Thinking allowed

Introducing Thinking Liturgy

on Saturday, 3 May 2014 at 7.00 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as about Thinking Liturgy, liturgy

A dec­ade or so ago we began Think­ing Anglic­ans with the express inten­tion of proclaiming

a tol­er­ant, pro­gress­ive and com­pas­sion­ate Chris­ti­an spir­itu­al­ity, in which justice is cent­ral to the pro­clam­a­tion of the good news of the king­dom of God. Our spir­itu­al­ity must engage with the world, and be con­sist­ent with the sci­entif­ic and philo­soph­ic­al under­stand­ing on which our mod­ern world is based. It must address the changes which sci­ence and tech­no­logy have brought into our lives.

Impli­cit in that was a con­nec­tion between what we do in Church and what we do in the world. We seek to share our food with the hungry, we seek justice for the oppressed and the cap­tive, we seek a new start for all and recog­nize the wrongs that we and oth­ers have done to indi­vidu­als and groups, as well as to oth­er creatures and the phys­ic­al world. 

These things are intim­ately linked with what we do in Church. We gath­er around lectern and table to hear and receive the Word of God; we share for­give­ness and peace with our neigh­bours, and eat with them, recog­niz­ing the pres­ence of Christ as we do so. We are the body of Christ, not just in Church, but in the world. Our table fel­low­ship is not just a sym­bol­ic table fel­low­ship exist­ing only with­in the con­fines of the church build­ing; rather, all these things are one.

This close rela­tion­ship was redis­covered both by the Evan­gel­ic­al reviv­al and by the Oxford Move­ment. It was fun­da­ment­al to the rise of Chris­ti­an Social­ism and lay at the heart of the Par­ish Com­mu­nion movement.

And so in this new blog we shall look at the link and explore how our wor­ship can reflect the social justice that we have pro­claimed, and at the con­tinu­ing rel­ev­ance of this in the second dec­ade of the twenty-first cen­tury. The title ‘Think­ing Liturgy’ con­nects this blog to the par­ent ‘Think­ing Anglic­ans’ and also indic­ates the inten­tion to think about liturgy and pro­mote liturgy that is thought­ful. We shall cov­er a range of litur­gic­al top­ics and news, and try not to be con­fined to any par­tic­u­lar theo­lo­gic­al or doc­trin­al stance or ‘church­man­ship’, though our focus will be largely Anglic­an and Eng­lish. We shall con­sider too how our wor­ship, our liturgy, impacts on our mis­sion. We intend to pro­mote and share good litur­gic­al prac­tice, among both laity and clergy, and we shall explore litur­gic­al pres­id­ency. We may provide sample mater­i­al, and news of syn­od­ic­al author­iz­a­tion and com­mend­a­tion. We intend to review books and also ser­vices and build­ings, and we will cov­er related blogs and oth­er mater­i­al on the inter­net. We expect to have a num­ber of guest con­trib­ut­ors and we wel­come spir­ited litur­gic­al discussion.