The Liturgy Trap (3rd Edition)

We hear all too often that someone has decided to leave the Evangelical Christian faith and to join the Church of Rome, or Eastern Orthodoxy, or High Anglicanism. The lure is liturgy and tradition, and since the Evangelical and Reformed churches so often have such poor worship, it is not hard to understand the pull exercised by those churches that have a heritage of formality, sobriety and beauty. This cure, however, is far worse than the disease. The answer to the weaknesses of Evangelicalism is not a turn toward the fallacies and errors of Rome, Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism, but a return to Biblical patterns of worship. Just as there is true and false doctrine, so there are true and false worship patterns. In this book, James B. Jordan sorts out the true and the false in the area of worship practice, discussing the cult of the saints, the veneration of icons, apostolic succession, virginity and celibacy, the presence of Christ at His Supper, and the doctrine of tradition. ABOUT THE AUTHOR James B. Jordan was born in 1949. His father was a professor of French Literature and his mother a piano teacher and a poet. He served as a Military Historian in the U.S. Air Force for four years. He began seminary training at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and graduated with an M.A.R. and a Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, majoring in Systematic Theology. In 1987, he founded Biblical Horizons in Niceville, FL. Beginning in 1999, Jordan served part time as Professor of Biblical Studies at the Reformed Theological Seminary of St. Petersburg, Russia. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including From Bread to Wine: Creation, Worship and Christian Maturity, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, and The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on Daniel, as well as scores of monographs and short essays.