Introduction to Christian Worship, Third Edition traces the development of the major forms of Christian worship, and includes discussion of the newest service books of the principal churches of North America and the British Isles. This staple of liturgical history is used widely in Protestant seminaries and is read by clergy and laity alike as an accurate, informative, and accessible introduction to all aspects of Christian worship. This revision keeps pace with the latest scholarship and includes more maps, tables, woodcuts, and photographs.
Introduction to Christian Worship, Third Edition traces the development of the major forms of Christian worship, and includes discussion of the newest service books of the principal churches of North America and the British Isles. This staple of liturgical history is used widely in Protestant seminaries and is read by clergy and laity alike as an accurate, informative, and accessible introduction to all aspects of Christian worship. This revision keeps pace with the latest scholarship and includes more maps, tables, woodcuts, and photographs.
James White’s classic Christian worship text, revised and updated. The book students of worship have read and re-read is now revised and updated for the first time in more than twenty years. Author Ed Phillips, one of White’s graduate students, is joined by practitioners and teachers from emerging generations, who contribute timely and well-researched material from their own areas of expertise. This new content brings the original up to date, filling significant gaps since the original publication on topics like technology, arts, embodiment in and of worship, pluralism and multiculturalism, denominational changes, and changes in the spaces and forms of worship, including worship in the age of pandemics. This new edition will take its place on the shelf of every student, pastor, and leader of Christian worship.
Most histories of Christian worship are written as if nothing significant in liturgical history ever happened in North America, as if cultural diversities were insignificant in the development of worship, and as if most of what mattered were words the priest or minister addressed to God. This book is a revisionist work, attempting to give new direction to liturgical history by treating the experience of worship of the people in the pews as the primary liturgical document. It means liturgical history written facing the other way--that is, looking into the chancel rather than out of it. Relishing the liturgical diversity of recent centuries as firm evidence of Chritianity's ability to adapt to a wide variety of peoples and places, Professor White shows that this tendency has been apparent in Chrisitian worship since its inception in the New Testament churches. Instead of imposing one tradition's criteria on worship, he tries to give a balanced and comprehensive approach to the development of the dozen or more traditions surviving in the modern world.
In recent years scholars have paid increasing attention to the richness and diversity of North American contributions to Christian worship. This volume of articles by James F. White summarizes a major segment of liturgical history (1955-1995). Characteristic North American emphases, such as liturgy and justice, are highlighted along with other issues growing out of the worship context of the New World.
Each year a billion dollars is spent on church buildings in the United States. Yet there is no authoritative book available to guide building committees, ministers, and others responsible for new churches in the theological implications of their work. Dr. White explores the theological and historical considerations relevant to building for Protestant worship. Surprisingly, these are often ignored by building committees, usually with disastrous results. His approach is highly original, especially in his theological treatment of worship; yet his book is also a operative in the largest sense, in that it relates theology to practice. Professor White begins with a critical analysis of contemporary concepts of Protestant worship and then defines the liturgical factors in church design. Following this, there are four chapters giving an historical account of various experiments from the third century to the present. This section indicates the tremendous variety of possibilities open to the church builder, many of which have been ignored too long. A final chapter deals with emotive factors - all vitally relevant to the architect: choir, liturgical art, and style. The opportunity to design a new church building occurs only once or twice in each generation of church members. It is all the more important that it be done carefully since the building will continue to affect the life of the congregation for many years. Until fundamental questions as to what the Church is and what the Church does in worship are raised, a congregation is not prepared to build. This book will help churches find the answers. The 155-item bibliography should be of value to many since a recent extensive bibliography on Protestant church architecture does not exist. This book also contains 60 diagrams of experiments in plan garnered from nearly 2000 years of history.
The sacraments were a major factor in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Ever since, they have been an important part of Protestant church life. Major changes have occurred in our time as most traditions have revised their sacramental rites and experienced many changes in sacramental practices. This book traces the most significant practices in the past five centuries, explains how they often led to controversies, and examines the faith that was expressed and experienced in the sacraments. James F. White attempts to depict the whole sweep of Protestant sacramental life, so that an overall picture is possible. And he outlines the possibilities for future developments.
A comprehensive look at the sacraments in today's mainline Protestant churches. This volume shows how the church can utilize the power of physical symbolism-- embodied in both the "outward and visible" and the "inward and spiritual"--to enrich worship.
For over a hundred years, Anglican church buildings in every part of the world were dominated by a single idea of what churches should look like and how they should be arranged inside. Only since Vatican II has the dominance of this idea been finally overthrown. Thousands of churches still reflect the architectural dogmas of the Cambridge Camden Society. Millions of worshippers still imbibe the theology so effectively promoted by this group through its powerful influence on the arrangement of church interiors and the style of such buildings. And many of these architectural images of what is the nature of the Church itself have proved to be the most stubborn resisters of Vatican II reforms. The Cambridge Camden Society was so successful in changing the outward aspects of Anglican worship because it had specific ideas as to how churches should be arranged. The Society's infatuation with a certain period of gothic architecture and with the whole medieval 'cultus' brought about drastic changes in worship according to the 'Book of Common Prayer' without changing a single letter of the prayer book itself. The members of the Society led the way not only in the revival of medieval architecture but also of vestments and ceremonial. Though much of the Cambridge Camden theology reflects that of the Oxford Movement, Dr. White shows both parallels and contrasts between the aims of Oxford tractarians and Cambridge ecclesiologists. Architecture proved to be every bit as effective a form of propaganda as tracts, and a good deal more permanent. The public, at first hostile, eventually became receptive to the ideals of the Cambridge Movement. The measure of the Movement's success is seen in almost all Anglican (and many Protestant) churches built or remodelled between 1840 and the 1960s. This is a valuable contribution to nineteenth-century studies, especially to the visual history of the period.
Most histories of Christian worship are written as if nothing significant in liturgical history ever happened in North America, as if cultural diversities were insignificant in the development of worship, and as if most of what mattered were words the priest or minister addressed to God. This book is a revisionist work, attempting to give new direction to liturgical history by treating the experience of worship of the people in the pews as the primary liturgical document. It means liturgical history written facing the other way--that is, looking into the chancel rather than out of it. Relishing the liturgical diversity of recent centuries as firm evidence of Chritianity's ability to adapt to a wide variety of peoples and places, Professor White shows that this tendency has been apparent in Chrisitian worship since its inception in the New Testament churches. Instead of imposing one tradition's criteria on worship, he tries to give a balanced and comprehensive approach to the development of the dozen or more traditions surviving in the modern world.
James White’s classic Christian worship text, revised and updated. The book students of worship have read and re-read is now revised and updated for the first time in more than twenty years. Author Ed Phillips, one of White’s graduate students, is joined by practitioners and teachers from emerging generations, who contribute timely and well-researched material from their own areas of expertise. This new content brings the original up to date, filling significant gaps since the original publication on topics like technology, arts, embodiment in and of worship, pluralism and multiculturalism, denominational changes, and changes in the spaces and forms of worship, including worship in the age of pandemics. This new edition will take its place on the shelf of every student, pastor, and leader of Christian worship.
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