Sacred Actions In The Protestant Churches Today

Ever ready to adopt new methods, Protestants have been affected by new means of communication and contemporary cultural trends during the twentieth century. In addition, powerful movements of liturgical renewal, combined with the twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic movements have changed the face of Protestant worship. In regard to the actions of worship, contemporary Protestant churches have inherited competing impulses from the major movements of the modern period: Pietism, Rationalism, and Restorationism. To this should be added three additional influences: the liturgical pragmatism that grew out of revivalist religion on the American frontier and has found recent expression in televangelism and the church growth movement; the modern liturgical movement in both its Roman Catholic and Protestant manifestations, which developed out of the Restorationism of the nineteenth century; and the charismatic renewal that has emerged from twentieth-century Pentecostalism. The variou…