Early Christian Worship: A Basic Introduction to Ideas and Practice

by Paul Bradshaw

Early Christian Worship is a straightforward, readable introduction to worship in the first four centuries of the church's existence. How did early Christians see and understand their own worship? How did this interact with early Christian beliefs? The book has been brought up-to-date and revised, with some chapters rewritten and an updated bibliography.

Paul F. Bradshaw is professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, and priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey and a member of the Church of England Liturgical Commission. He is the author or editor of several major books (The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, Eucharistic Origins, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship, The Study of Liturgy, A Companion to Common Worship, volumes 1 and 2).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Theology, Religion, Church History

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Scottish reporter on children

Reviews

[Aaron Reyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good short introduction to how the early church practiced baptism, daily prayer, lent, epiphany, the Eucharist, and more.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broken into three parts, it explains the history of Christian initiation, Eucharist, and Liturgical time. Reading it for a seminary class. Very interesting! Talks about early practices, how and why they were the way they were. Really enjoyed the part about Easter and the Quatrodecimans.

[Jake Pettit · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely solid, concise reference book for early Christian practices. Dry, but surprisingly comprehensive given it’s length (100 pages). Extremely helpful for charting the development of Eucharistic theology in particular.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Focused on baptism, communion/eucharist, with some discussion of early decisions around liturgical time. Not so much about what the regular worshippers were experiencing outside of these events on a regular basis. An introduction as it claims.

[Ben Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the author seems to have a skepticism towards the Bible that I disagree with, I found this book to be incredibly helpful, easy to read, and straight to the point.

[Grant Lewandowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of boring, but it is straight forward in giving a good survey of early Christian worship. It’s definitely not a deep dive into the topic.