By the Book: The Bible as Artefact in Christian Liturgy

The arrival of various hand-outs, bespoke orders of service and other small pieces of printed liturgical ephemera brings good and bad things to liturgical practice. Percy is not sure why, in an otherwise environmentally-sensitive context, there is so little thought given to the paper being consumed, for one thing. Yet there is no doubt that having all the elements needed by the congregation for full participation in one single printed form makes for ease of use and engagement.

Many will also point out that the full provision of the lections - assigned readings from the Bible - in such forms assists their reading and understanding by the people. It is also probably a reasonable hedge against the temptation to leave something out, which I have commented on elsewhere!

Yet some readers might well raise the objection that these photocopied excerpts are a poor substitute for the use of a Bible.

I tend to agree, if perhaps not for the same reasons as some of my more protestant readers. I do not, for instance, think it is particularly necessary or even helpful to bury one's head in either a Bible or a pewsheet when Scripture is read at the Eucharist. The Bible is designed to be heard as well as read, and the liturgy assumes a community willing to open ears, as well as eyes, to what the Word might reveal to us.

In fact for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians have not been literate, let alone owned Bibles; and hence, while we may be glad this is not the case for the average follower of Percy's thoughts today, it suggests that any view of liturgy or of Christianity that makes "Bible reading" an essential discipline is questionable, historically and theologically as well. Christians have heard the Word first and foremost, and the liturgy reflects this.

Yet the Book itself has a liturgical place which should not be lost. In classical protestant worship as well as in liturgy of self-consciously catholic traditions, the Bible has been not merely a source of the day's readings but a visual symbol, a key object in the work Christians do when coming together to remember, listen, pray and praise the God of the Bible. That Book ('B' for emphasis) is not the various books (i.e, Bibles) individuals might bring to Church, even if their contents are the same; for the Christian does not - should not - engage with the Bible as a personal tool of revelation via private judgement, but as the corporate gift of challenge, encouragement and more.

For this reason the actual use of literal physical books in liturgy is significant. The Book or Books from which Scripture is read liturgically should reflect that corporate and public function - meaning that above all, such Books should actually be used, and visibly.

How exactly the Book is used depends a great deal on the space and the specifics of the liturgy. A large Bible visible on an ambo or lectern makes a clear statement (and shouldn't be visibly pushed aside for a preacher's folder, pewsheet, or iPad). Visibly reading from photocopied sheets leaning against that Bible is also not a good look. Pewsheets are not intended as a hedge against biblical illiteracy, and if necessary readers should expect to be trained not only in how to read aloud, but in where in the Book to find what they are supposed to read.

In some contexts different Books are used, most obviously when a Gospel book or Lectionary is carried in procession. This makes a point about the (generally overlooked) centrality of the Gospels in the Christian canon for interpreting Scripture as a whole, and the proclamation of the Gospel to the world. There are quite a few places where the idea of this procession appeals just because it involves some pomp and circumstance, but where the point gets lost. Such a failure is ritualized, for example, where a plastic binder or the mere pewsheet gets hoisted by a deacon or other offender, to general bemusement. The liturgical proclamation "This is the Gospel of the Lord" is not meant to be so implausible.

Of course there are times when a set of readings has to be prepared for a set of readers, in ways that make the idea of endless bookmarks or post-it notes in one Book on the lectern impractical. In that case, there are various possibilities. The assembly of set readings in Lectionaries - not originally lists of readings only, but the actual texts - has a venerable history. Yet these books have traditionally been treated with the same respect and prominence as Bibles and Gospel Books, and there is no reason they can't be made or decorated to make their dignity match their amenity.

The basic principles about using books are thus those of the liturgy as a whole. The Gospel itself, Christ himself, are the centre. Our actions should make this as clear as possible, and we should minimize or avoid things which distract from what is important. The Bible is important. Words can make this clear, or undermine it; so too can objects and actions.

The Bible

This page links to posts concerning the liturgical use of Scripture, Lectionaries, and related matters.

In Read It! Percy laments the tendency to omit set lections at eucharistic celebrations.


In By the Book the use of the Bible in liturgy as an actual book, as opposed to pewsheets, plastic folders etc., is discussed.

I Don't Believe in Worship (Part 1)

‘Worship’ has become almost a meaningless term in some places; and where it does mean something, it now often has little to do with those distinctive practices whereby the Christian community across history has expressed and renewed its relationship with the God of Jesus Christ.

