"The death of kneeling" - Anglicans fight back

Leaders of the Anglican Church in Britain are urging worshippers to kneel when praying amid growing concern that fewer people are adopting the practice during services. Stephen Pedley, the Bishop of Lancaster, has launched a campaign to revive kneeling, and other bishops are echoing his views.

"Over the past few years I have noticed the death of kneeling," he said in his latest diocesan newsletter. "People crouch, they stand, they sit, in extremis they appear to lie down, but hardly anyone kneels.

"Is it because kneeling is uncomfortable? Or are we so ageing that old bone and old minds can no longer conceive of kneeling? Are we simply too embarrassed to kneel? Why is it that God no longer draws us to our knees? Is it just indifference?

In Canada, the kneeling question has sparked debate in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches.

Kneeling is an ancient and traditional practice, especially during Eucharistic prayers, that symbolizes humility and inward reflection before God. In recent decades, however, Canadian churches have been encouraging, or at least permitting, worshippers to stand as priests recite liturgical prayers.

Where the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer instructs people to kneel during prayer, the more modern Anglican Book of Alternative Services tells the faithful when to stand.

At Toronto's St. James Cathedral, one of Canada's most conservative Anglican churches, The Reverend Douglas Stoute said he takes a laissez-faire approach. "We encourage people to do whatever they feel comfortable with," he said. "We work on the principle that praying is hard enough without throwing other obstacles in the way. So if you like to kneel you can kneel and if you want to stand you can stand."

Monsignor Kieron Conry, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in England, warned against insisting that congregations kneel. "As a practice, kneeling is much less common even in Catholic services," he said. "People reflect more on why they do things. Many find that they can be equally reverential standing or even sitting, rather than kneeling because they have always knelt. To tell people to kneel is carping."

Standing is seen by some clerics as more politically correct - a way of exalting God - an uplifting gesture in the spirit of the Easter resurrection.

However, the Bishop of Basingstoke, Geoffrey Rowell, said he was concerned about the trend toward less kneeling.

"Every word for worship in the Bible means not only to kneel, but probably to prostrate oneself. We are bodies as well as souls, and how we actually use our bodies signals things. There is a kind of attentive sitting which is appropriate for meditation, but if you never kneel, something very important has been lost from our body language. And because this informs the way in which we are as living personal beings, it is not without its significance.''

Jonathan Petre, The Daily Telegraph, with files from Richard Foot, National Post

[See also the short meditation on Kneeling by Romano Guardini]

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