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The Common Service: The English Liturgy of the Church of the Augsburg Confession
In 1888, a Joint Committee of theologians of three Lutheran synods—the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod of the South—formulated a unified English liturgy called “The Common Service.” The published liturgy was the culmination of goals established a century earlier by the Patriarch of the American Lutheran Church—Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787)—who urged the Lutheran Ministerium of North America to unite in the use of a single, purely Lutheran, liturgy. The work of the Joint Committee was guided by a liturgical principle called “The Rule”: “The common consent of the pure Lutheran Liturgies of the sixteenth century, and when there is not an entire agreement among them, the consent of the largest number of those of the greatest weight.” Under the leadership of Dr. Beale M. Schmucker, the Joint Committee formulated the liturgy which most perfectly adhered to this liturgical standard, and created the greatest uniformity in a single liturgy ever known to the Lutheran Church. Within decades, almost the entirety of the Lutherans in North America—regardless of synodical affiliation—was using the “Common Service.”
The Modernist agendas of Ecumenists and theological liberals, combined with the pedantry of those ‘liturgical scholars’ who took offense at the entire concept of “The Rule” and sought to bring alien elements into the Lutheran liturgy, led to a decline in the use of the “Common Service.” The result was the liturgical chaos which began in the 1970s and has simply grown worse to this day. However, there are signs that a growing number of Lutherans are recognizing what was lost when the “Common Service” was abandoned in many circles, and they are seeking a restoration of that faithful liturgy in the life of the Church.
This book is the first truly in-depth history of the “Common Service” and it provides an apologia for the restoration of that faithful service which remains “The English Liturgy of the Church of the Augsburg Confession.”
The Modernist agendas of Ecumenists and theological liberals, combined with the pedantry of those ‘liturgical scholars’ who took offense at the entire concept of “The Rule” and sought to bring alien elements into the Lutheran liturgy, led to a decline in the use of the “Common Service.” The result was the liturgical chaos which began in the 1970s and has simply grown worse to this day. However, there are signs that a growing number of Lutherans are recognizing what was lost when the “Common Service” was abandoned in many circles, and they are seeking a restoration of that faithful liturgy in the life of the Church.
This book is the first truly in-depth history of the “Common Service” and it provides an apologia for the restoration of that faithful service which remains “The English Liturgy of the Church of the Augsburg Confession.”
324 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2022
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