Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology

The Reformation movements that emerged in Western Christianity in the late Middle Ages questioned the hitherto accepted views about the sacrament of order on the same grounds as they challenged much medieval teaching about sacraments in general. They also extended this critique to the inherited understanding of the ordained ministry both as constituting a mediatorial priesthood, the primary function of which was the celebration of the Eucharist, and as being hierarchically structured according to divine providence. None of these, the Reformers argued, had any basis in the New Testament as they read it, and it was the New Testament that for them constituted the ultimate criterion against which all practices were to be tested.

Their exegesis of Scripture did not, however, take place in a vacuum. They were also influenced by their own experience of the ordained ministry as it was practiced in the church of their time. Hence, for example, widespread hostility to episcopacy was not only the result of their being unable to discern a distinction between bishops and presbyters in the pages of the New Testament but also their direct encounter with what they saw as the princely and autocratic abuse of episcopal power in the bishops of their own day. Similarly, their frequent demands for the laity to play a significant part in the choice of their clergy sprang not only from observing that election by the people seemed to have been the common practice in apostolic times but also from their view that men were being ordained who lacked the qualities that they thought necessary for a minister.

In studying the theology and practice of the sixteenth-century Reformers, two important factors need to be kept in mind. The first is that their views often changed and developed in response to unfolding events, and so an apparent lack of consistency in different works by the same author may frequently be because time had elapsed between the composition of one and the emergence of a more mature theology in another, or because a different audience with different concerns is being addressed in one work over against another. The second factor is that they were sometimes compelled to compromise their principles and adopt practices inconsistent with their doctrines of church and ministry.

One of the earliest figures in the movement toward reformation, the Englishman John Wycliffe (ca. 1329–84), asserted that only two orders of ministry, priests and deacons, had existed in primitive Christianity. As we have seen, some other medieval scholars would not necessarily have disagreed with this exegesis of the New Testament, but they would not have shared Wycliffe’s conclusion about the illegitimacy of the church developing other orders in the course of time. Wycliffe thought that it was through the sin of pride that such orders and gradations had been introduced, and he attacked in particular the wealth and use of power by prelates (Trialogus 4.13). Some two centuries later William Tyndale denied that Order was sacrament because there was “no promise coupled therewith.” According to the New Testament, all Christians were priests, and the presbyter was “an officer to teach, and not to be a mediator between God and us.” The elaborate medieval rites of ordination were unnecessary: “neither is there any other manner or ceremony at all required in making of our spiritual officers, than to choose an able person, and then to rehearse him his duty, and give him his charge, and so to put him in his room.”¹

Similar views on ordination and priesthood were expressed by the leading sixteenth-century German Reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546), as these extracts on the subject from his work, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, published in 1520, reveal:²

Of this sacrament the Church of Christ knows nothing; it was invented by the church of the Pope. It not only has no promise of grace, anywhere declared, but not a word is said about it in the whole of the New Testament. Now it is ridiculous to set up as a sacrament of God that which can nowhere be proved to have been instituted by God. Not that I consider that a rite practised for so many ages is to be condemned; but I would not have human inventions established in sacred things, nor should it be allowed to bring in anything as divinely ordained, which has not been divinely ordained; lest we should be objects of ridicule to our adversaries.…

I grant therefore that orders may be a sort of church rite, like many others which have been introduced by the Fathers of the Church, such as the consecration of vessels, buildings, vestments, water, salt, candles, herbs, wine, and the like. In all these no one asserts that there is any sacrament, nor is there any promise in them. Thus the anointing of a man’s hands, the shaving of his head, and other ceremonies of the kind, do not constitute a sacrament, since nothing is promised by these things, but they are merely employed to prepare men for certain offices, as in the case of vessels or instruments.…

Resting, however, on this very weak foundation, they have invented and attributed to this sacrament of theirs certain indelible characters, supposed to be impressed on those who receive orders.…

After this they bring in their very strongest argument, namely, that Christ said at the last supper: “Do this in remembrance of me.” “Behold!” they say, “Christ ordained them as priests.”…Let us reply to them that in these words Christ gives no promise, but only a command that this should be done in remembrance of Him.…

How if they were compelled to admit that we all, so many as have been baptized, are equally priests? We are so in fact, and it is only a ministry which has been entrusted to them, and that with our consent. They would then know that they have no right to exercise command over us, except so far as we voluntarily allow of it. Thus it is said: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” (1 Pet. ii. 9.) Thus all we who are Christians are priests; those whom we call priests are ministers chosen from among us to do all things in our name; and the priesthood is nothing else than a ministry. Thus Paul says: “Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.” (1 Cor. iv. 1.)

