Thanksgiving ... for the "sober, decent" ceremonies of early PECUSA worship

Each Thanksgiving Day, laudable Practice gives thanks for an aspect of the life and history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. This year, we turn to the simple, modest ceremonies of early PECUSA worship.  It is, in some ways, a theme particularly appropriate for Thanksgiving Day: modest, quiet, decent ceremonies, after all, echo something of the frugal New England spirit associated with the origins of the day. There was nothing gaudy, loud, or overstated about early Episcopalian ceremonies: minister vested in surplice; kneeling to receive the Sacrament and the sign of the Cross at Baptism; the congregation appropriately kneeling, sitting, standing; a decently attired Lord's Table, with communion rails; quietly plain church buildings consecrated for divine service.

In a sermon to the 1786 General Convention, meeting in Philadelphia, William White - the recently consecrated Bishop of Pennsylvania - explained why Prayer Book worship was not defined by numerous ceremonies:

I proposed ... to lead your attention to the offices of devotion which become a church thus divine in its origin, and holy in its doctrine; and which are the "clothing of wrought gold."

And here, let none confound the metaphor with the spiritual meaning; or think there is held up a plea in favour of a showy and fantastic worship. For, as we may perceive a clear difference between the gaudy splendor of affected ornament, and the decent dignity suitable to birth and station; so, it is not in unmeaning ceremonies that we must look for the majesty, beauty and propriety, which should adorn all reasonable offices of devotion. Not however that religion is so abstracted as to have no connection with the senses. Whatever charms the eye, and ear, acquireth by means of them an influence over the mind: and God forbid, that those avenues should be shut against such subjects only, as are the most worthy to take entire possession of the soul. Still, the most brilliant ornaments of divine worship are prayers and praises, suitable to gospel truth.

There is more than an echo here of Cranmer's account of ceremonies in 'Of Ceremonies, Why some be abolished and some retained':

And besides this, Christ's Gospel is not a Ceremonial Law, (as much of Moses' Law was,) but it is a Religion to serve God, not in bondage of the figure or shadow, but in the freedom of the Spirit; being content only with those Ceremonies which do Serve to a decent Order and godly Discipline, and such as be apt to stir up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty to God, by some notable and special signification, whereby he might be edified. 

Some ceremonies, few in number, are most fitting: the senses are not untouched during divine service. Multiply them, however, and we too easily forget, in White's words, that that "it is not in unmeaning ceremonies that we must look for the majesty, beauty and propriety, which should adorn all reasonable offices of devotion". Here was, in the words of a writer in an 1804 edition of The Churchman's Magazine, "the golden mean between too much, and too little form and ceremony ... that sober, decent, yet not unornamental service of God": some ceremonies, decent churches, neither gaudy or overstated.

Modest ceremonies: not a case of ceremonies entirely, indecently absent. Early Episcopalian worship was "yet not unornamental" for, as White had stated, divine service should have a "decent dignity".  As another writer in the same year in The Churchman's Magazine declared - contrasting it with the "modern visionaries" of the Second Great Awakening and their "pretended conversions and revivals of religion" - "The religion of Christ is a religion of decency, sober mindedness and order". Modest ceremonies fittingly pointed and gave expression to such "decency, sober mindedness, and order".

Another sermon to General Convention, this time in 1808, by Philadelphia minister James Abercrombie, referred to the "ceremonies so few and innocent" of Episcopalian divine service:

With respect to our Rites and Ceremonies, they are neither numerous nor burdensome; preserving a just medium between the fastidious and melancholy coldness of Puritanism, and the tedious and unmeaning mummery of Superstition, they are admirably calculated to awaken and animate attention. Appropriate, solemn, and impressive, they give dignity to our devotion, and enforce the sublimity of our service.

Abercrombie's account of the Prayer Book ceremonies of early PECUSA worship as "a just medium" again emphasises that such ceremonies are neither too many nor entirely absent: instead, such modest ceremonies suffice, a sign of the dignity of divine service. Increase such ceremonies and they become a distracting burden; remove these modest ceremonies and divine service loses something of its dignity.

An 1819 charge by John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, brings us back to William White's reminder that the heart of divine service is not the modest ceremonies but the heart and soul in prayer and praise. This is all the more significant in light of the fact that Hobart - in contrast to White - represented the High Church tradition in early PECUSA. In Hobart, however, we see the Old High spirit, faithful to the Prayer Book's "chaste ... ceremonies", not seeking after "gaudy pageantry":

The liturgy of his own Church the Churchman revering as the first of uninspired compositions, so correct and affecting in its exhibition of evangelical truth; so sober, and yet so fervid in its spirit; so perspicuous, and yet so elevated in its language; so orderly, and yet so varied in its distinct parts; so impressive and significant, and yet so chaste in its ceremonies; accounts it his distinguishing privilege to worship his God, and to supplicate the merits of his Saviour, in its inimitable forms. And however he may boast the name, he acts unworthy of the character of a Churchman who either permits this spiritual service, calculated to rouse and cherish every devotional feeling of his heart, to degenerate into the formal homage of the lips; or would for a moment compare it with the unmeaning and gaudy pageantry of papal worship, or the meager and unpremeditated, though doubtless sincere, effusions of many Protestants. In his preference of this worship the Churchman, and particularly the Church Clergyman, is uniform and consistent; not merely adhering rigidly to it as far as the Church has plainly enjoined it, but carefully avoiding the suspicion of a secret preference for extempore effusions, by not mixing them with her well ordered and comprehensive services.

Hobart, like White, expounds why the Prayer Book has but modest ceremonies, few in number: they aid the heart and soul in divine service, without overwhelming the senses; they serve rather than obscure the call to the heart to offer prayer and praise. 

Such a sober, decent, modest approach to ceremonies has, of course, been rather lost in the contemporary Episcopal Church, with some honourable exceptions. There are, thankfully, here and there in the Great Republic, a few Episcopal churches that have retained Morning Prayer as a main Sunday service, the surplice rather than vestments, a modestly attired Lord's Table, and a layout befitting the Reformed worship in Word and Sacrament of the Prayer Book tradition. 

Such churches are a reminder of a noble Protestant Episcopalian tradition which can continue to resonate, cutting through the clutter and distraction of a culture bombarded by constant images, sound, and colour: loud, gaudy, overstated. In such a cultural context, the modest, decent approach to ceremonies of early PECUSA worship is something to be more widely retrieved and re-received with thanksgiving, quietly aiding and serving - not overwhelming and distracting from - the call to approach the throne of grace "with a pure heart and a humble voice".

A happy Thanksgiving to friends and readers in the United States.

(The photographs are of Saint Matthew's Church, Bedford, New York; Old Trinity Church, Dorchester, Maryland; and Bruton Parish Church, Virginia.)