A Mainline Protestant Concern

Worship renewal is a corrective to the individualism of much Protestant worship. The liturgical movement is restoring the corporate nature of worship as well as the balance of Word and Table. The liturgical movement addresses itself wholeheartedly to the problem of exaggerated individualism which has tended in the past two hundred years to reduce many Protestant churches to little more than private devotional assemblies. Its answer to pietism, rationalism, and liberalism is an attempt to restore the supernatural authority of revelation and the truly divine-human character of worship. If leaders of renewal work to restore historical forms of worship, this is not because they derive some quaint delight in dabbling with antiquities. Rather, they see such liturgies as proclaiming the ancient faith in a truly magnificent manner. These liturgies proclaim that the worshiper is not an isolated soul in the sea of the saved, but an integral part of a community that witnesses to its faith and…