From this it follows that he who does not preach the word, being called to this very office by the Church, is in no way a priest, and that the sacrament of orders can be nothing else than a ceremony for choosing preachers in the Church.…

Let every man then who has learnt that he is a Christian recognise what he is, and be certain that we are all equally priests; that is, that we have the same power in the word, and in any sacrament whatever; although it is not lawful for any one to use this power, except with the consent of the community, or at the call of a superior. For that which belongs to all in common no individual can arrogate to himself, until he be called. And therefore the sacrament of orders, if it is anything, is nothing but a certain rite by which men are called to minister in the Church. Furthermore, the priesthood is properly nothing else than the ministry of the word—I mean the word of the gospel, not of the law. The diaconate is a ministry, not for reading the gospel or the epistle, as the practice is nowadays, but for distributing the wealth of the Church among the poor.…

As far then as we are taught from the Scriptures, since what we call the priesthood is a ministry, I do not see at all for what reason a man who has once been made priest cannot become a layman again, since he differs in no wise from a layman, except by his ministerial office.

What Luther said here implies that everyone had the power to function as a minister of the Word and sacraments, subject to their being authorized to do so, and that there was no particular vocation to ordained ministry given to certain individuals by God. He repeated this belief in some of his other writings. On the other hand, in other works he does appear to make a firmer distinction between those who are preachers and the laity, in which the office of preaching does not derive directly from the priesthood shared by all Christians. His ambiguity on this subject has led to serious disagreements among scholars within Lutheranism, with some attempting to harmonize the apparent contradictions in order to show that either the one or the other was his true position, and others admitting to the existence of some inconsistency in his views depending on the period of his life when they were expressed and the particular audience he was addressing, which seems the more likely answer.³ What should be noted is that the later Lutheran Confessions certainly adopt a more positive view of ordination as the call of particular individuals to ministry, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531) was even willing to describe it as a sacrament.⁴

From his understanding of the New Testament, Luther judged that the process of appointment should include the election or “calling” of the candidate by a local church and his commendation to the ministry by prayer and the imposition of hands in a public assembly. Luther could see no evidence in the New Testament for the office of bishop distinct from that of the presbyter, and hence some Lutheran churches (e.g., Sweden) retained the historic succession of the episcopate, others (e.g., Denmark) retained the office of bishop or superintendent but without the historic succession, and others (e.g., Germany) abolished the office altogether. Where the episcopate was retained, it was not regarded as having any inherent power to ordain but received that authority from the church.

What is believed to have been the first evangelical ordination was performed by Luther in Wittenberg on May 14, 1525, when he ordained Georg Rörer as deacon, although no detailed record of the rite used has been preserved. A rite of ordination was drawn up in the 1526 church order of Homberg in Hesse, though never used, and it was not until after 1530 that the increasing scarcity of ministers already ordained by Catholic bishops created the need for regular ordinations and the composition of suitable rites. The earliest were those drawn up by Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558) in the church orders for Hamburg (1529), Lübeck (1531), and Pomerania (1535). In 1535 Luther himself produced an ordination rite that became the basis for those in most later church orders, including Mecklenberg (1552), Lüneberg (1564 and 1575), Mansfield (1580), Hoya (1581), Henneberg (1582), and Lauenberg (1585). Its influence can also be seen in Bugenhagen’s later rites for Denmark (1537), Schleswig-Holstein (1542), Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1543), and Hildesheim (1544), as well as in Laurentius Petri’s rites for Sweden (1571).⁵

Bugenhagen thought that ordinations ought to take place in the congregation that had called the person. Luther, though sympathetic to this idea, preferred a more centralized practice, at least as a temporary expedient, since he believed that something was needed to replace the ecclesiastical hierarchy in supervision and legitimation of the actions of local churches. Hence ordinands were to be sent by the authority of the secular ruler to be examined by appointed persons, usually the theological faculty of a university, and if found acceptable, ordained there. Because the ordination rites developed out of earlier forms devised for the ritual installation into parochial charges of those already ordained, and versions of them continued to be used for the local installation of those who were ordained in a central location, some theological ambiguity between ordination and installation resulted in early Lutheranism.

