Reviewed in: Church of England Newspaper
Review date: Thursday January 9, 2003
The Church should work hard to avoid being too posh for the working-class and be willing to adopt liturgies that are not based solely on words, according to the author of a new Grove booklet. The Rev Tim Stratford, vicar on a large Liverpool outer housing estate, says that the Church is still failing the poor with its concentration on middle-class language, structures and style of worship. "Working-class communities are likely to write off middle-class institutions as not belonging to 'us' and write off middle-class individuals as 'untrustworthy'," he writes in Liturgy and Urban Mission. Despite the abolition of pew rents in the 19th century, the introduction of Slum-Priest-Ritualists emerging from the Oxford Movement and the current Urban Priority Areas, Mr Stratford argues that the Church of England is unwilling to listen to the poor. "The more painful questions [the Slum Priests] provoke of what it means to identify in worship with the experience of living in Urban Priority Areas, such as where the Church stands in relation to power, still rarely trouble the conscience of much of the Church of England even today," he writes. Working-class culture differs from middle-class in terms of language, education,money and identity, the author argues. Common Worship and other word-based forms of liturgy discriminate against those who best understand through drama and song, and are in danger of creating a service lead entirely by the priest. Of Common Worship, Mr Stratford says: "Many of the responses to Eucharistic Prayers require the worshipper to follow the text closely; triggers for responses are not predictable unless people have learnt the whole prayer; responses vary from paragraph to paragraph within the same prayer. Texts need to have a simpler rhythm in parishes where following the printed word is not a straightforward pattern." Preaching from an authoritative position will be less popular than a sermon that ties in with local life and even allows the worshippers to chip in with comments, he continues. Open prayer and suggestions from the congregation should also be encouraged, and a willingness to think in ways other than academic or traditional evangelical focus on the word.
Priest should also be wary of emphasising sin over hope in areas where many have low self-esteem. Overall, the author argues that leaders of UPA churches should listen to its members, and not try too hard to bring middle-class expectations with them. He and his churchwardens, for example, are the only people in his church with a diary.