This collection of essays is the fruit of a conference held at Westminster College, Cambridge, in September 2007, and its focus is the United Reformed Church. Formed in 1972, this union church brought together Congregationalists and Presbyterians, and they were subsequently joined by the Churches of Christ, and the Congregational Union of Scotland. Although all were expressions of the Reformed tradition, there were differences, and although these were mainly in polity, they also extended to worship. These essays probe some of the common background and some of the contradictions which remain in the denomination. Historical essays by Ernest Marvin and David Cornick outline the heritage of the Reformed tradition as expressed in Zurich and Geneva, and then via Geneva to Scotland and the Westminster Directory. Some editing problems have occurred in Cornick's essay. He refers to this reviewer's work, From the Lord and ‘the Best Reformed Churches’, but he later refers to material in my book, Freedom or Order?, though this is neither footnoted nor listed in the bibliography.

Cornick very usefully contrasts the worship space of Union Chapel, Islington, with that of Mansfield College, Oxford, and these helpfully illustrate the tension which existed within nineteenth-century Congregationalist understandings of worship and which still are alive and well in the Reformed tradition. It is left to David Thompson to remind readers that Geneva was not the focus of many English Congregationalists and, as Geoffrey Nuttall reminded his neo-Genevan colleagues, the sixteenth-century Separatist tradition played a greater role than many would wish to acknowledge. Julian Templeton questioned the wisdom of many feminist and inclusive-language advocates in removing and eliminating references to the Father and the Son, and speaking instead of God and Christ. As he correctly points out, God is not a name, and Christ and the Spirit are equally God, and he draws attention to the inclusive agenda of Susan Durber in the composition of the All Age communion service in the denomination's 2003 service book, where the Trinity is subverted. Templeton argues that the Trinity subverts patriarchy and matriarchy. Keith Riglin investigates the legacy of Congregationalism's local pastors, who were lay preachers who had been given pastoral charge over small congregations, and presided at the eucharist. This was connected with ordination resting in the local church, and this contrasted with the Presbyterian heritage where ordination rested with the Presbytery, and only ordained ministers could preach and preside. The anomaly, according to Riglin, has passed over into regulations concerning temporary appointments in an emergency of a lay person to preside at the sacrament. Fleur Houston explores the implications of Ricoeur for good preaching. David Thompson's essay, already referred to, is mainly concerned to explore the spirituality/psychology of those regular worshippers who decline to receive communion. He explores the Pauline warning of unworthy reception, and contrasts the excommunication of sinners in the sixteenth-century Reformed rites with the communion invitation of John Hunter, ‘Come not because you must, but because you may’. Is it holy fear or Holy Communion? In more than one essay the problem of the disappearance of the common cup and the use of grape juice surfaces, a nineteenth-century development when the temperance movement and the Victorian fear of microbes became a church agenda. The essayists might have noted that good wine and a silver goblet both have strong sterilising properties which grape juice and glass and pottery do not have. Professor Iain Torrance recently drew the reviewer's attention to the silver communion spoons used in some Church of Scotland congregations – the common cup was retained, and each communicant had a silver spoon to take the wine/grape juice, which is surely preferable to individual glasses. Finally, since metrical psalmody played such a central role in Reformed worship, Barbara Douglas encourages the English Reformed tradition to sing psalmody again. This is a very nice collection, not unduly heavy, and deserves to be widely read by all United Reformed Church folk who care about worship.