Early Lutheran ordination rites varied considerably in their details, but were always held within a congregational celebration of the Eucharist, and typical features were the following:

The rites generally concluded with the words of 1 Peter 5:2-4, used as a charge to the newly ordained, and another hymn, “Now let us pray to the Holy Spirit,” in Luther’s rite and its derivatives and Te Deum laudamus in others, the latter having already been used as a concluding hymn in Durandus’ rite for the ordination of bishops. The appointment of a bishop or superintendent was similar, often using the same prayers, but was a little more elaborate. The ordination prayer used by Luther himself was as follows:

John Calvin (1509–64) belongs to a second generation of Reformers. While sharing many of the views of his predecessors, his exegesis of New Testament texts set out in his magnum opus, The Institutes of Christian Religion, led him to somewhat different conclusions about a pattern of ministry that would be in accord with Scripture. He claimed that the first three categories of ministers mentioned in Ephesians 4:11—apostles, prophets and evangelists—had been intended only as temporary offices to secure the foundation of the church, though they might again be raised up in extraordinary situations, but the other two, pastors and teachers, were meant to be the regular offices of the church,⁸ together with two others, elders and deacons. Although he believed that in the Bible the terms bishops, presbyters, and pastors were used synonymously, he interpreted Romans 12:8 and 1 Corinthians 12:28 as referring to the existence of “seniors selected from the people to unite with the bishops in pronouncing censures and exercising discipline” (IV.3.8). Similarly, he believed that Romans 12:8 spoke of the existence of two classes of deacons concerned with the poor: one administered alms and the other took care of the poor and sick (IV.3.9).⁹ In Reformed practice, however, the office of teacher eventually tended to be absorbed into that of the pastor.

The two principal parts of the pastor’s office were “to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments” (IV.3.8), and no one ought to assume this office without being duly called to it, by which Calvin meant “the external and formal call which relates to the public order of the Church, while I say nothing of that secret call of which every minister is conscious before God” (IV.3.10–11). According to his reading of the New Testament, this call required “the consent and approbation of the people,” but with other pastors presiding over the election to ensure its regularity (IV.3.15). As for an ordination rite,

In spite of this commendation of the laying on of hands, however, Calvin did not adopt it in actual practice in the church in Geneva because of what he regarded as superstitious views about it that had grown up in the medieval church.¹⁰ There, when a new minister was required, the other ministers selected and examined a suitable candidate. If they approved of him, they submitted him to the City Council for their consent and finally to the people. “As to the manner of introduction, since the ceremonies of time past have been perverted into much superstition, because of the weakness of the times, it will suffice that a declaration be made by one of the ministers denoting the office to which ordination is being made; then that prayers and petitions be made, in order that the Lord give him grace to discharge it.”¹¹

A broadly similar procedure was followed in other Reformed churches, varying only in detail. Thus, for example, within the congregation of Flemish weavers who sought refuge in England around 1548 under Valerand Pullain (ca. 1509–57), the ministers and elders first submitted nominees to the congregation, who chose either one of these or someone else to be examined by them. If he was found satisfactory, he was ordained by the ministers, and the imposition of hands was used. When a minister was required by the English exiles at Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary, the practice was for the congregation to appoint two or three candidates to be examined by the elders and other ministers. The examiners indicated who they thought was the most suitable, and a period of at least eight days was allowed for inquiries and objections. If no objections were made, the candidate was presented at a Sunday morning service by a minister, who was to preach about his duty, and in the afternoon the “election” took place. There was no imposition of hands, but the minister who had preached was to pray “as God shall move his herte” prior to the election, and afterward “geveth thankes to God with his request of suche thinges as shall be necessarie for his office.” On their return to England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Puritans tried unsuccessfully to secure changes in the Anglican practice so that it might conform more closely to this pattern.¹²

In Scotland under John Knox (ca. 1514–72), the procedure adopted was that which had been used by the exiles at Geneva for whom Knox had been pastor. There was also in Scotland the office of superintendent, which seems to have been set up not as a type of permanent episcopacy but simply as a temporary expedient to organize the Presbyterian system, to take charge of vacant parishes, and to ordain suitable ministers for them, although superintendents had no power of ordination inherent in their office but acted under the commission of the General Assembly of the Church. In 1569, Knox drew up a rite for their “election” based on a form composed by the Polish reformer John á Lasco (1499–1560) for exiled foreign congregations in London in 1550. Following the pattern of his rite, after the examination of the candidates came a substantial prayer asking for the gift of the Holy Spirit and ending with the Lord’s Prayer, followed by a shorter prayer of blessing. Knox’s version of these drew mainly on á Lasco’s, including addressing the prayer to Christ rather than to the Father, but was also influenced by the original form of the prayer and blessing composed by the German Reformer Martin Bucer (1491–1551), on which á Lasco himself had drawn and which had also formed the primary source of the first Anglican ordination rites of 1550.¹³

