de_doc

Going back to the beginning of this thread, I may note that great intellectual effort is expended in attempting to reconstruct early Christian worship, even though there is general acceptance that relatively little will be known. Note P.F. Bradshaw The search for the origins of Christian worship (or via: amazon.co.uk) (NY: Oxford, 2002).

This academic exercise is not totally divorced from the ecclesial agenda shared by probably most churches of claiming an aboriginal purity in worship, but is distinct in that nobody is kidding themselves that even if early Christian worship were recoverable that anyone nowadays would want to worship in that way.