Liturgy

Introducing the Old Testament to readers

August 23, 2010

This is part of an experimental set of simple introductions I’m trying out. Comments on what is unclear, what ought to be included, or changed, are welcome. The pieces are none of them intended to be longer than two sides of a typical book, so around 800-1000 words each. They are meant as simple guides [...]

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How helpful are these creative ideas for alternative worship?

August 16, 2010

Oh dear. I so wanted to really like this book Creative Ideas for Alternative Sacramental Worship. It’s the sort of resource many of us ought to be looking for and making use of. But this one is quite a mixed bag. Let’s start with the positive. It really encourages people to have a go at [...]

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A Sunday Assumption: how embarrassing is that?

August 14, 2010
Titian

Tomorrow is most widely known in the Western Church as the Feast of the Assumption, although the Church of England’s calendar maintains a surreptitious ambiguity and simply refers to the day as the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The lectionary also provides a set of ordinary time readings for the Sunday for all those [...]

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Fresh Expressions of Funeral

August 12, 2010

I have begun raising this with various people, but it seems to me that the current mainstream funeral provision in the UK is misconceived. There are, I think, a significant number of people who have some fairly inchoate beliefs, and a larger number who are well aware that within their family grouping there are religious [...]

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Going god shopping in the worship mall

August 4, 2010

I’ve been reading The Worship Mall by Bryan Spinks (SPCK / Alcuin Club 2010). It’s unusual in that it’s a book by a bonafide academic liturgist about the stuff people – many of whom would claim not to be doing liturgy at all – actually get up to, especially when they’re being “non-traditional”. A short [...]

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When worship songs become entertainment

June 13, 2010

There was a time when charismatic and evangelical Christianity was simply populist. In many ways it still is, but that early populism was no more apparent than in its (re-)introduction of more contemporary musical styles into worship. The new musical approach to songs instead of hymns joined hands with a much older evangelical critique of [...]

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The common cup: after the swine-flu health scare

May 29, 2010

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles) When I first – in an earlier cyber-carnation – wrote about the thirtieth of the articles, I thought I was dealing with something almost entirely in the past. Discussing the distribution of Holy Communion in both kinds, versus its distribution [...]

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Help: I can’t resist the temptation to be rude about this

May 23, 2010

Scot McKnight posts on a new psalter: I want to mention this again because of what I’m hearing through the back window… more and more Christians are wanting a prayerbook The thing is, my basic reaction is to say: “well, join a real church which uses one.” There’s a serious point to the prejudice on [...]

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God in the box? Reserving the sacrament

May 16, 2010

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles) When I wrote the original version of this series I quickly got a disgruntled evangelical comment on my treatment of the twenty-eighth article.: “Do you have nothing to say about the last paragraph of this Article, which is blatantly ignored [...]

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The future present of the Real Presence

May 13, 2010

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles) This post follows on from last week’s on the twenty-eighth article about the Eucharist. I don’t particularly want to get stuck in the Reformation debates, and as I noted earlier, the development of Anglican spirituality in Eucharistic hymnody, as well [...]

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