O Lord, to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth, Thou that art the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, who hast not only so loved Thy Church that, for the redemption and purgation of the same, thou has humbled thyself to the death of the cross, and thereupon hast shed Thy most innocent blood to prepare to Thyself a spouse without spot, but also, to retain this Thy most excellent benefit in recent memory, hast appointed in Thy Church Teachers, Pastors, and Apostles, to instruct, comfort, and admonish the same: look upon us mercifully, O Lord, Thou that only art King, Teacher, and High Priest to thy own flock: and send unto this our brother, who, in thy name, we have charged with the chief care of thy Church, within the bounds of L., such portion of thy Holy Spirit, as thereby he may rightly divide thy word, to the instruction of thy flock, and to the confutation of pernicious errors and damnable superstitions. Give unto him, good Lord, a mouth and wisdom, whereby the enemies of thy truth may be confounded, the wolves expelled and driven from Thy fold, Thy sheep may be fed in the wholesome pastures of Thy most holy word, the blind and ignorant may be illuminated with Thy true knowledge: finally, that, the dregs of superstition and idolatry which yet rested within this realm being purged and removed, we may all not only have occasion to glorify Thee our only Lord and Saviour, but also daily to grow in godliness and obedience of thy most holy will, to the destruction of the body of sin, and to the restitution of that image to the which we were once created, and to the which, after our fall and defection, we are renewed by participation of Thy holy Spirit, whom, by true faith in thee, we do profess as the blessed of Thy Father, of whom the perpetual increase of thy graces we crave, as by Thee our Lord King, and only Bishop we are taught to pray, “Our Father,” etc.

God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath commanded His Gospel to be preached to the comfort of His elect, and hath called thee to the office of a watchman over His people, multiply His graces with thee, illuminate thee with His Holy Spirit, comfort and strengthen thee in all virtue, govern and guide thy ministry to the praise of His holy name, to the propagation of Christ’s kingdom, to the comfort of His Church, and, finally, to the plain discharge and assurance of thy own conscience, in the day of the Lord Jesus, to whom, with the Father, and with the Holy Ghost, be all honour, praise, and glory, now and ever. So be it.¹⁴

Unlike á Lasco’s rite, an imposition of hands did not accompany this blessing. Instead, a handshake was exchanged afterward between the one elected and the other ministers and elders present “in sign of their consent” (apparently inspired by Galatians 2:9, “the right hand of fellowship”). The inclusion of the elders in this action is an indication of their greater prominence in the government of the church here than they had under Calvin. Later imposition of hands was restored for the ordination of both ministers and superintendents under pressure from King James VI, and the elders participated in this too. In 1610 episcopacy was introduced, again under pressure from the King, and new ordination rites for bishops and ministers were published in 1620, being a compromise between the former practice and the Anglican rites. An attempt in 1636 to impose the Anglican rites in toto was unsuccessful: episcopacy was rejected and Presbyterianism established.¹⁵

The Westminster Assembly in 1645, though continuing to give elders a place in church government, moved more in the direction of continental Calvinism and did not accord them a special role in ordination: ordained ministers alone were to examine the candidate and perform the imposition of hands. After the examination, the ordinand was to be sent to the congregation where he was to serve in order to preach on three days and have his suitability judged by them. Representatives of the congregation were then to appear before the presbytery to declare their assent or objections. If they assented, the ordination was to take place in their church and a solemn fast kept by the congregation beforehand. At least three or four of the presbytery were to attend the ordination service. One of them was to preach a sermon on the duties of minister and people, questions were to be asked of both ordinand and congregation, and then while the ministers laid hands on the candidate, a short prayer or blessing on the following lines was to be said by one of them.

The service ended with a charge to the minister and the people, a prayer commending him and them to God, a psalm, and a blessing. These same basic elements continued to be found in all later rites of Reformed churches.

