Confessions of a Liturgical Historian: A Journey of Rethinking the Bible’s Importance When Discussing Worship; or, What I Am Now Learning from Pentecostals and Evangelicals

Since the 1960s two liturgical tsunamis have swept over the entire globe, adjusting the worship of Christians worldwide. The first is the Liturgical Movement. Of the two tsunamis, readers of Liturgy are probably the most familiar with this one. Gaining momentum in earlier serious studies of patristic-era worship, this movement hit its stride in the 1960s with the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms in Roman Catholicism. The impulse spilled over to a variety of other mainline Protestant liturgical traditions. If you are a worshiper, musician, or pastor in one of those traditions, I am willing to bet your Sunday worship has been impacted by the Liturgical Movement, whether in the use of a three-year lectionary, a new emphasis upon the sacraments as the center of Christian life, a robust following of the church year, or a revision of liturgical texts sparked by the strength of early ways of worshiping. This Liturgical Movement had a broad impact, one wider than just providing new resources for Sunday morning. One of the concerns of the Movement was an educational goal, namely, to teach worshipers a new vision of worship. The hope was not only that participation in the new worship be full, conscious, and active but also that we could understand new ways more deeply. The Liturgical Conference, so named because it used to hold large teaching conferences, and its journal, Liturgy, which you are now reading, were part of the educational reach of this Liturgical Movement. So also were various other programs, including the doctoral program in liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame, of which I am an alumnus. Here I waded into the vast sea of historical and theological reflection on the church’s liturgy, guided by leading professors in the field. It was an exhilarating experience, one which is still deeply formative for me. I would not trade it for anything. But I have discovered a gap in my education and formation in the Liturgical Movement, namely, an ability to discuss easily worship from the angle of the Bible. Simply put, I did not have a fully formed biblical theology of worship. I have discovered that lacuna as my research dives more deeply into studying the second liturgical tsunami, the music-driven way of worship that is often known in America as Contemporary Worship, but known more globally (and in the United States among nonwhite and/or non-mainline congregations) as Praise and Worship. For an all-embracing term, I will call it Contemporary Praise and Worship. The global impact of this second tsunami has been as widespread as the first and occurred at approximately the same time, facts that American mainline Christians might not know since our focus was on a few