Karin Maag has previously written an informative study of worship in Geneva in the time of John Calvin. In this new book she presents a broader overview of worship in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries – Worshiping with the Reformers – though it includes the Catholic reformation. Maag is concerned to describe and illuminate context rather than liturgical text, and to explore the challenges of making changes in a community's worship practices, and how this was experienced by the worshipers. This has entailed listening to the voices of many lay people rather than the refined and honed views of the theologians and reformers themselves. She also notes that worship practices were not set in stone, and that there was more diversity in Reformation-era worship than one might think.
This is a delightfully written book. Many of the chapters begin with a vignette from a primary source, and from this microcosm she moves out to the wider picture. Chapters cover topics like ‘Going to Church’ and ‘At Church’ as well as the more obvious subjects of preaching, prayer, baptism and communion. This book is, it should be stressed, an introduction, and does not purport to be a heavily researched in-depth study. Each chapter ends with a select bibliography for those who wish to begin to dig deeper. Maag draws attention to perennial problems in worship, such as the Genevan authorities having to close shops and businesses on Sunday to make sure there was less temptation to avoid attending church – and the bells were retained as a regulative clock to sound ‘time to close up shop’. Since habits are deep, there was also the battle to keep the attention of worshipers who would have preferred to revert to their older private devotions than listen to the ministerial monologues. Laughter and chatter at weddings and baptisms – a common human practice – also needed to be checked. Lay ideas of traditional continuity meant a clash with Reformed ministers over certain names for children at baptism, with the Reformers outlawing names associated with Roman Catholicism. The two final chapters provide a vivid context for the worship- visual arts and music, and worship outside church.
A broad survey – covering Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist and Anglican – is bound to have lacunae, especially since the time span, from the 1520s to the 1640s (with even one example from as late as 1679) covers multiple changes in theology and worship. The chapter on preaching hides the different styles within denominations, such as the ‘metaphysical’ and ‘plain’ style in England. The intricate links between the editions of the metrical psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins and the material in the Scottish editions of the Form of Prayers – the inclusion of some of the latter as family prayer in editions of the former – is entirely missed, as well as the ambiguous place of the Elizabethan Primers (including Latin) had in the Church of England. Attention is given to Geneva and Zurich, but much less so to the Palatinate and the Netherlands. The move from Micron's liturgy to Datheen's forms also get no mention. True, these are texts, but some reference to the texts would have been useful for those who are being introduced to the worship of this era. There are also surprising omissions of more recent important studies, particularly in the English Church. Although the work of Carlos Eire gets a mention towards the end of this book, his study War Against the Idols deserves a more prominent place in the discussion. The studies of Bruce Gordon on Zwingli, which illustrates that the Zurich reformer did use place and movement in the eucharist to express a theology of ministerial function, could have been usefully used. There is also no reference to the Polish Reformed worship that Kazima Bem has recently documented, nor to the huge growth in the publication of domestic prayers in both Catholic and Protestant churches. The book is an introduction, but some of the studies on these topics might have featured in the select bibliography. These observations, though, do not detract from the fact that Maag has provided a very readable and lively book that students will profit from.
