Keep the Christian Calendar, but Keep It Under the Word

Growing up as a Southern Baptist, I had little experience with the church calendar. My hometown church certainly celebrated the major holidays. We had candlelight services every Christmas Eve and a choir concert on Good Friday. But my pastors didn’t wear colorful stoles that changed with the seasons, and we never had special services on Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday. Those practices were for the Lutherans and Methodists, not for Baptists.

This division I intuited from my upbringing is normative historically. Celebrating the Christian calendar—not just Christmas and Easter, but whole seasons like Epiphany, Lent, and Pentecost—has separated believers since the Reformation. Yet over the last several decades, this has begun to change.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the pragmatic and revivalist emphases of the church-growth and seeker movements began to influence evangelical churches. Then, in the 2000s, authors such as Robert E. Webber and James K. A. Smith wrote against these trends. They promoted liturgical worship and the church calendar as historically rooted alternatives to entertainment-driven services. Their thinking caught on.

Today, even low-church congregations might use seasonal prayer books or host Ash Wednesday services and Epiphany feasts. Is this a positive development? Are we reclaiming Christian history, or in our desire to put off pragmatism, have we inadvertently adopted practices contrary to God’s Word? Do we understand the theology behind the calendar or what led our Reformed forebears to reject it?

To answer these questions, let’s explore the roots of the Christian calendar and the history that’s made its observance so divisive.

Rhythms for Rehearsing

When the Lord told Israel to pass down his story to their children, he framed the retelling with annual celebrations. God gave instructions for the Passover before the people left Egypt (Ex. 12:1–28). Then in Leviticus 23, he established a series of festivals—from Unleavened Bread to the Feast of Booths—that helped God’s people rehearse their journey from the Red Sea to Sinai each year. When the Christian calendar was developed in the church’s earliest centuries, it was meant as a similar teaching tool.

Christians first observed holy week and Lent in the third and fourth centuries. For believers in the West, Easter’s date was formalized at Nicea in AD 325. Christmas and Epiphany came next, followed by Advent in the sixth century.

For the early Christian pastors who developed these holidays, the seasons of the Christian year taught the milestones of Jesus's earthly ministry—from the promise of his coming at Advent through his resurrection at Easter and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

As Mike Cosper writes,

To many Protestants, the church calendar may seem like an arbitrary regulation, a testimony to authority and micromanagement from Rome, but for its authors, it was designed pastorally. The church calendar was designed to walk believers through the story of the gospel every year, from the incarnation to the ascension.

Yet the Christian calendar is more than a tool for catechesis. It’s also built on the conviction that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1)—that the sun’s daily course, the moon’s monthly circuit, and the changing seasons are all imbued with the gospel story. Summarizing Martin Luther’s thoughts, editor Elizabeth Rundle Charles wrote, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.”

Congregations that follow the calendar worship in a way that reflects this creational vision. Their longing in the dark days of Advent erupts into the lights and joyful songs of Christmastide. Their penitent collects during winter’s Lenten fast give way to Easter’s flower-filled sanctuaries and shouts of “Alleluia!” With full hearts at Pentecost, they can sing like David at harvest: “You crown the year with your bounty” (Ps. 65:11).

From Altar to Pulpit

Hebrews reminds us that Israel’s earthly tent was modeled after the greater tabernacle Moses saw in the heavenlies (Heb. 8:5). As worship developed in the Western churches during the Middle Ages, it attempted to follow the same heavenly pattern. The colorful vestments and majestic cathedrals were meant to lift congregants’ eyes away from earth to the skies.

But sadly, the tabernacle pattern—replete with an altar for the Eucharistic sacrifice and a priestly class whose traditions came to hold authority equal to Scripture—instead hid the gospel behind religious trappings. It transformed worship from a means of grace to a way of achieving salvation.

In this context, the church calendar was also transformed from a tool for discipleship to an elaborate and binding regulation. In addition to the rhythms that taught Christ’s life, the church added seven major feasts to the Virgin Mary, days commemorating each of the 12 apostles, and numerous saints’ days that elevated patrons above everyday believers.

The Reformation confronted these errors by recentering worship around God’s Word. In Germany, Luther translated the Scriptures and gave the Bible back to the people. Reformed churches on the European continent (and later the Puritans and free church nonconformists in Great Britain) went further. They ceased using vestments and images in worship. Unlike the cathedrals, their churches were plain and austere.

Wanting to make clear that holiness isn’t found in holidays, they simply prioritized Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Reformed pastors removed the altar and instead put the pulpit front and center in their sanctuaries. The point, as Ligon Duncan writes, was that “true Christian worship is by the book. It is according to Scripture. The Bible alone ultimately directs [its] form and content.”

