Arthur Kay hates communion rails because, as he sees it, they promote exclusion, individualism, and mis-placed penance. Kay’s animus, however, does not stop with communion rails. He also appears to hate (I’m being playful here, Arthur!) the Book of Common Prayer, mainstream Anglican eucharistic theology, and the concept of an ordained priesthood, each of which seems, in Kay’s telling, to have played a part in perpetuating a faulty eucharistic practice. Those who cling to their communion rails and believe in a “consecration of the bread and wine” are at once in danger of “heretical thinking” and a violating of the second commandment. Who knew the stakes could be so high with liturgical furniture? But Kay doesn’t just tell us what he hates; he proposes a unique practice of communion that obviates his concerns and better approximates the original setting of the institution of the Lord’s Supper.
By making a fuss about kneeling at the communion (forgive me, I almost wrote “altar”!) rail, Kay is picking up an old debate. John Knox, the fiery Scottish Presbyterian, also hated communion rails and anything that smacked of popery. He preached a sermon in 1552 before the King, railing against the rail. That sermon created such a stir that it moved the King to have a declaration inserted into the prayer book, without the authority of the Church.[1] That declaration became known as the “black rubric.” Knox, like Kay, worried that such a posture was tantamount to idolatry, and that a more biblical posture was needed: sitting. Knox pushed for kneeling to be prohibited altogether from the new prayer book. Archbishop Cranmer responded that if Knox really want to be scriptural, then we should take communion lying down on our sides “like Tartars and Turks today,” since this was the actual posture of Jesus and his disciples.[2]
Cranmer believed kneeling to be a good and seemly posture that does not necessarily lead to idolatry, so a prohibition or declaration was unnecessary. Nevertheless, at the last minute, the so-called “black rubric” was hastily attached to the 1552 Book of Common Prayer even after printing had begun. It disappeared in the 1559 BCP but showed up again in the 1662 BCP (with some alterations), when Presbyterian anxieties were once more running high regarding real presence and eucharistic adoration. The rubric still required kneeling: “which Order is well meant, for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ there given to all worthy receivers” and made it clear that “no Adoration is intended…unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood.”
Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”[3] Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.[4] Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”[5] All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively. Kay’s critiques are standard fare Puritan and Presbyterian complaints about Anglican eucharistic practice going back at least to the second edition of the BCP.
Cranmer’s response to Knox is indicative of an important Anglican ethos, and is helpful for this conversation. A historicist attempt to reconstruct the setting of the first Lord’s Supper faces challenges. We can receive developments in the liturgical tradition and practices of piety, however, as long as they do not violate Scripture. Kay’s instinct to recover an explicitly biblical practice is a good one. Of course, we want our liturgical practices to be regulated by Scripture, but this is different from saying we have to find explicit warrant for everything we do in Scripture.
I have a couple of questions, which I hope Arthur could address. First, how far should we go in such a project of liturgical reconstruction? Mike Farley, sympathetic to Kay’s proposal for a “relaxed posture,” admits—like Cranmer does—that we cannot replicate the original eucharist in every detail. Once we start down the historicist path of reconstructing the first century, what are our guiding principles? Why not recline on one another’s breast in the chancel as John did with our Lord? Why not meet in homes? Could it be that the, say, neo-gothic parish church, while quite beautiful, creates a possibility for idolatry and communicates something opposite of the family meal Jesus intends? The eucharistic celebration became separated from the context of a full meal. Why not recover the full agape meal with a separate bread rite and the wine rite?
My second question is, Who gets to decide our common liturgical practices? Perhaps the greatest strength of the Book of Common Prayer tradition is that it not only provides a grammar of shared prayer and worship but also practices that direct our worship. I think Kay makes some important critiques about unhealthy individualistic tendencies that can happen in eucharistic practice. But for Anglicans that should not and does not have to be a feature of common prayer. We pray together and we commune together. To get lost in a private space during the common prayer and celebration of the eucharist at the rail or in our seats is against the whole common prayer project.
For Anglicans, as much as we might protest this or that piece of the liturgy, we don’t get to decide how we worship together; we receive a tradition, submit and apprentice ourselves to it as the people of God. I’m curious what Arthur would propose for how liturgical change should come about so that liturgy does not become an idiosyncratic endeavor. While there is a beauty in what he proposes—a family meal in the chancel around the table—how many Churches in the world celebrate the eucharist like that? If individualism is a danger in liturgical practice, it seems to me idiosyncratic liturgical projects pose a risk of the same genre.
