In many Reformed celebrations of the Lord's Supper, argues Moore-Keish, not all is well in the pews. Too often worshippers are prompted, whether overtly or implicitly, to focus not on direct engagement with God in the ritual action of eating and drinking, but on right thinking about these actions. The ritual action becomes strictly representative of divine action, and communion with God depends on a correct interior interpretation of the action involved. Moore-Keish seeks to reclaim for the Reformed tradition eucharistic participation in which communion with God is not made secondary to, or derivative from, right doctrine. The ritual action of the Supper not only reflects but forms faith.
After providing a ‘thick description’ of the celebration of the Lord's Supper in a Presbyterian congregation, Moore-Keish leads readers through historical Reformed theology, contemporary liturgical theology, ritual studies and empirical inquiry to seek the sources and effects of Reformed eucharistic participation, which tends to seek communion with God beyond, rather than within, the Supper. Moore-Keish reviews Calvin's eucharistic theology and its subsequent development in the work of Charles Hodge and John Williamson Nevin. While Calvin emphasised theological understanding as requisite to right sacramental participation, this emphasis intensifies in Hodge so that right doctrine becomes prerequisite for communion with God in the Supper. Nevin, by contrast, emphasised an equally strong idea in Calvin – that through the Spirit, believers are united to and in Christ precisely through the ritual action of eating and drinking.
Chapter 2 maps major positions among liturgical theologians in relation to the well-known phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer precedes the law of believing). Moore-Keish wisely steers a middle course between extremes in the field, noting that over-emphasising ‘correct’ liturgical action is no more helpful than allowing doctrine to dominate. Moore-Keish turns to ritual studies in chapter 3, underscoring that the meaning of the Supper is not external to its action but emergent through it.
Chapter 4 describes Moore-Keish's qualitative research into congregants’ eucharistic experience in the congregation described at the outset. For the majority, personal prayer aimed at right thinking is key to proper participation. Fewer experience the meal itself as an immediate and communally shared engagement with God. In the closing chapter, Moore-Keish builds on preceding chapters to propose a ‘ritual studies approach to Reformed Eucharistic theology’ (p. 143).
Moore-Keish is undoubtedly correct that Calvin understood the Supper as intimate and immediate communion with God through the Spirit; yet some may feel she has too readily relieved Calvin of responsibility for the cerebral tendencies of Reformed eucharistic celebration, shifting the blame to the shoulders of Hodge and others. One also cannot help wondering whether members of a congregation with roots in the Mercersburg sacramental theology of John Nevin would prove any less susceptible to the ‘hermeneutical’ mode of participation that Moore-Keish describes. In other words, might some of the tendencies Moore-Keish describes be traceable to the pervasively individualistic, debt-payment-centred popular theology so dominant in North American culture, rather than to implicitly memorialist Reformed presiders and rites?
Pastors in Reformed congregations, as well as students and teachers of worship, will recognise the tendency to privilege doctrine over action which Moore-Keish identifies. More extensive research may clarify its sources; yet Moore-Keish helps us understand why some are abandoning Reformed pews, seeking in other traditions a more deeply visceral, immediate communion with the Lord given to us in flesh and blood.
