From the perspective of a present-day Episcopal worshipper, the experience of the 1789 Communion Office presents two discontinuities with modern practice, and one key continuity.

Today we’ll take a look at the first discontinuity: the Feel. I break this down into three main headings, the different visual setting, the different ceremonial action, and the different participants. Clearly, this is the discontinuity that it is hardest to express through the media of writing and reading. In the talk, we’d just experienced the liturgy together; reading this, you’ll have to try to imagine it… (We did try to record it, but apparently the recording stopped halfway through.)

All three of these headings (visual, ceremonial, and participants) need to be discussed together because they all relate to two particular points of rupture that we’re on the far side of now: The Cambridge/Camden Movement and Vatican II.

If you’re a church nerd, you probably know about the Oxford Movement which was a theological renewal movement in the Church of England that began in the mid 1800’s; only the nerdiest of the church nerds are familiar with the Cambridge/Camden movement which took and ran with the theological points of the Oxford Movement and turned them into sound, stone, and movement. If you think a church should look like a Gothic Revival building with stone and stained glass and all, these are the people who made the Gothic Revival happen!

The other thing they did was to look into the English Church’s past for the music and vestments and ritual that had been thrown out at the Reformation and also looked ecumenically towards what was going on in the Roman Catholic Church. What we see, hear, and expect in a modern Episcopal Church was largely shaped by these folks. A proper Hanoverian-period church looked a lot more like this:

This satirical print by William Hogarth entitled “The Sleeping Congregation” was originally published in 1736, but was enhanced and reprinted in 1762 with the helpful additions of a couple of warts to the preacher and more cracks in the walls. Hogarth communicates a number of things visually that connect to the Feel of the service I’m trying to get across.

First, notice what is and isn’t shown. The right half of the image is dominated by the giant double-decker pulpit. Where’s the altar? No idea–it’s not visible here. The sleeping congregation in the box pews fills the left; there’s no organ, no choir, no suggestion of music at all.

Second, the sleeping congregation and the two non-sleeping ministers says something else about the experience–there’s not a lot of congregational participation and a lot of talking by the ministers. One of the things I noticed when Fr. Eric and I did our first run-through and again at the liturgy itself is how little he sat; he was constantly standing or kneeling because he was the one doing the vast majority of the talking. Many of the items now said corporately were said by the priest alone like the initial Lord’s Prayer (which our congregation joined in on out of habit!) and even the Prayer of Humble Access which the priest prays aloud on behalf of all.

Then there’s the role of the clerk whose principle reason for being is to respond to the priest. In fact, that’s the reason why the clerk exists. The role of liturgical clerk came to prominence at the Reformation to overcome two major problems: lack of literacy and a dearth of prayer books. In 16th century England in a small country parish, it could not be taken for granted that the congregation who gathered had prayer books or could even read them if they had them. Thus, the clerk was the one layman who the clergy could be certain would be present, possessed a prayer book, and was literate. The clerk would read the congregational parts with the idea that the congregation would learn their lines through repetition and could eventually join in with what the clerk was saying.

The clerk was also responsible for leading the singing, knowing the tunes, and which tunes went with which metrical psalms and hymns as there was no printed music in the early hymnals. In fact, I suspect that this 1790 printing may have been used by the clerk at Trinity Church, New York, because the hymnal in the back is notated by meter and tunes; this page identifies the Psalm 51 paraphrase as being in Long Meter (LM) and customarily sung to Southwell (used in #641 of the ’82 Hymnal), the paraphrase of Psalm 52 is Common Meter (CM) and sung to St. David. And, yes, that’s why there’s an index of tune names on pages 949-53 in the back of the ’82 Hymnal even today. (Indeed, some hymnals even contain a metrical index that lists tune names by their meter so you can see which tunes match with which meter as did the green Lutheran Book of Worship with which I grew up.) Thus, the clerk can not only serve in the role of the congregation, but organ and choir as well!

You may have an experience of this if you have attended Choral Mattins or Choral Evensong. The choir takes the place of the clerk which is why all of the responses are sung by the choir, not the congregation. Indeed, a full Choral Evensong can be performed without a congregation present at all–and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature! This is why cathedrals and other large churches in England had paid choirs: so the full required round of Mattins and Evensong could take place regardless of whether a lay congregation was present or not. It’s a hold-over from the originally monastic concept that the community as a whole would provide for the proper worshipping of God to function even if the individual members of the congregation could not be physically present–a communal notion of community worship rather than an individualized one.

However–back to Hogarth and his print–it could also lead to what he pictures here… If you look carefully you can see that the priest’s prayer book is open to the (misquoted) Comfortable Words: “Come unto me, all ye that Labour and are Heavy Laden, and I will give you Rest. St. Matt. xi. 28.” (Hogarth gives the KJV while the prayer book uses a modified “I will refresh you” found in none of the English Bibles of the time.) Indeed, a congregation was not required to say, sing, or do anything, merely to be present. (Remember, analogously, the old Roman obligation was to “hear” Mass not to participate or receive!) The hero of the Sarum Revival, Walter Frere, was still complaining about this tendency in his 1905 Principles of Religious Ceremonial where he encourages participation saying, “Liturgical worship must be co-operative and corporate… A good deal is needed to get rid of the false idea of the duet of parson and clerk, or parson and choir, or even parson and congregation.”

Third, notice the visual vocabulary of the space. The ministers would normally wear a surplice over their cassocks of Eucharist was being celebrated; apparently it was not on this occasion. Without that garment, the preaching tabs are the only signal that this was not a courtroom or some other governmental affair as the bewigged parson could easily be a judge or magistrate. The art on the walls is equally secular with a coat of arms in the lozenge shape in the balcony and a very large, mostly obscured, Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom on the church wall, supported by the cherub. The stained glass window as well holds the (political) Cross of St. George. The only apparently religious image is the rather ambiguous glowing triangle that may or may not represent the Trinity. (Hogarth himself was a Deist and a Freemason, and it could easily be a Masonic symbol as much as a religious one!) This is a visual comment on the theological principle of Erastianism, the idea of secular supremacy over the church which would become a major concern of the early Oxford Movement.

Finally, Hogarth is definitely taking a jab at the morals and complacency of both clergy and congregation. The clerk is quite obviously eyeing the rather exposed bosom of the young lady by him. She does have a prayer book, but you’ll see it is open to the marriage service, indicating that her mind was certainly elsewhere than on the present service. While biblical verses inscribed on pulpits are quite common, the verse on this one is not one of the usual: “I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Galatians 4:11.” Much of Hogarth’s art was satirical moralizing, often portraying biting commentary on the state of English society particularly around rampant drinking and sexual immorality (and Methodism). The implication here is that the spiritual and ethical formation taking place is…lacking.

Between the Cambridge/Camden Movement and the ecumenical Liturgical Renewal Movement that culminated in Vatican II and a whole spate of new Protestant liturgies in the ’60’s and ’70’s–like our current prayer book–even Broad Church Episcopalians are quite sanguine about things like altar candles, chasubles, signs of the cross, and other liturgical gestures that were seen as rampant Romanism in earlier ages. Even practices we take for granted like standing communion stations are borrowed from Roman Catholic practice due to the ecumenical rapprochement of our present age.

So–this is the first main discontinuity, the very stripped-down Protestant aesthetic and clergy-heavy content creating the Feel of the experience.