The Ten Commandments aren't just a moral code; in Reformed worship they sit at the foundation of the service itself. Dorn traces how Bucer and Calvin built liturgies around them, and asks whether contemporary congregations have lost something by quietly setting them aside.
The Reformation was as much a reform of spirituality as of theology. Old shows how Protestants moved devotion out of the cloister and into the workshop, the kitchen, the field, treating the whole of ordinary life as the place where Christians live before God.
The opening worship service of the 2021 Theology Matters conference. Richard Gibbons preaches the welcome sermon, setting the theological frame for the gathering and inviting attendees into the conversation that follows.
What clergy wear in worship has changed in his lifetime, and Taylor isn't quite sure all the changes are improvements. Working from Lorimer's nineteenth-century painting of a Scottish Kirk ordination, he reflects on the theology of vestments and what gets lost when the gown disappears.
Online communion split Presbyterians worldwide during COVID. Taylor lays out why his own congregation declined the option even when their denomination permitted it, taking Paul's warning about the body of the Lord seriously enough to insist the body matters.
Nixon learned the limits of video calling during a long-distance courtship: the format is a poor substitute for actually being together. She brings that lesson to bear on the COVID-era church, where Zoom worship and live-streamed sacraments couldn't fill the space the gathered body of Christ left behind.
Lectionary preaching protects congregations from their preacher's pet agendas. Lectio continua, preaching consecutively through books of the Bible, was the Reformed alternative recovered from the Fathers. Old answers the practical questions raised by anyone trying to do it now: where to start, how long to spend, what to do with hard texts.
Earl Palmer has been called the best expository preacher in America of his generation. Burnett interviews him at age eighty-five about how he came to faith at Cal Berkeley, what shaped his approach to the text, and what he wants the next generation of preachers to keep alive.
Late medieval worship was overrun with what Calvin called theatrical trifles. Ray follows Calvin's polemic into its sources and stakes, and asks what 'theatrical' looks like in modern Reformed worship that has long since stopped policing itself by the standard Calvin set.
Burgess works through baptism in the form of a parish dialogue: Martha worries the congregation doesn't follow up, Jerry's too busy, Lisa's not sure baptism matters, Max thinks it's mostly welcome. The conversation works toward a shared theology of what the church is doing when it pours water.
Before the Reformation, Catholic worship had no congregational singing and no music in the language people actually spoke. Mills traces how Luther and Calvin recovered the song of the gathered people, and asks whether contemporary churches are quietly drifting back toward the silence the Reformers fought.
Luther asked how a sinner is made right with God. Calvin asked an even prior question: how is God rightly worshiped? Taylor argues that the Reformation's deepest legacy is the Reformed insistence that justification exists for the sake of worship, and worship is the goal toward which salvation tends.
Theology Matters is sent free in print to anyone who requests it, sustained primarily by readers like you. Tax-deductible.
Give a Gift