Holy Week in Protestant Churches
Anglicans/Episcopalians, along with other Protestants in the Catholic liturgical tradition, such as Lutherans, observe Holy Week much as the Roman Catholic Church does. Anglicans style the most important days Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Even.
Of Protestant fellowships, perhaps the Holy Week services (Passion Week) of the Moravian Church are the most extensive, as the Congregation follows the life of Christ through His final week in daily services dedicated to readings from a harmony of the Gospel stories, responding to the actions in hymns, prayers and litanies, beginning on the eve of Palm Sunday and culminating in the "Easter Morning" or Easter Sunrise service begun by the Moravians in 1732. Some Protestant churches make much of the foot washing ceremony on Maundy Thursday, for others it may be the only time in the year when Holy Communion is celebrated, other churches celebrate versions of the Jewish Passover at this time.
Other Protestant churches do not have the special ceremonies that distinguish Holy Week in Orthodox and Catholic churches. However, these Protestants conduct more informal celebrations of Holy Week, usually including sermons about the last week of Christ's life, and possibly some special services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and or Easter Sunday.
The consensus of modern scholarship is that the New Testament accounts represent a crucifixion occurring on a Friday, but a Thursday or Wednesday crucifixion have also been proposed, especially in fundamentalist circles. Some scholars explain a Thursday crucifixion based on a "double sabbath" caused by an extra Passover sabbath falling on Thursday dusk to Friday afternoon, ahead of the normal weekly Sabbath. Some have argued that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, not Friday, on the grounds of the mention of "three days and three nights" in Matthew 12:40 before his resurrection, celebrated on Sunday; others have countered by saying that this ignores the Jewish idiom by which a "day and night" may refer to any part of a 24-hour period, that the expression in Matthew is idiomatic, not a statement that Jesus was 72 hours in the tomb, and that the many references to a resurrection on the third day do not require three literal nights.
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Famous quotes containing the words holy, week, protestant and/or churches:
“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 1:18,19.
“Next week Reagan will probably announce that American scientists have discovered that the entire U.S. agricultural surplus can be compacted into a giant tomato one thousand miles across, which will be suspended above the Kremlin from a cluster of U.S. satellites flying in geosynchronous orbit. At the first sign of trouble the satellites will drop the tomato on the Kremlin, drowning the fractious Muscovites in ketchup.”
—Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941)
“blow as he would, though it made a great noise,
The flute would play only ‘The Protestant Boys’.”
—Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 23–24)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)