Exceptionally among the churches of the Reformation, the term “priest” was retained for an ordained minister in some Lutheran churches—for example, those of the Scandinavian countries—and in the Church of England. The Church of England was also unique in not regarding election of the candidates by the people as an essential requirement of a true ordination. Even in these cases, however, it can be argued that this did not signal a rejection of the Reformation doctrine as such but only a desire to make as little change as possible in external forms. The first ordinal of the Church of England, published in 1550, the year after the appearance of the first Book of Common Prayer, provided rites for the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops, and was based primarily on the rite composed by Bucer that was mentioned earlier in connection with Knox in Scotland.¹⁷ Although his was only a single rite, Bucer did suggest that it might be carried out “more solemnly and at greater length” when a bishop was ordained, and simplified for a deacon, and this is basically what the Anglican rites did, supplementing Bucer’s text with a number of features adapted from the former medieval practice. The rites were preceded by a preface, which stated that ministers should be admitted “by public prayer with imposition of hands.” The main elements in the rite for deacons, which was the simplest of the three, were: a sermon, the presentation of the candidates, the litany, the eucharistic liturgy of the word up to the end of the Epistle, an examination of the ordinands, and the imposition of hands by the bishop with the words, “Take thou authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of God committed unto thee: in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.” This was followed by the giving of the New Testament (rather than the gospel book, as in medieval times). The Eucharist then continued from the gospel onward (which one of the new deacons read), and concluded with a special collect before the blessing. It is clear from this that the litany (which included a special petition and concluding collect for the ordinands) was understood to be the requisite “public prayer,” which preceded and was distinct from the formal commissioning for ministry with imposition of hands.

The rite for priests was similar, except that it came after the gospel and included an English version of Veni Creator Spiritus from the medieval rite, a lengthy exhortation to the ordinands, a period of silent congregational prayer, and another substantial prayer before the laying on of hands. In Bucer’s rite this prayer had contained a petition for the gift of the Holy Spirit on those being ordained, but the Anglican rite removed that petition from the prayer entirely, so that once again the “public prayer” for them was principally the litany. As in the medieval rite, priests joined with the bishop in performing the imposition of hands. This was accompanied by a formula beginning with the words from John 20:22-23, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” which had been used at the second imposition of hands in the medieval rite, and followed by, “and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments.” The newly ordained then received a Bible as well as the chalice and paten formerly given, though with different words: “Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy sacraments in this congregation.”

Following medieval precedent, the rite for bishops was described as the form of “consecrating” a bishop, instead of “ordering,” as in the other two rites. It was rather more elaborate than the others, and did include a complete prayer for the candidate before the laying on of hands, which drew on material from the medieval service. In accordance with tradition, the imposition of hands was performed by all the bishops present, after which the gospel book was laid upon the new bishop’s neck. He then received the pastoral staff.

When these rites were revised in 1552 because of protests from some extreme Protestants, all directions about how the candidates were to be vested were removed from them, and the traditio instrumentorum was modified: priests received the Bible alone, and bishops did not have the Bible laid on their necks but given to them and were not presented with the pastoral staff. No major changes were made to the rites at subsequent revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, with which the ordinal was now bound up, apart from an alteration to the wording of the preface to the ordinal in 1662 to make episcopal ordination explicitly a sine qua non for admission to ministry in the Church of England. At the same time, opportunity was taken to clarify, by a number of minor changes to the rites, that bishops and priests constituted separate orders of ministry and not merely different degrees within the same ministry.

These may be classed together since they have a common origin in seventeenth-century English Separatism. Both viewed ordination as the recognition by the local congregation that a person had been called by God to the ministry and already had the necessary gifts and graces, and as the setting apart of that person to function as a minister within the congregation. According to the Savoy Declaration of 1658, a modification to suit congregational polity of the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, in a section titled “The Institution of Churches, and the Order Appointed in Them by Jesus Christ,”

However, it went on to indicate that the imposition of hands was not essential, and, in fact, Congregationalists generally abandoned it and later often substituted the giving of the right hand of fellowship.

On the other hand, it was a very different matter if the process of election were to be dispensed with:

And while preaching was an essential aspect of the office of the pastor and teacher, it was not exclusive to it.¹⁸ Ironically, what this tended to leave as exclusive to the ordained was presidency at the Lord’s Supper, thus resulting in a strange parallel with the ordination of priests in the Roman Catholic Church!

