We do not celebrate church “seasons” is they often ask us to think of the Christian life as something we “do” instead of what Christ has done. Further, they cause us to think as if Christ has not already done anything. Roland Barnes, longtime Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian in Statesboro, GA, said the liturgical calendar asks believers, “to suspend their living in light of the finished work of Christ…” One of my former Pastors, Jimmy Agan, told me once that he was fine with celebrating Christmas and Easter, but he never wanted to act like they had not already happened.
A couple of weeks ago on our podcast, Theology Lunch, we were asked the question, “Do Presbyterians follow the church calendar?” I would encourage you all to give it a listen here. In this article, I want to expand on some points made in that conversation.
First, yes, Presbyterians do follow the church calendar as reflected in Holy Scripture, that is we meet on the first day of the week remembering it was the day the Lord Jesus rose from the dead (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10). We believe that the Lord has set apart Sunday as the day to worship him. Outside of these passages, we have no explicit command to worship God on any other day. This has been the historic position of American Presbyterians as a story from 1841 will help illustrate. In 1841, the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, George Washington Doane, published a booklet arguing for the use of the liturgical calendar. His neighboring Presbyterian minister, Cortlandt Van Rensselaer, wrote a response under the pseudonym, “a Presbyterian.” Rensselaer’s response took issue with the extravagance and emphasis on man-made holy days, numbering 120, compared to the biblically simple pattern of 52 Lord’s days. While his response is well worth reading, “Man’s Feasts and Fasts in God’s Church,” a chart depicting “Presbyterian Holy Days” in the style of what would be found in the Episcopal Bishop’s Book of Common Prayer captures his argument perfectly:
Further, while the two clergymen disagreed over the observance of the church calendar, Rensselaer delivered the sermon at Doane’s funeral. It has been well documented by Morton Smith and other church historians that the shift of observing Christmas and Easter in Southern Presbyterianism was late in US history, really taking root in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of particular historical interest, one of the strongest voices for Presbyterians observing the church calendar was Henry Van Dyke Jr who infamously and publicly gave up his pew at 1st Presbyterian of Princeton New Jersey when Gresham Machen took over as supply. Van Dyke was in favor of the modernism which Machen was opposed to and viewed as a danger to historic Christianity.
Second, the recent emphasis on all things liturgical like the observance of Advent and Lent is a recent phenomenon in Protestant Evangelicalism. Imagine for a moment we rewound the clock to the early 1990s average Baptist church. If you went up to the pastor a few weeks leading up to Easter and asked, “When does Lent start and what do you plan to preach during those weeks?” He would probably get uncomfortable. Maybe he would think you were in the wrong church and direct you to the Catholic or Episcopalian church down the street. Postmodernity has made many feel disconnected from tradition and the past. It is not surprising then to want a connection with the ancient church. Many will be disappointed to discover though that references to the celebration of Easter and Christmas come much later than the Apostolic era. It would seem from the New Testament witness and the Early Church that the primary focus of the church calendar was the weekly gathering of the saints on the Lord’s Day.
Third, we do have a tradition we can follow that is historic and biblical although could honestly have a more creative name – the Regulative Principle of Worship.