Lutheran Worship

Luther's liturgical reform was guided by the principle that if the Scriptures did not expressly reject a particular practice, the church was free to keep it. Consequently, Lutheran worship retained much of the ceremonial practice of Catholic worship. There are a number of reasons for considering the Lutheran tradition as the most conservative of the Protestant traditions of worship. Martin Luther (14831546) had a high respect for the existing Christian cultus; his inclination was to purge those aspects that could not be reconciled to his theology and to retain the rest. He could be quite radical on occasion (as with the canon of the Mass) but on the whole retained more than he rejected. He tended to move carefully; others anticipated him on vernacular liturgies. After statements in The Babylonian Captivity (1520) that were to be determinative for almost all subsequent Protestant sacramental theology, Luther moved to liturgical reform with vernacular baptismal rites in 1523 and 1526…