page_title: Ritualism in the Church of England
section_title: Against
hierarchical_section_title: Ritualism in the Church of England / Definition / Common arguments / Against
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of John Charles Ryle (10 May 1816 - 10 June 1900), Anglican Bishop of Liverpool.
context_page_description: Ritualism, in the history of Christianity, refers to an emphasis on the rituals and liturgical ceremony of the church, in particular of Holy Communion.
  In the Anglican church in the 19th century, the role of ritual became a contentious matter. The debate over ritual was also associated with struggles between High Church and Low Church movements.
context_section_description: Those who oppose ritualism in the Church of England have generally argued that it:
  encourages idolatry in that it encourages worshippers to focus on ritual objects and actions rather than the things they are meant to symbolise;
  constitutes an attempt to wrest the Church of England from its Protestant identity;
  constitutes a downgrading of the significance of preaching and biblical exposition in regular Christian worship;
  encourages an idolatrous attitude to the Eucharist because ritualism is predicated on a belief in the Real Presence;
  uses excessive elaborations in worship that cannot be justified on the basis of the descriptions of worship in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or the Epistles in the New Testament – the robes used in the worship of heaven described in the Book of Revelation are plain white;
  undermines a key Protestant belief that no human actions, even worship precisely and carefully offered, can be of any value when it comes to being justified in the eyes of God: worship should be an unfussy, obedient, penitent, grateful, and spontaneously joyful response to the experience of being saved by faith alone in Jesus – ritual and tradition are merely human inventions;
  has often impeded the understanding of the gospel by wrapping up Christian worship in indecipherable symbolic acts.
  is not beautiful as proponents claim but rather gaudy and distracting from contemplative worship
caption: Bishop Ryle of Liverpool – a leading critic of ritualism – by Carlo Pellegrini, 1881
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