{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.016058394160583942, 'fraction_numerical': 0.020437956204379562, 'mean_word_length': 5.376744186046512, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Implementing a Reformed Liturgic: Fifty Years of Reformed Liturgical Life

When The Liturgical Conference embraced the ecumenical character of its mission, the Reformed community was just launching its skiff into the stream of the ecumenical liturgical convergence. Two lectures delivered in 1956 and 1960 give us a baseline for assessing the impact of liturgical renewal on churches in the American Reformed Tradition. These are the Sprunt Lectures delivered in 1956 at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, by James Hastings Nichols, and the Stone Lectures delivered in 1960 at Princeton Theological Seminary by Howard Hageman. They were given on the eve of the liturgical productivity that poured forth from the historic denominations of the United States in the last third of the twentieth century, including the American Reformed community (see excursus). This outpouring began with a joint Presbyterian–United Church of Christ (UCC) effort resulting in each publishing a provisional service for the Lord’s Day in 1964 and wound down with the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship of 1993. The liturgies produced during this period reflect the ecumenical liturgical convergence that occurred between the historic churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic, in this generation. However, for the Reformed community of the late 1950s all this lay in the future.