ABSTRACT
European-American Protestant liturgical traditions sprang to life as self-conscious alternatives to the medieval Roman Mass. Beginning in the sixteenth century, reform-minded Europeans asserted their right to create modes of Christian practice independent of Roman, and, later, of various imperial and national, authorities. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their followers crafted liturgies that reflected local realities, humanist insights, and newly rediscovered documents from the era of the early church. As African-American worship facilitated the formation of African Americans as a distinct people, early Protestant worship accompanied the emergence of pre-modern Europeans, a people with a new sense of identity as individuals (as opposed to being a member of an immutable class category) and citizens (as opposed to being a subject of one’s king or queen).
