“Liturgy” was something close to a seven letter four-letter word for those who believed in spiritual worship. And, what students thought about Bodey and his liturgy much of the faculty also thought. The Book of Common Worship drew much upon Cranmer and The Book of Common Prayer as well as other historic resources. Everybody knew that Anglicans and  Episcopalians were not Christians! We thought about them the way my Baptist wife grew up thinking about Presbyterians – almost Catholic!

His sermon criticisms were legendary for spilling seminarians’ blood (back in the day when seniors preached before whole student body and faculty followed by public criticism). In my first year he went ballistic when a senior titled his Thanksgiving sermon, “Let’s Talk Turkey.” Several us remember when an adjunct professor, a Reformed Baptist, who could be something of a comedian, preached in chapel. As the preacher went on illustrating the state of the sinner by talking to an imaginary dead man and students chuckled, the red crawled up Bodey’s neck to the crown of his head.

“Liturgy” was something close to a seven letter four-letter word for those who believed in spiritual worship. And, what students thought about Bodey and his liturgy much of the faculty also thought. The Book of Common Worship drew much upon Cranmer and The Book of Common Prayer as well as other historic resources. Everybody knew that Anglicans and  Episcopalians were not Christians! We thought about them the way my Baptist wife grew up thinking about Presbyterians – almost Catholic!

“Liturgy” was something close to a seven letter four-letter word for those who believed in spiritual worship. And, what students thought about Bodey and his liturgy much of the faculty also thought. The Book of Common Worship drew much upon Cranmer and The Book of Common Prayer as well as other historic resources. Everybody knew that Anglicans and  Episcopalians were not Christians! We thought about them the way my Baptist wife grew up thinking about Presbyterians – almost Catholic!

As it turned out, Dr. Bodey did not have much success foisting liturgical worship on Southern Presbyterians. For one thing, it is hard to overcome a lifetime of low church Presbyterian worship with a few seminary courses. Then, too, most of the churches we went out to serve would have found an ordered liturgical service with written prayers something like singing the songs of foreign land in Zion. And, it was hard for Puritan-influenced consciences not to snag on the few occasions we might try to do a  liturgical service. It was something like what Dr. Al Fruendt, a smoker who grew up in fundamentalist Presbyterianism and spent some time at Moody Bible Institute experienced. He said it was very hard for him to see someone smoking and not think they were sinning! So it was hard to overcome the nagging of weak conscience, though in one’s mind he knew better.

The truth is that liturgy is not the enemy of spiritual worship. It is the friend of worship that makes sense and is connected to the history of Christian worship.  Forms of prayer are not a sign of the lack of the Holy Spirit. The masterful prayers composed Thomas Cranmer at the time of the English Reformation give expression to the mind of the Spirit far better than most of the free prayers I have experienced. For substance and depth, for aptness and economy of words, the prayers of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer are unsurpassed. They are much to be preferred to the trite and inarticulate prayers that too often combine prayer with exhortations with announcements.

Dick Bodey didn’t have great success introducing forms of prayer and liturgical worship. However, even from his present vantage in heaven, I have to think Dick Bodey smiles when he recalls that the now President of Greenville Seminary showed up to have a prayer at the class of 1972’s graduation ceremony wearing a collar!

Bill Smith is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church of America. He is a writer and contributor to a number of Reformed journals and resides in Jackson, Miss.  This article first appeared at his blog and is used with his permission.