Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Liturgy and worship

Michael Spencer recently recommended a new InterVarsity Press publication: the Pocket Dictionary of Liturgy & Worship by Brent Scott Provance. My copy just arrived and I agree:
The Dictionary is balanced between Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox and Protestant/Evangelical traditions. Some of the articles are quite substantial. ...I highly recommend it for you or as a gift for that person you know who is seeking to get out of their own liturgical box into the broader, deeper, more ancient church.
And whether you have any interest in liturgy or not, it is a very handy way to discover the what and why of the practices of our Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic and other fellow Christians. As he indicates, it isn't exclusively about their practices. "Non-liturgical" Protestants will find definitions and descriptions relevant to our traditions as well.

This Seventh Day Baptist turned almost immediately to see what it had to say about subjects about which I know something. I found brief entries titled "baptism, believers" and "baptism, infant" which accurately describe the justifications for each. There is a description of "congregational" as a form of church government. Seventh day Sabbath observers would be interested in the entry about:
Sabbath. Rooted in a Hebrew word for "rest," the Sabbath is the seventh and final day of the Jewish week (Saturday). The Sabbath begins at sunset Friday evening and ends at sunset on Saturday. This day is *holy in the Jewish religion, its proper observance being demanded in the *Ten Commandments (Ex 20:8-11). Many Christian churches have transferred the sanctity of the Sabbath to *Sunday, the primary day of Christian worship, though some Christian churches maintain keeping primary worship and rest on the Sabbath (e.g., Seventh-Day Adventists). Observance and strictures concerning the Sabbath or Sunday vary greatly among Christians, the author of the letter to the Hebrews even abstracting its meaning from calendrical observance (Heb 4:4-11; cf. Rom 14:5-6). As Saturday evening can be understood as the first part of the day of Sunday (according to OT reckoning), Sunday worship services in some churches are offered Saturday evenings. [note: the asterisk refers you to an entry on that subject]
The article on Sunday is much shorter and alleges that evidence for corporate worship on that day "is found as early as the NT and *Apostolic Fathers" which is, of course, a common argument by those justifying the change.

The book is good on those things I know about and I will profit by having a concise source for those things less familiar. Spencer writes "I’m glad IVP gave me this book to review, because now I’m one of three Baptists who can identify a baldachino."

Recommendation and Review: Pocket Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship by Brett Scott Provance | internetmonk.com

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