Repost: Lutheran Order of the Decalogue

This is an article I wrote in 2009 on the Lutheran order of the decalogue.  In particular, I wanted to repost this comment at the end of the article:

Unfortunately, modern Evangelical Anglicans like many of those in the Sydney Diocese have sided with the modern church growth movement. They no longer use the prayer book or read the Decalogue during communion services. While they still recommend that ministers use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer or the Australian Prayer Book adopted in 1980, the use of liturgy to teach Scripture, creed, and evangelical theology is replaced with dumbed down "experiential" worship focusing on the subjective and ecstatic experience of the lay person rather than an intellectual grasp of the propositional truths of Holy Scripture. This blatantly anti-intellectual approach to worship downplays the didactic intent of Cranmer's liturgy and replaces it with what can only be described as an irrational and "liberal" view of worship. This sort of liturgical pragmatism may win short term gains in attendance and monetary rewards for the church but the long lasting effects of such an approach is pelagianism and liberalism, the very things Sydney claims to oppose. The same seems to be true in many Anglican congregations in the United Kingdom.

The real purpose of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is to teach the Evangelical faith and to evangelize all who attend the worship services by reading the penitential sentences or Scriptures in the Morning and Evening Prayer services and by reading both the Decalogue (law) and the Gospel in the liturgy itself. For Cranmer and the English Reformers real presence, veneration of images and the saints, and other departures from Scripture are not matters of indifference but matters central to the very Bible itself.

From:  Why Luther Deletes the Second Commandment.