The
Order of St. Luke was founded in 1946 under the leadership of
the Rev. R.P. Marshall, a former editor of the Christian Advocate.
It was dedicated to the cause of liturgical renewal, and led the
way in a serious liturgical awakening across the Methodist Church
and much of post-war protestantism.
In
its early years the Order of St. Luke struggled to define a mission
more thrust upon it than sought out. In those days most worship
departments in the seminaries focused on preaching. The necessary
undergirding of theology and history were missing, or at least
separated from the worship curriculum so as to have little relevance
to the task of liturgical leadership. The new ecumenical movement
and post-war reaction to theological idealism did much to spotlight
these gaps within the non-Roman churches, and especially the Methodist
Church. For Methodism this was an era of ingenious but often quite
dogmatic efforts to compensate for these deficiencies, especially
by pastors in the local churches. By and large, spontaneous experiments
with "worship enrichment," ceremonial niceties, and
chancel "restorations" were the fruits of a liturgical
understanding devoid of historical, ecumenical and theological
grounding.
The
Order has outgrown its early years of trial and temptation when
it was the object and perhaps the cause of considerable caricature
and misunderstanding. A maturing comprehension of liturgical renewal
in an ecumenical era has become the guiding vision of members
within the Order, just as it has become a dawning concern in the
minds of many persons in the Church presently outside the Order.
Recent evidence of this emerging vision maybe seen in the design
of the official worship books of many denominations.
The
additional emphasis of directed spiritual formation, adopted in
1980, sets the direction in which the Order believes itself called.
While
it will shun doctrinaire positions, the Order is dedicated to
the task of breaking down the barriers of historical ignorance,
theological sectarianism and liturgical illiteracy in the Church.
The Order has no special revelation about the future of the emerging
ecumenical concensus, but will do what it can to encourage the
people called Christian to look outward and work toward the greater
Church which God is surely gathering for Christ' s sake from a
broken Christendom.
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