The provisions of sections 11 and 13 were repeated almost verbatim in the Second London Confession drawn up by the Baptists in 1677 and in the Confession of Faith of 1689, chapter 26, paragraphs 9 and 11, although using the terms bishop, elder, and pastor as synonyms for the same office and making no mention of teacher. Most Baptist and Congregational churches subsequently continued to practice the formal ordination of pastors, but there have been those who have argued that any form of distinctive ministry was in danger of compromising belief in the priesthood of all believers. In any case, no exclusive rights are conferred by the act of ordination, and not only lay preaching but also lay presidency at the Eucharist is possible. Although strict congregational polity would require a minister to be ordained again each time that he was called to a new congregation, it eventually gave way in both Baptist and Congregational churches to an ordination involving wider church representatives, not just a single congregation, and was recognized throughout the denomination (the minister simply being inducted into the new charge if he moved from one congregation to another).¹⁹

John Wesley (1703–91) did not intend to set up a formal structure of ministry in opposition to that of the Church of England, but he did perform actions to initiate his assistants/itinerant preachers into their role, ranging from a simple prayer in some cases to a formal commissioning in others, which sometimes included the imposition of hands and the giving of a Bible. When the English bishops would do nothing about providing a bishop for America, he went further and in 1784 ordained two men as deacons on one day and as presbyters or “elders” the next day to serve there, and “set apart” Dr Thomas Coke, an Anglican priest, as “superintendant” [sic]. Later he ordained other elders for Scotland and eventually for England. His justification for these actions was that, as a result of having read many years earlier Edward Stillingfleet’s Irenicum (London, 1661) and Peter King’s An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity and Worship of the Primitive Church (London, 1691), he believed bishops and priests differed only in degree and not in order and that as the spiritual Episcopos of the Methodist societies he had the right to ordain preachers for them. He adapted the Anglican ordination rites for this purpose. The main changes were the omission of the preface, the deletion of all directions about vesture, the substitution of the terms “elder” and “superintendant” for “priest” and “bishop,” and “ordain” for “consecrate” in the rite for superintendants, and the omission the phrase from John 20:23, “whose sins…,” at the imposition of hands on elders. The rite for the diaconate was retained, with deacons being given a Bible instead of the New Testament.²⁰

These services provided the basis of the ordination rites of Methodists in the United States, although in the course of time they underwent various changes. In 1792 the Methodist Episcopal Church replaced the name “superintendant” with “bishop” and “The Lord pour upon thee the Holy Spirit” was substituted for the imperative “Receive the Holy Ghost” at the imposition of hands on elders. In the nineteenth century the same change was made in the rite for bishops, and “consecrate” also replaced “ordain” in that rite to make it clear that the episcopate was not a separate order. Other Methodist churches rejected the office altogether, preferring an elected “President of Conference,” and some also dispensed with the diaconate. The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, also severed the link between ordination rites and the celebration of the Eucharist during the nineteenth century. Although the 1944 ordinal of the reunited Methodist churches marked a more cautious turn (with the restoration of elements deleted in the heyday of Protestant liberalism and the 1964 rite being even more conservative), the connection to the Eucharist was not reinstated. Orders for the consecration of deaconesses emerged in the late nineteenth century, with the first authorized service of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1908 borrowing the deaconess prayer from the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions.²¹

In Britain, Wesley’s services continued to be printed in subsequent editions of The Sunday Service despite the fact that there were no superintendents or deacons there and, in any case, the Methodist Conference of 1792 had forbidden the practice of ordination and substituted a simple reception into Full Connexion by the Annual Conference. This was done largely in order to regulate the admission of ministers to Methodism, which was becoming somewhat chaotic. It was not until 1836 that formal ordination with imposition of hands at the Conference was restored in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and in 1848 a rite of ordination containing elements from all three of Wesley’s rites but especially from those for elders and superintendents was adopted for the purpose. Its main features were extemporized prayer, the reading of a number of prescribed passages of Scripture, a token election (the admission to Connexion having taken place earlier in the day), the exhortation to the candidates and their examination from the rite for elders (with some minor changes), the bidding from the rite for superintendents, a period of silent prayer and the collect (slightly emended) from the rite for elders. Then came the prayers before the imposition of hands from both rites, the imposition of hands itself performed by the president of the Methodist Conference together with other ministers and accompanied by a formula adapted from the rite for elders, and the giving of a Bible. The service concluded with the final collect from the rite for superintendents and the Lord’s Supper followed.²² Minor changes were made in 1883, including the addition of the English version of Veni Creator Spiritus from the Anglican rite.²³ The non-Wesleyan Methodist ordinations were generally of the same kind, except that Primitive Methodists were ordained at the District Meeting instead of the Conference and, apart from the United Methodist Free Churches, “election” was played down, being dropped altogether in the rite of the United Methodist Church that was formed in 1913. After the reunion of British Methodists in 1932, the Wesleyan Methodist rite was adopted with minor alterations in the 1936 Book of Offices.²⁴

All this emphasis on formal rites of ordination, however, did not preclude the persistence of lay preaching within Methodism just as much as within the Baptist and Congregationalist traditions.