The problem is most profound in newer Church settings where ‘worship’ is equated with ‘music’, and ‘worship leaders’ are conductors or accompanists, rather than preachers or priests. Yet even Christians who belong to Churches of clearly sacramental character, such as Anglicans, may well see their liturgical actions simply as aesthetic options chosen according to preference for a certain activity or style.

It is then unsurprising if we find ‘worship’ events becoming more akin to sales meetings, arena concerts or whatever other cultural forms are available for adaptation, rather than recognizable forms of Eucharistic celebration or daily prayer.

Even fairly recently the English word ‘worship’ referred to reverence and service (cf. ‘with my body I thee worship’). In present Western Christianity however, this meaning has been lost, and ‘worship’ tends to mean whatever people do in Church on Sundays. Similarly 'service' has lost the earlier meaning of 'divine service', and refers to a meeting rather than a disposition.

So ‘Worship services’ (two vapid words combined in a desperate effort to mean something!) might seem to be constructed just to suit our tastes or passing preferences, rather than as particular activities characteristic of the Christian community across its history.

The possibility that our liturgy might really be ‘worship’ has to do then with how well we integrate it into the whole of life, lived faithfully and authentically – in Church as well as out of it. For Christians that does involve some characteristic patterns and actions.

If instead we make aesthetic preferences or ‘worship needs’ (as one recent publication called them) the determinant of liturgical practice, this certainly contradicts any real ethos of Christian worship; for if ‘needs’ are understood as the pre-existing wants of the participant, rather than either as the imperative to exist or act in a certain relationship to God, or as continuing faithfully in practices founded on Jesus' example and teaching, we are wasting our time or worse.

Of course Christians do and should borrow some elements of newer cultural forms, critically and carefully; Percy is not pleading here for a particular aesthetic of traditional liturgy, but for recognition that liturgy is founded on core actions and patterns, on scripture and bread and wine and prayer.

We can and should adapt forms; but if the core actions of our liturgies are not made more profound and more prominent in the process, then the result is a failure. We therefore need to pay as much or more attention to the real core or substance of specifically Christian liturgy, rather than to the trappings in which it is presented. Here we might have to admit that both traditional and commercialized forms of Christian gathering often fail equally, if differently.

Read it!

It has become common in some parishes of more liberal and/or Catholic bent in Australia to omit one or more of the set readings from the Lectionary, on weekdays including feasts, and sometimes even on Sundays.

This is a very unfortunate development, for many reasons. It undermines the Catholic Anglican claim to present an appropriate relationship, 'both/and', as it were, of Word and Sacrament. It reflects and deepens a wider problem of biblical illiteracy. It undermines the intentions of the lectionary framers, and often particularly suggests a quasi-Marcionite view that downgrades the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (since this is so often what gets dropped).

The reason? Apparently nothing more profound than that the liturgy 'takes too long' with all the readings.

This is breathtakingly bad reasoning and practice, but there are a few factors to consider to understand it.

One is that the Revised Common Lectionary, commonly now in use in Anglican circles, has been ineffectively introduced and is poorly understood. The lack of connection across the readings of a given day (as opposed to the readings from week to week) makes it easier to dislodge one or more of them, without a deep sense of loss for the congregation. And without a pattern of preaching that engages with the Lectionary as a whole, the disparate lections are all the more precarious. So there is a serious unmet need for teaching about the Bible, and the Bible in the liturgy - its natural home!

Yet the concern about excessive length or boredom suggests a problem of performance, for the readings and for the liturgy more generally. If participants are not engaged with the readings, or with any aspect of the celebration, attention needs to be given to how they are presented.

There is no rubric, printed or arcane, that requires readings to be done badly or inaudibly just so people can have a turn. There is no rule that says anyone equipped to mow the lawn or do bookkeeping has the duty or right to mangle complex rhetoric in the NT Epistles. If a music group can rehearse, so can a reader - but we just don't seem to care as much.

In other words, this problem suggests not only some difficulties about our interest in the Bible, but about our seriousness regarding the liturgy as a whole.

Our plea, then, is 'Read it!'. The Lectionary is there for a reason, and those who treat it in a sloppy manner will be ill-equipped to defend use of any set pattern of readings against the critical and the ignorant who think it more 'biblical' to pick and choose whatever they want.

If the reading of three disparate pieces of scripture and the Psalm presents a challenge, treat it as a positive one, and consider how to train readers, how to expound the course-readings from the OT/HB in preaching, and how to use other liturgical opportunities to 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest'. This process of serious engagement with scripture is essential to Anglicanism, and we are on weak foundations without it.