A treat. Richard Giles has another book out – Creating Uncommon Worship. It does for the liturgy what Re-pitching the Tent did for Church Buildings. It is deliciously caustic, wise and very funny and there are lots of pictures.
Here is a taster (on whether or not to sing the Collect of the Day): “There is much to be said for the view that if a person cannot sing, they cannot preside at the assembly of the faithful. The Ethiopian Church would say the same goes for liturgical dance, but we may get to that later.”
And on incense: “When I was first ordained, incense was considered very naughty in the Church of England, despite ingenious Scriptural interpretation by initiating clergy who pointed out a certain gift received by the Christ child from one of the Magi, and other hermeneutic tit-bits. The polarization around incense has largely passed, as it has around votive candles, mainly because as we have been twittering on among ourselves about such details, the world has formed a queue in the local gift store to buy up every candle and incense stick it can lay hands on.”
There is a passage on 8 o'clock services which made me laugh out loud, but perhaps I will not post it here.
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