In reaction to the complexities of the medieval rites of ordination and to what James Puglisi has called the “over-sacramentalization” of ordination in medieval theology,²⁵ the sixteenth-century Reformers attempted to return to what they saw as the simplicity of New Testament practice and teaching. Yet even this did not bring about complete agreement among them. How many of the words for ministers found in the New Testament were titles of actual offices? How many of them were intended to be permanent institutions? How many were merely synonyms for the same ministry?

Nor did what they found in its pages always dictate what they adopted. Thus, while those of the Reformed tradition were convinced that election was the sine qua non of ministerial appointment according to the New Testament, they did not view the equally scriptural gesture of the imposition of hands as enjoying the same status and were happy to dispense with it where they believed it would give an erroneous impression. On the other hand, the bishops of the Church of England, although aware that election by the people had been practiced in the primitive church, denied that this was always essential and, in the words of John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 to 1604, “now in this state of the church it were most pernicious and hurtful.”²⁶

Equally, the inherent ambiguity of what the Reformers read in the New Testament failed to provide a clear guide to practice. It was not obvious to everyone, for example, who should be responsible for examining the candidates and who should participate in the laying on of hands, and different conclusions were reached on those matters in different churches. Similarly, although all the Reformers saw prayer as being part of the process of appointment in the New Testament, this did not always lead them to adopt an ordination prayer as such, but it appears to have been thought sufficient for ordinations to take place within the general context of prayer. In Luther’s rite it is the congregation that first prays for the gift of the Holy Spirit and the presiding minister may simply recite the Lord’s Prayer in conjunction with the imposition of hands. In the same way, the essential prayer of the Anglican rites for deacons and priests is the litany with its congregational responses. In those rites that did include an ordination prayer and where imposition of hands was practiced, the two were rarely simultaneous, but the laying on of hands was often done in conjunction with a subsequent blessing or a commissioning formula. While the Reformers may have recognized that both prayer and the imposition of hands were parts of New Testament practice, they did not conclude that the two necessarily went together. Although records of early Reformed ordination practice are frequently very sketchy, it appears to have been the Westminster Assembly that first restored the association of the imposition of hands with the principal prayer of the rite.

¹ William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), in Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, by William Tyndale, Martyr 1536, ed. Henry Walter, Parker Society 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 255–56, 259.

² English translation from First Principles of the Reformation or The 95 Theses and the Three Primary Works of Dr. Martin Luther, ed. Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim (London: John Murray, 1883), 227–36.

³ See, for example, Brian Gerrish, “Priesthood and Ministry in the Theology of Luther,” Church History 34 (1965): 404–22; Lowell Green, “Change in Luther’s Doctrine of Ministry,” Lutheran Quarterly 18 (1966): 173–83; Robert H. Fischer, “Another Look at Luther’s Doctrine of Ministry,” Lutheran Quarterly 18 (1966): 260–71; T. G. Wilkens, “Ministry, Vocation and Ordination: Some Perspectives from Luther,” Lutheran Quarterly 29 (1977): 66–81; Gert Haendler, Luther on Ministerial Office and Congregational Function (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

⁴ Article XIII. See The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Theodore G. Tappert et al. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 212.

⁵ More extensive study of these rites and their theology in Puglisi 2:3–69; Ralph F. Smith, Luther, Ministry, and Ordination Rites in the Early Reformation Church (New York: Lang, 1996); Bryan D. Spinks, “Luther’s Other Major Liturgical Reforms: 2, The Ordination of Ministers of the Word,” Liturgical Review 9 (1979): 20–32. For later practice and theology, see Ralph Quere, “The Spirit and the Gifts Are Ours: Imparting or Imploring the Spirit in Ordination Rites?,” Lutheran Quarterly 27 (1975): 327–46, here at 333–41, and for the Nordic countries, Rites of Ordination and Commitment in the Churches of the Nordic Countries: Theology and Terminology, ed. Hans Raun Iversen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 75–263, 433–71.

⁶ In Luther’s rite and its derivatives, 1 Tim 3:1-7 and Acts 20:28-31, thus affirming the identity of bishops and presbyters in New Testament times; other rites included Matt 28:18-20 or John 20:21-23, Titus 1:5-9; and 2 Tim 3:14–4:5.

