32. Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition - James F. White

White surveyed the nine Protestant worship traditions/distinctives/historical development using seven categories: piety, time, place (circumstances of worship), prayer, preaching, music (acts of worship, and people. p.16
-In trying to be a 'descriptive' instead of 'normative' historian, White did not tell the history of Protestant worship in terms of eucharistic texts/liturgical texts. "A liturgical theology that gives preferential treatment to some forms over others is highly dubious." p.15
-"People are the primary liturgical document." p.16
-piety is the traditional term for spirituality. p.18
-Place "We must look at the relationship of the basic spaces for worship: gathering, movement, congregational, choir, baptismal, and altar-table. p.19
-Tradition: we mean inherited worship practices and beliefs that show continuity from generation to generation. ...Worship traditions, then, are specific ways of and attitudes toward doing worship that are passed on from generation to generation. p.21

16th C. Anabaptist, Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran
17th C. Quaker, Puritan
18th C. Methodist
19th C. American Frontier
20th C. Pentecostal

The Reformation era:
-"The insistence today in many parts of the Reformed tradition on beginning all worship with confession is a good instance of late-medieval penitential piety still flourishing." p.27

The future of Protestant worship:
-"If convergence becomes too prominent, we must ask whether some of the richness of the variety of Protestant worship will suffer. The richness of Protestant worship consists in its diversity and its consequent ability to serve a wide variety of people." p. 212
-new traditions will develop
-"...when more study and research are given to understanding the process, all the churches will benefit. Very little has been done to conceptualize the process of transmission of the various traditions down to the present, ..." p. 216

P: I appreciate the author's look at the historical development of Protestant worship through the lenses of people: what they do and the circumstances (space!) because this is closer to what I am used to when doing research as learned in my musicology course. However, as a Christian historian, I find very little evidence of describing God's Hands in the course of how these evolved. The book does provide a good survey of the important key moments and charts the events and people that shaped the different traditions--whether by reform or by holding onto their central theological beliefs/interpretations. White also acknowledged how certain elements of other traditions are borrowed and incorporated into one, e.g. how Methodist hymnody are adopted by the Anglicans.

26-29 Sep 2017
Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989