“The Worship of the Presbyterian Church”
This short work by David Douglas
Bannerman, published in 1884 is based on lectures that he gave in Perth and
Glasgow. Bannerman, the Free Church
minister of St Leonards in Perth for most of his ministerial career, produced this
succinct biblical and historical defence of the use of an optional liturgy,
showing that this was the historical position of the Presbyterian Church of
Scotland from the Reformation until the watering down of her practice with the
adoption of the Westminster Directory for Public Worship. The guidance of the Directory was only
adopted to try and facilitated a closer union with the Reformed church in
England, but that hoped for unity of practice in worship never truly emerged.
Bannerman shows that Knox’s Book
of Common Order was the standard guide in the Scottish Church, outlining a rich
but not prescribed and binding liturgy.
The prayers of the Book of Common Order were both models and guides to
enrich Presbyterian worship. They were
the framework used by Rutherford, Dickson and Henderson and beloved by the
Scottish Covenanters who resisted the imposition of Laud’s liturgy not because they
were opposed to a liturgy per se, but because they were opposed to a liturgy
that was inflexible and Popish in character and had no consent from the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Bannerman is not blind to the
dangers that even a non-prescriptive liturgy could cause, but he gently
balances this with a discussion of the advantages that such a liturgy could
bring, not least a historical continuity with the worship of the Scottish
Reformers and the wider Reformed church in continental Europe.
“The
historical position of the Scottish Church in this matter, deliberately taken
up by her best representatives both of the first and second Reformation, was
that of a discretionary liturgy, regarded and used as at once a basis, guide,
and stimulus for the exercise of free prayer on the part of her ministers,
elders and people.”
There is a growing sense within
Presbyterianism that our worship needs to return to our Reformed roots,
combining freedom and form, enriched by the liturgies of the Reformation and
the ancient church. There is equally a
growing danger that Presbyterian worship becomes less Reformed, reflecting the
vacuous style of much modern evangelical and charismatic confusion, rather than
the traditional decency and order of our forefathers. Bannerman is a voice from the past calling us
to reconsider how we approach worship, and a voice that deserves to be heard.
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