Pulpit and Table – A Rivalry?

While emphasizing the value of preaching was not unique to the Reformation, nevertheless, during the Reformation preaching gained new prominence. English Protestants understood the ministry primarily as a preaching office – and not just ‘puritans’. The Prayer Book promoted the elevation of preaching; it required a sermon every Sunday. George Herbert (certainly a conformist) called ‘the Pulpit [the parson’s] joy and his throne’.¹Herbert, George. A Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson his Character, and Rule of Holy Life. (London: T. Maxey for T. Garthwait, 1652), p. 21. This development is usually presented as if it came at the expense of the eucharist. Peter Iver Kaufman, expressing a widespread view, said, ‘Late Tudor Calvinists hoisted the pulpit over the altar and insisted that each parish be supplied with a preacher’.²Prayer, Despair, and Drama (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 48.

Kauffman’s characterization alludes to the late Elizabethan–Jacobean trend of erecting towering pulpits often situated in ways that obscured view of the communion table from the church’s nave. The Jacobean pulpit in St James’ Church, Stanstead Abbotts, Hertfordshire (as seen in this picture) illustrates the sort of thing Kaufman had in mind. This is read as evidence of side-lining communion. But there are strong reasons to question this reading.

Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke report no table-pulpit rivalry reflected in spending on new pulpits and tables in the Jacobean period.³Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547-c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 106. Hunt demonstrated that an emphasis on preaching tended to go hand-in-hand with frequent communion.⁴Arnold Hunt, “The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England,” Past & Present 161, no. 1 (1998), pp. 39–83 (p. 52). The evidence of monthly communion cuts across the party lines; non-conformist preachers were as likely as conformists to urge frequent communion. Parsons scheduled more sermons ahead of communion Sunday to help people prepare. This reading of the material evidence also fails to notice how the Prayer Book envisions the use of the room within the liturgy. Pulpits indeed dominated naves but, for the Lord’s supper itself, the Prayer Book bid the people “draw near” the table, from which vantage point, the pulpit falls out of view. 

What the Prayer Book envisions differs from what most Anglicans today would find familiar. Most church buildings in England on the eve of the Reformation were designed on a two-room model: one for the altar and clergy, called the chancel or choir, and one for the people, called the nave. They were separated by a lattice screen, usually called a rood screen in England (from the rood or crucifix displayed on it), known in Latin as cancelli. The space within that lattice screen (cancelli) was called the chancel, as in the Prayer Book rubric, “And the chancels shall remain, as they have done in times past.” This rubric forbids pulling down the screen. Cranmer wanted to keep the two-room model. But, why? Surely this physical separation conflicts with evangelical principles. Some certainly thought so, because the order to keep the rood screens was not always followed. Many were indeed pulled down to create one room. But, the Prayer Book’s design is entirely evangelical. In 1549 it instructed the laity to enter the chancel to present their offerings, after which communicants – those people admitted to communion who had duly prepared for the occasion – were to “tarry still in the choir.” The invitation to communion in the 1662 Prayer Book, says

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.

This bidding “draw near with faith” was not a metaphor. Charles Wheatley said that this was the point at which communicants would come ‘from the more remote parts of the church as near to the Lord’s table as they could’.⁵Charles Wheatley, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (London: C. Hitch, L. Hawes, B. Dod, J. and J. Rivington, J. Ward, R. Baldwin, W. Johnston, J Richardson, P. Davey, and B. Law, 1759), p. 269. Depending on how the table was situated within the space – either in the middle of the chancel (if there was one) or church, or against the eastern wall – the people knelt either around the four sides of the table or before it.⁶D. N. Keane, “The Relative Positions of the Presider, Table, and Assembly at Communion, Pt. 2,” The North American Anglican (2020). https://northamanglican.com/the-relative-positions-of-the-presider-table-and-assembly-at-communion-part-ii/ Whether there was a rood screen or not, rails or not, the people relocated nearer to the table. From this perspective, the towering pulpit does not dominate the view. At communion, the table becomes the visual focal point (as seen in this second picture of St James Church, Stanstead Abbotts).

In the Prayer Book’s design, the pulpit and the table are not rivals but partners in proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). Sermons, far from displacing the sacrament, should point towards it and prepare hearers for partaking of it.