⁷ Luther’s Works 53: Liturgy and Hymns, ed. Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), 122–26.

⁸ Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.3.4–5. All references to this work and extracts quoted here are from the English translation by Henry Beveridge in 1599. See also J. L. Ainslie, The Doctrines of Ministerial Order in the Reformed Churches of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1940).

⁹ See Elsie Ann McKee, John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984).

¹⁰ See Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.19.31.

¹¹ “Draft Ecclesiastical Ordinances September & October 1541,” in Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. J. K. S. Reid, Library of Christian Classics 22 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 59–60, n. 11.

¹² For both Pullain’s Liturgia sacra and the practice of the Genevan exiles, see W. D. Maxwell, John Knox’s Genevan Service Book (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1931 = London: Faith Press, 1965), 165–74. For the English Puritans, see Paul F. Bradshaw, The Anglican Ordinal: Its History and Development from the Reformation to the Present Day, ACC 53 (London: SPCK, 1971), 37–54.

¹³ English translation of Bucer’s text in E. C. Whitaker, Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, ACC 55 (Great Wakering: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1974), 175–83; and, with analysis, in Puglisi 2:39–53. See also ibid. 2:75–85, for John á Lasco’s rite, and 2:95–101, for the adaptation of á Lasco’s rite by Puritan exiles from England in the Netherlands. For the Anglican ordination rites, see below, pp. 163–65.

¹⁴ Text from The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland, ed. G. W. Sprott, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1901), 13–30.

¹⁵ See Puglisi 2:87–95; Duncan Shaw, “The Inauguration of Ministers in Scotland 1560–1620,” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 16 (1966): 35–62; Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI, ed. G. W. Sprott (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1901), 111–31. For the later practices of the Church of Scotland, see Gordon Donaldson, “Scottish Ordinations in the Restoration Period,” Scottish Historical Review 33 (1954): 169–75; W. R. Foster, Bishop and Presbytery: The Church of Scotland 1661–1688 (London: SPCK, 1958).

¹⁶ Propositions Concerning Church Government and Ordination of Ministers (1647), 15–26.

¹⁷ For further details of Anglican ordination rites, see Bradshaw, The Anglican Ordinal; E. P. Echlin, The Story of Anglican Ministry (Slough: St. Paul Publications, 1974); Hans-Jürgen Feulner, Das “anglikanische Ordinale”: eine liturgiegeschichtliche und liturgietheologische Studie (Neuried: Ars Una, 1997); Puglisi 2:111–46.

¹⁸ On the struggles that had taken place earlier among Puritans in England over this question, see Richard L. Greaves, “The Ordination Controversy and the Spirit of Reform in Puritan England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21 (1970): 225–41.

¹⁹ For Baptist churches, see Ernest A. Payne, The Meaning and Practice of Ordination among Baptists: A Report Submitted to the Council of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Carey Kingsgate, 1957); Robert Torbet, The Baptist Ministry: Then and Now (Philadelphia: Judson, 1953). On the history of English Congregationalism in general, see R. Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in England, 1662–1962 (London: Independent Press, 1962).

²⁰ See further A. B. Lawson, John Wesley and the Christian Ministry: The Sources and Development of His Opinions and Practice (London: SPCK, 1963); J. K. Mathews, Set Apart to Serve: The Meaning and Role of Episcopacy in the Wesleyan Tradition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985); Puglisi 2:150–61.

²¹ See further A. C. Outler, “The Ordinal,” in Companion to the Book of Worship, ed. W. F. Dunkle and J. D. Quillian (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), 103–33; G. F. Moede, The Office of Bishop in Methodism: Its History and Development (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964); and for commentary on the 1964 rite, Puglisi 3:195–202.

²² Order of Administration of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism…Together with the Ordination Service: As Used by the Wesleyan Methodists (London: John Mason, 1848), 91–118.

²³ The Book of Public Prayers and Services for the Use of the People Called Methodists (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Book-Room, 1883), 269–79.

²⁴ The Book of Offices, Being the Orders of Service Authorized for Use in the Methodist Church (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1936). See also Puglisi 3:176–85. On the history of the Methodist rite in Britain, see further A. R. George, “Ordination,” in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. 2, ed. Rupert Davies, A. R. George, and Gordon Rupp (London: Epworth Press, 1978), 143–58.

²⁵ Puglisi 2:25.

²⁶ The Works of John Whitgift, vol. 1, ed. John Ayre, Parker Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851), 368.

Chapter 8

Orders and Ministry in the Churches of the Reformation