By the Word Your Servant is Warned

Scripture repeatedly says we don’t only commit idolatry when we worship false gods. We also commit idolatry when we worship the true God in the wrong way, because doing so puts erroneous ideas about who God is into our heads.

We hear this warning in the commandments (Ex. 20:1–6) and in narratives such as the golden calves (Ex. 32; 1 Kings 12:25–33), Nadab and Abihu’s “strange fire” (Lev. 10), and Ananias and Saphira’s lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1–11).

Appealing to such warnings, Reformed theologians have emphasized the necessity of having scriptural warrant for all we do in corporate worship. This conviction that worship practices should be founded on Scripture’s positive instructions has come to be known as the regulative principle. Duncan says, “It is an extension of the Reformational axiom of sola scriptura. As the Bible is the final authority in faith and life, so it is also the final authority in how we corporately worship.”

Following this principle, Reformed worship is simple. It doesn’t require elaborate rituals, prayer books, or regalia. Instead, it’s rooted, as Duncan goes on to write, in “the unadorned and unpretentious principles of order found in the Bible.” Believing that “the law of the Lord is perfect . . . the testimony of the Lord is sure . . . [and] the precepts of the Lord are right” (Ps. 19:7–8), Reformed churches sing the Word, pray the Word, read the Word, preach the Word, and as it’s enacted in the sacrament, even eat the Word.

Matter of Freedom

At times in history, the regulative principle has been applied too stridently. As R. Kent Hughes comments,

Certainly there was some regrettable iconoclasm [by the non-conformist churches], and sometimes they went too far and abused their freedoms. Who today can read the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and not appreciate its excellencies? Who with Bible in hand can defend the radical Separatists’ extremes?

In their pursuit of a simple spirituality shorn of all extra-biblical accretions, Reformed churches sometimes constrained free Christian consciences unnecessarily. This was particularly the case when it came to the church calendar. Lacking any assurance that the calendar is apostolic in origin, some Puritans wanted to ban Christmas. But in Scripture, we discover that when Paul wrote about Christian freedom, he explicitly mentioned observing days (Rom. 14:15).

Because of this apostolic teaching, I sympathize with the Anglo-Lutheran impulse to reject Catholicism’s clearly unbiblical practices but nevertheless plunder from them what’s edifying. Recovering the calendar reminds us we’re part of a global church that’s broader than our denominational traditions. It roots us in history and reminds us we aren’t the first to love and rehearse the redemption story. But even if we retrieve what’s good in early Christian history, we must ensure the Word remains our priority.

Yes, But...

Calendar-keepers are right in their conviction that the seasons tell Christ’s glorious story. But because of sin, we don’t naturally hear creation proclaim the gospel. We must first be taught the Bible’s story before we can sense it in nature’s rhythms. As the second half of Psalm 19 makes clear, we can only see what the heavens declare when God’s Word revives our souls.

The calendar’s rhythms can also help church leaders teach their people disciplines of fasting and feasting. But if we use the calendar this way, we should also teach Christ’s warnings against publicly practicing righteousness to be seen by others (Matt. 6:16–18). Corporate fasts can be good, but there’s no need to post what you’re giving up on social media. After all, God sees what is done in secret. For him, outward rituals are nothing. What counts is faith and love that keeps God’s commands (Gal. 5:6; 1 Cor. 7:19).

Yes, Paul says observing days is a matter of freedom (Rom. 14:15), but we shouldn’t use our freedom as an opportunity for the flesh (Gal. 5:13). Elsewhere, Paul tells the Colossians not to make observing days and festivals a mandate (Col. 2:16–17). As Cosper writes, “The church calendar, as a pastoral and contextual concept for teaching people to live in the gospel story, is a great idea. As a binding regulation ordered with absolute authority, it distorts the purity of worship.”

Today’s secular culture isn’t all that concerned with vestments and ritual. Instead, we fill each month with amusements, more focused on changing the seasonal candy aisle than the colors in the sanctuary. For this reason, I’m thankful for the church of my adult years, which has taught me to follow the calendar more intentionally.

As Sarah Irving-Stonebraker writes, “Stewarding our time using the historical rhythms and seasons of the church underlines the rich distinctiveness of the Christian life. . . [a life that’s] markedly different from how the secular world compels us to spend our time.” That’s the calendar at its best, and if your conscience permits, there’s freedom to keep it. Only be sure to keep it under the Word.