A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Glen Scorgie teaches at the Canadian Theological Seminary, Regina, Saskatchewan.
Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland Forrester. Duncan, and Murray, Douglas, eds. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1984.
Duncan Forrester, Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at New College, Edinburgh, and Douglas Murray, Associate Editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology have brought together eleven essays on the form and character of Christian worship in Scotland since the earliest times. The work should be of particular interest to those whose own worship tradition is linked to that of the Scots.
Ten scholars have contributed, all of them competent and some of them (Gordon Donaldson, for example) very well-known historians. But despite the number of contributors, there is nothing eclectic about Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland. The editors have taken their responsibilities seriously, and given this multi-author work an integrated character. The contributions are for the most part arranged chronologically. They begin with early Celtic worship, and carry through the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Covenant times and on to the present day.
In addition, there are two topical essays: one by Professor James Whyte of St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, on ‘‘The Setting of Worship.” and another quite intriguing one by David H.C. Read on “The Scottish Tradition of Preaching.” In the former, Whyte notes that his own concern for worship setting was shared by the Scottish Reformers, who prescribed that neglected kirks should be repaired in a fashion “as appertaineth as well to the Magestie of God, as unto the ease and commodity of the people” (p. 154). In the latter. Read suggests that the distinctive ideal of Scottish preaching has been the wedding of passion and scholarship.
The volume is thus a welcome supplement to the standard work in the field, namely, William D. Maxwell’s History of Worship in the Church of Scotland (1955). Maxwell’s work is a brief but felicitous study. Admittedly, he is partisan in his treatment, and fails to conceal his hostility towards all that is not (to his mind) tasteful and austere. But this personal bias is so transparent, and so winsomely expressed, that if anything it adds to rather than detracts from his work. The Studies edited by Forrester and Duncan offer much more information than Maxwell ventured to discuss, and they strive to present these facts with more objectivity than he displayed. These aims, it would seem, have been achieved, though perhaps at the expense of some vivacity. At the same time the more recent Studies also surpass Maxwell by expanding the range of inquiry. Maxwell restricted himself to developments within the Church of Scotland. Forrester and Murray treat Scottish Presbyterianism too. of course, but also include chapters on the Episcopal (by Allan Maclean) and Roman Catholic (by Mark Dilworth. O.S.B.) worship traditions.
In keeping with Maxwell’s conclusions, and the more recent suggestions made by Alec Cheyne in his Transforming of the Kirk: Victorian Scotland’s Religious Revolution (1983), Douglas Murray notes that: “During the second half of the nineteenth century the worship of the presbyterian churches in Scotland changed more than at any time since the seventeenth century” (p. 79). Indeed, it was a time of such bewildering innovations as hymnody, instrumental music, service books, sermons read from scripts and (tell it not in Gath) Christmas services.
Yet despite these revolutionary changes, and all that have followed since that time, Forrester concedes that “a disturbing number of people [still] find that services are often dreary and shapeless ministerial monologues . . .” (p. 168). Evidently the Scottish evolution in worship has not yet reached its perfected state. He therefore stresses that the task of reappraisal and advance must continue, simply because, in the words of Karl Barth, worship is “the most momentous, the most urgent, the most glorious action that can take place in human life’’ (p. 169).