incense

As a way of giving myself discipline for regular blog writing, I've decided to try a few weekly features. Friday I'm going to designate "spotlight on church history," though in practice this will likely be fairly far-ranging and sometimes reflective.

As I mentioned yesterday, we spent just over two weeks in England this July.  While there we had the opportunity to attend Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey (possibly more on that later) and Solemn Evensong at Wells Cathedral.

Wells Cathedral

At the time we attended the service at Wells, I was a little unsure what "Solemn Evensong" referred to and why it was different from the ordinary "Evensong" scheduled for the days prior to and following our visit.  Our experience involved a beautiful, highly formal, high-church service -- and liberal use of incense.  In fact, it appeared that one guy's only duty was to walk the aisles through and around the choir, swinging his thurible like a metronome.  It was very, um, atmospheric.  I loved it, but did give thanks none of us suffers from asthma.  

Turns out "Solemn" connotes a day of special significance -- in this case, we were in Wells on the festal day dedicated to Mary Magdalene.  One of the differences between "Solemn" and regular Evensong is the use of incense.  I've done some reading now about the use of incense in the Church of England, and the history is fascinating.  In Roman times, incense was used as an offering to the gods and as a test to suss out Christians -- a believer would not be willing to undertake the sacrilege of making such an offering.  As the church became established in Europe, however, incense was routinely used... until the Reformation.  By the 1600s, use of incense in England was seen as suspect -- as "unsuited to the needs of the day" and unreflective of early church practices.  Not the type of thing a good reformer would be interested in indulging!  As recently as 1899 Lambeth Palace issued an archibishops' statement affirming that incense was not permitted for use in worship.  (Though it could be used to "sweeten the church."  See the text of the archbishops' statement here.)

More recently, the biblical underpinnings for the use of incense (one of the three Kings brought frankincense to the baby Jesus; the book of Revelation includes reference to incense in heavenly worship), among other things, have come to exercise greater influence.  Incense on festival days is once again an acceptable element not just for air-freshening (?), but of worship.