Liturgy


A liturgy is the customary public worship of a religious group, according to their particular traditions. In religion, it may refer to, or include, an elaborate formal ritual (such as the Catholic Mass), or a daily activity such as the Muslim Salats (see Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, p.582-3). Not infrequently in Christianity, a distinction is made between so-called "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" churches based on the elaboration and/or antiquity of the worship, but this obscures the universality of public worship as a religious phenomenon.[1] Thus, even the open or waiting worship of Quakers is liturgical, since the waiting itself until the spirit moves individuals to speak is a prescribed form of Quaker worship, sometimes referred to as "the liturgy of silence."[2] Typically in Christianity, however, the term "the liturgy" normally refers to a standardized order of events observed during a religious service, be it a sacramental service or a service of public prayer.