Ritual in Anglicanism

I wanted to give you a heads up about some of the pageantry you will be witnessing this Holy Week here at St. Margaret’s. “Ceremonial,” as it is called, is a defining feature of our Anglican church, although this was not always uncontroversial. There have always been tensions between the so-called “high-churchmen” and the “low-churchmen” in our tradition, going as far back as the Reformation. If you can believe it, the presence even of candles on the altar was a matter of controversy even as recently as the 1874 General Convention.

I mentioned today in our Midweek Mass, when we commemorated Blessed James DeKoven, one of the founders of my seminary. He was being persecuted by General Convention for his “ritualism,” which included many things we take for granted today—candles on the altar, Eucharistic vestments, and ultimately (the thing from which all these externals flowed out) his belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. He said, “I believe in the Real, Actual Presence of our Lord, under the form of bread and wine, upon the altars of our churches. I myself adore, and would, if it were necessary or my duty, teach my people to adore, Christ present in the elements under the form of bread and wine.” This was to throw down the gauntlet to the low-churchmen of his day.

This view has always been permitted by the words of the Prayer Book but was not always popular in the Anglican tradition. Really, it is because of the bravery of people like James DeKoven that we have many of the ceremonial things which we now take for granted. DeKoven added:

“If I prostrate myself — I do not do it — but were I to prostrate myself before the altar, it would only be because I see, hidden behind all material forms, him, my own Savior, Whom I believe in, and love, and adore. And if I place upon head, upon lip, and upon breast, the sign of the cross, it is only to remind me of him and his crucifixion. And if I place upon the altar the lights that blaze and glow, it is only because they typify here on earth the seven lamps of fire which burn before the throne of God, which no canons and no General Conventions can ever put out.”

Elsewhere in his speech, he said, “You may take away from us, if you will, every external ceremony; you may take away altars, and super-altars, lights and incense and vestments…and we will submit to you. But, gentlemen… to adore Christ’s Person in his Sacrament – that is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart.”

I bring this up in this first article to remind you that our right as Anglicans to celebrate his Triumphal Entry, Passion, and Resurrection with the ceremonial which you will witness this Holy Week was fought-for and hard-won by people like James DeKoven who were willing to stand up for catholic ceremonial at a time when to do so was unpopular. Little could he have guessed that within little more than a hundred years, the Real Presence would become the default position in the Episcopal Church, and that the Prayer Book itself would include special directions for the Triduum.

In the next article, we will take a look at the basis of such ceremonial in the practice of the Early Church.