As an Anglican priest, I have no personal investment in altar rails. In the parish I serve, we come forward to receive and drink from a common cup. We strive for an atmosphere of joyful reverence. But I have been in parishes where kneeling was the norm and it has been, on the whole, joyful and not grossly introspective. I did not feel like by being behind the rail I was hindered from receiving the grace of the sacrament or unwelcome to the fullness of the Lord’s Table. Kneeling at the same rail with kids and elderly folks and whoever else happens to be on my left or right, I have found to be a shared and positive experience. It is worth noting that communion rails are an invention of the western medieval Church, have never been used in the East, and they are not the norm in novus ordo Roman Churches today.[6] For those who would want to insist on altar rails as necessary (though I have not met these folks!) they must account for their late introduction. In my little corner of the Anglican world altar rails are less common, and the BCP we are bound to follow neither requires nor prohibits the practice. Here I think Farley’s “liturgical law vs. liturgical wisdom” distinction is helpful.
Like Knox before him, Arthur Kay rails against the rail. But as Anglican Divines have done in the past in responding to similar concerns, I think we can take Kay’s cautions seriously, while still allowing for kneeling at the rail as a fitting and pious custom. Kay’s essay raises the importance of how eucharistic theology impacts eucharist practice. Even if I land in a different place than Arthur, we both understand the importance of the principle of lex orandi lex credendi. The use (or non-use) of bodies, liturgical furnishings, and church architecture are all significant for consideration. I’m grateful for this thought-provoking piece that has caused me to consider afresh how these elements intersect.
Blake Johnson is rector of Church of the Holy Cross in Crozet, VA.
[1] On the history and meaning of the Black Rubric, see E.B. Pusey, The Real Rresence of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Doctrine of the English Church (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1857), 222-225.
[2] Brian Cummings, ed., The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 794.
[3] Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29.
[4] http://anglicanhistory.org/taylor/reverence.html.
[5] http://anglicanhistory.org/laud/laud1.html
[6] Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: A&C Black, 1945), 13, recounts the history of the rail.
Arthur Kay hates communion rails because, as he sees it, they promote exclusion, individualism, and mis-placed penance. Kay’s animus, however, does not stop with communion rails. He also appears to hate (I’m being playful here, Arthur!) the Book of Common Prayer, mainstream Anglican eucharistic theology, and the concept of an ordained priesthood, each of which seems, in Kay’s telling, to have played a part in perpetuating a faulty eucharistic practice. Those who cling to their communion rails and believe in a “consecration of the bread and wine” are at once in danger of “heretical thinking” and a violating of the second commandment. Who knew the stakes could be so high with liturgical furniture? But Kay doesn’t just tell us what he hates; he proposes a unique practice of communion that obviates his concerns and better approximates the original setting of the institution of the Lord’s Supper.
By making a fuss about kneeling at the communion (forgive me, I almost wrote “altar”!) rail, Kay is picking up an old debate. John Knox, the fiery Scottish Presbyterian, also hated communion rails and anything that smacked of popery. He preached a sermon in 1552 before the King, railing against the rail. That sermon created such a stir that it moved the King to have a declaration inserted into the prayer book, without the authority of the Church.[1] That declaration became known as the “black rubric.” Knox, like Kay, worried that such a posture was tantamount to idolatry, and that a more biblical posture was needed: sitting. Knox pushed for kneeling to be prohibited altogether from the new prayer book. Archbishop Cranmer responded that if Knox really want to be scriptural, then we should take communion lying down on our sides “like Tartars and Turks today,” since this was the actual posture of Jesus and his disciples.[2]
Cranmer believed kneeling to be a good and seemly posture that does not necessarily lead to idolatry, so a prohibition or declaration was unnecessary. Nevertheless, at the last minute, the so-called “black rubric” was hastily attached to the 1552 Book of Common Prayer even after printing had begun. It disappeared in the 1559 BCP but showed up again in the 1662 BCP (with some alterations), when Presbyterian anxieties were once more running high regarding real presence and eucharistic adoration. The rubric still required kneeling: “which Order is well meant, for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ there given to all worthy receivers” and made it clear that “no Adoration is intended…unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood.”
Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”[3] Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.[4] Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”[5] All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively. Kay’s critiques are standard fare Puritan and Presbyterian complaints about Anglican eucharistic practice going back at least to the second edition of the BCP.
Cranmer’s response to Knox is indicative of an important Anglican ethos, and is helpful for this conversation. A historicist attempt to reconstruct the setting of the first Lord’s Supper faces challenges. We can receive developments in the liturgical tradition and practices of piety, however, as long as they do not violate Scripture. Kay’s instinct to recover an explicitly biblical practice is a good one. Of course, we want our liturgical practices to be regulated by Scripture, but this is different from saying we have to find explicit warrant for everything we do in Scripture.
I have a couple of questions, which I hope Arthur could address. First, how far should we go in such a project of liturgical reconstruction? Mike Farley, sympathetic to Kay’s proposal for a “relaxed posture,” admits—like Cranmer does—that we cannot replicate the original eucharist in every detail. Once we start down the historicist path of reconstructing the first century, what are our guiding principles? Why not recline on one another’s breast in the chancel as John did with our Lord? Why not meet in homes? Could it be that the, say, neo-gothic parish church, while quite beautiful, creates a possibility for idolatry and communicates something opposite of the family meal Jesus intends? The eucharistic celebration became separated from the context of a full meal. Why not recover the full agape meal with a separate bread rite and the wine rite?
My second question is, Who gets to decide our common liturgical practices? Perhaps the greatest strength of the Book of Common Prayer tradition is that it not only provides a grammar of shared prayer and worship but also practices that direct our worship. I think Kay makes some important critiques about unhealthy individualistic tendencies that can happen in eucharistic practice. But for Anglicans that should not and does not have to be a feature of common prayer. We pray together and we commune together. To get lost in a private space during the common prayer and celebration of the eucharist at the rail or in our seats is against the whole common prayer project.
For Anglicans, as much as we might protest this or that piece of the liturgy, we don’t get to decide how we worship together; we receive a tradition, submit and apprentice ourselves to it as the people of God. I’m curious what Arthur would propose for how liturgical change should come about so that liturgy does not become an idiosyncratic endeavor. While there is a beauty in what he proposes—a family meal in the chancel around the table—how many Churches in the world celebrate the eucharist like that? If individualism is a danger in liturgical practice, it seems to me idiosyncratic liturgical projects pose a risk of the same genre.
As an Anglican priest, I have no personal investment in altar rails. In the parish I serve, we come forward to receive and drink from a common cup. We strive for an atmosphere of joyful reverence. But I have been in parishes where kneeling was the norm and it has been, on the whole, joyful and not grossly introspective. I did not feel like by being behind the rail I was hindered from receiving the grace of the sacrament or unwelcome to the fullness of the Lord’s Table. Kneeling at the same rail with kids and elderly folks and whoever else happens to be on my left or right, I have found to be a shared and positive experience. It is worth noting that communion rails are an invention of the western medieval Church, have never been used in the East, and they are not the norm in novus ordo Roman Churches today.[6] For those who would want to insist on altar rails as necessary (though I have not met these folks!) they must account for their late introduction. In my little corner of the Anglican world altar rails are less common, and the BCP we are bound to follow neither requires nor prohibits the practice. Here I think Farley’s “liturgical law vs. liturgical wisdom” distinction is helpful.
Like Knox before him, Arthur Kay rails against the rail. But as Anglican Divines have done in the past in responding to similar concerns, I think we can take Kay’s cautions seriously, while still allowing for kneeling at the rail as a fitting and pious custom. Kay’s essay raises the importance of how eucharistic theology impacts eucharist practice. Even if I land in a different place than Arthur, we both understand the importance of the principle of lex orandi lex credendi. The use (or non-use) of bodies, liturgical furnishings, and church architecture are all significant for consideration. I’m grateful for this thought-provoking piece that has caused me to consider afresh how these elements intersect.
Blake Johnson is rector of Church of the Holy Cross in Crozet, VA.
[1] On the history and meaning of the Black Rubric, see E.B. Pusey, The Real Rresence of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Doctrine of the English Church (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1857), 222-225.
[2] Brian Cummings, ed., The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 794.
[3] Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29.
[4] http://anglicanhistory.org/taylor/reverence.html.
[5] http://anglicanhistory.org/laud/laud1.html
[6] Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: A&C Black, 1945), 13, recounts the history of the rail.
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