Ten good books about the history of Christian worship

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By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

This is another in an ongoing series of "booklists for the serious reader" about Christian history topics, following up on posts on American religious history and on the Reformation.  Also, I'll share a friendly reminder that Christian History has published an issue on worship in the early church, an issue on the golden age of hymns, and a short guide on worship from Constantine to the Reformation.

Without further ado (and alphabetically by author....) 

1. R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming.  Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed.  A thorough collection of Eucharistic prayers from the early church, the early Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the Reformed tradition through the late 1700s.
2. Cheslyn Jones et. al. The Study of Liturgy.  A classic collection of essays on the history of worship and music in the church.
3. Jean Halgreen Kilde, When Church Became Theatre.  The only book on this list focusing on American worship--specifically the transition to auditorium-type architecture in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Kilde mainly is interested in how this affected mainline churches, but her work is also very valid for understanding the creation of modern evangelical worship styles.
4. Wlliam Maxwell, An Outline of Christian Worship.  An oldie (1936) but still a good read. Goes from the early church through the 1800s, but focuses particularly on the Reformed tradition, which Maxwell thought had been ignored by Anglican church historians.
5. Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church. Famous and precedent-setting orders of worship from the early church through the 1780s, ending with John Wesley's Sunday Service. Each service also has a good, brief historical introduction. Unfortunately Thmpson never produced the companion volume he hoped for on American orders of service. But he did write....
6. A Bibliography of Christian Worship. OK, a book that leads you to other books is sort of cheating.  But, making allowances for its age (1989), this is a hugely important reference source for doing research on the history, theology, and practice of worship. 
7. Geoffrey Wainwright and Karen Westerfield Tucker, eds.  The Oxford History of Christian Worship.  It's difficult to say that you should own any one book on the history of worship, but if so, this would probably be it. Essay writers from around the world cover issues of scripture, prayer, sermon, sacrament, music, and church architecture throughout church history, with particular attention to new religious movements like Pentecostalism and evangelicalism.
8. Robert Webber, ed. The Complete Library of Christian Worship (especially vol. II, Twenty Centuries of Christian Worship.)  This series discusses worship from Biblical, historical, and practical points of view, aimed particularly at an audience of evangelical churches who want to dig deeper into Christian worship traditions.  (Although you can't get the entire set from the publisher, you can do so at the moment from Amazon.)
9. James F. White, A Brief History of Christian Worship.  White, sometimes called the "dean of Methodist liturgists," was involved with the liturgical reforms of Vatican II and wrote a lot of books on worship in his long career--how Christians have done it through the years and how he thought they should do it in the future. This is probably his most accessible, and most comprehensive, survey of the whole story of Christian worship from the early church to our own day.  Also, he edited....
10. Documents of Christian Worship.  Lots of these are now available online (someday soon I'll do a post rounding up great sources of primary texts for the study of Christian history online.)  But if you want one handy book to put on your shelf or throw in your briefcase or take to the beach (if you like reading about worship at the beach!), this is a good choice that has all the standard documents.