This collection of essays in honour of Richard Giles is best described as "slight". Despite a line up of fairly heavy weight writers we get a selection of personal anecdotes strung together with flimsy theorizing and much hyperbole.
There is lots about Giles enthusiasm to share his vision and his charismatic abilities to do so - but if we are blunt the vision has made little impact beyond the regimes in which Giles had the authority to autocratically put vision into practice.
One eassy that did stand out was that of Steven Croft, seeking simplicity in liturgy after decades of escalating complexity in Common Worship - simplicity not just within particular liturgical acts but simplicity in the landscape of a worshipping community week to week.
Another, and perhaps related theme, from Stephen Cotterell seemed to be that if we get the actions of liturgy right then the words will become much less important.
The reflection I will take most strongly way from it is Richard Giles' interesting way of understanding "the priesthood of all believers" - that this should not be taken, as it almost invariably is, as an individualistic identity. It is not that each believer is in and of themselves endowed with a separate priesthood, but that all believers share in a collective priesthood. The exercise of this priesthood therefore is only intelligible within community.
However overall I was left feeling a little let down.
No comments:
Post a Comment