Directory for Family Worship

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Calvinism

John Calvin
Background Christianity St. Augustine The Reformation
Distinctives Calvin's Institutes Five Solas Five Points (TULIP) Regulative principle Confessions of faith
Influences Theodore Beza Synod of Dort Puritan theology Jonathan Edwards Princeton theologians Karl Barth
Churches Reformed Presbyterian Congregationalist Reformed Baptist
Peoples Afrikaner Calvinists Huguenots Pilgrims Puritans This box: view • talk • edit

The Directory for Family Worship is a book of general directions for private, family worship in the Calvinist tradition. While generally approving of the products of the Westminster Assembly (namely, the Westminster Standards), the Church of Scotland viewed it as incomplete without directions for private worship. The Directory was approved by the General Assembly at Edinburgh, Scotland on August 24, 1647, it became, the standard of family worship in the Church of Scotland and has been influential within Presbyterian churches worldwide. In America, for example, it was highlighted in 1733 by the Synod of Philadelphia to seek "some proper means to revive the declining Power of Godliness," recommended "to all our ministers and members to take particular Care about visiting families, and press family and secret worship, according to the Westminster Directory."^[1]

[edit] References

^ Kerry Ptacek (1997). Family Worship - Biblical Basis - Historical Reality - Current Need. Greenville Theological Seminary.

[edit] Bibliography

J. W. Alexander (1850). The Nature, Warrant, and History of Family Worship. Alexander was the eldest son of Archibald Alexander, the first professor of Princeton Theological Seminary.
A Westminster Bibliography (Part 6) by By Dr. Richard Bacon (1996), An investigation of the Westminster Assembly regarding the construction of this document.