the Supper of the Lord to your comfort

Come to this sacred Table, not because you must, but because you may: come to testify not that you are righteous but that you sincerely love our Lord Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciple: come not because you are strong  but because you are weak; not because you have any claim on heaven’s rewards, but because in your frailty and sin you stand in need of Heaven’s mercy and help: come not to express opinion but to seek a Presence and pray for a Spirit
And now that the supper of the Lord is spread before you, lift up your minds and hearts above all selfish fears and cares; let this bread and this wine be to you the witnesses and signs of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, Before the throne of the Heavenly Father and the cross of the Redeemer make you humble confession of sin, consecrate you lives to Christian obedience and service and pray for strength to do and to bear the holy and blessed will of God”

What was a prohibition is now an invitation.

At most URC communion services today you will here an invitation often picking up phrases from John Hunter’s original. However, if you go back to the worship books you won’t often find it, yet time after time in the actual act of worship. What is more is the invite asks people to come, more and more it has stressed that it is Christ’s table not the table of any creed or sect (yes I am quoting but not sure where from).

This repeated use of this liturgical innovation has entered into the consciousness of the church-going public. It has become part of how we think of ourselves. I have seen it quoted in theological debate as well as during worship.  It has been picked up by lay preachers as a key element of worship. Most people’s understanding of the rubrics of communion come from this and not from the dry rules that technically govern such things. If a congregation of whatever tradition has some sort of an open table, I suspect this working in the background. The genie is out of the bottle, the tables have become open, I suspect no-one can put it back, however, much any tradition tries to apply the rules. This all because a Scot’s Congregationalist needed to find a way to differentiate his congregation from the Presbyterian around it!