Public Worship
By J. T. CHRISTIE (Principal of Jesus College, Oxford) THE attention given to what is termed "Control of Wor- ship" in the recent report of the Church Assembly Commission on Church and State is significant. Most laymen are aware that many services today transgress the regulations of the Prayer Book, and some laymen thoroughly approve of the innovations. If "control of worship" meant abolishing these innovations, they would be sorry. But there are still some laymen who feel unhappy about the wide diver- gences from the Rubric which are increasingly common today. Partly they feel unhappy—and let us be honest—because the unauthorised practices offend their taste. They cannot appre- ciafe the use. of incense and vestments, and the gabbling of - prayers that sometimes goes with it; but when one says "taste," one often means the prejudice against " Popery " which is still not far below the surface in many English hearts. The objector knows that these things are a -real help to some worshippers, and he tries to forget his prejudice. But some objections surely do not rest only on prejudice. Every clergy- man has made a solemn promise at ordination that he will in public prayer and the administration of the Sacraments use the form in the said book prescribed and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority, and he wonders why so many of the clergy feel justified in going far beyond what is permitted and yet remaining Ministers of the Anglican Church.
Some deviation is no doubt reasonable, such as the use of prayers from the 1928 book and other sources, and the omission of certain psalms. And yet, in the experience of many laymen, it is often those clergymen who are sticklers for the liturgy in some respects that seem to over-ride it in the Communion Service, where, as they must know, innovations are most likely to offend. I was invited to give an address in a country church,. and I asked tentatively if I might have the gospel for the day read as a lesson, a practice not unknown in the more provincial world of boarding-schools. I was courteouslk told "No." This refusal seemed to me perfectly reasonable, and I recog- nised that the parson was a man who liked things done decently and in order. But at the 8.0 Communion Service that morning there were changes that could not possibly have been sanctioned by any interpretation of the Rubric: there were various additions to the service, including the "nine-fold Kyrie ";. the prayer for the King and the commandments were wholly omitted, and half the words which are to be used in adminis- tering the bread and the wine. Yet this, for many laymen, is the most central and the most sacred service of all. That is the kind of irregularity the layman has in mind when he thinks about control of worship. The report discusses the question in general with reference in particular to Parlia- mentary control and the rejection of the 1928 book. After a fair and full discussion, with some comparison and contrast between the liturgical regulations of the English and Scottish Church, the report suggests that authority should be sought "to allow experimental deviation during an interim period." It is true enough that a community may need to use a book for years before it can make up its mind as a whole whether it prefers one form of service to another. The scheme in the report is put out in some detail with due safeguards: "In effect the Convocations and the Church Assembly would not be saying 'We have made up our minds and we now - ask that legal effect may be given to our decision,' but only As a condition of health we require a real chance to make up our minds; we therefore ask to be allowed a certain regulated liberty of experiment during a limited period '."
Apprehensions would be allayed by providing inter alia that the interim period should be strictly limited, say, to seven years and that the measure should require a two-thirds majority of those /present and voting in-Convocation and the House of Laity. This seems a sensible idea. How far would it remove the layman's present unhappy feelings at unlawful divaga- tions? It would not remove them at all.
For most of my life I was a schoolmaster, and in questions of discipline my mind recurs to •.the world of school for an analogy. The proposal made in the report suggests a com- parison with a school where some of the boys have for a long time been notoriously breaking bounds; the head master sum- mons his colleagues and, with the approval of the governors, drafts an interim scheme experimentally enlarging the school bounds, which in fact have for years been transgressed by the offenders far beyond what any head master could allow. I do not know what attitude the dissentient clergy would take to the recommendations of the report. But I know what the school- boys would do in my imaginary case : they would laugh.
The question is not whether this scheme or that scheme is the better if it is desirable to widen the boundary of lawful authority. • The question is one of enforcing any scheme. Lawful authority at present is to be found in the regulations of the Book of Common Prayer, and they are probably broken at almost every service held in Anglican churches. But some of these breaches are commonly accepted in England; they give no offence and do not exacerbate the feelings of Low Church against High Church or vice versa. But there are other breaches which do. The Church of England can afford to be wide-minded and tolerant in matters where there is an equal tolerance in the congregation. But has it the same right to wink at more flagrant breaches of authority, which find favour by some worshippers and are resented by others ? Probably those who approve are more articulate than those who dis- approve, because the latter simply stay away from church. Where there is a cleavage of this kind, surely there is a case for appealing to the Prayer Book; and there is no doubt whatever on which side the Prayer Book stands. If the Church is to regain the dignity of a clear and consistent position, even if it be an unpopular one, it miist either jettison the Prayer Book and regard the Reformation as an unfortunate mistake, or it must take steps to see that -where there is deep disagreement about religious usage, the Prayer Book is enforced.
But what steps ? Ultimately there must be an appeal to law, and at this point the layman -goes on to read the fourth and last section on Church Courts. The final decision. on Church disputes lies with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but, to quote the report, "the authority of the Judicial Committee in spiritual questions is so widely and strongly disowned that no such questions are brought before it. This aspect of the problem demands fuller discussion, but clearly some change is necessary if the Church is to be master in its own house.
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