Yesterday, marked Remembrance Day. This is the day commonwealth countries remember the ending of the First World War and honour those who lost their lives in the line of duty. Other non-commonwealth countries also mark the day. The day, marked by a silence at 11am, on the 11th day of the 11th month remember the specific time hostilities ended. The day has also come to incorporate remembrance for those who gave their lives in World War II and, to some extent, those who have fought in other wars in defence of the nation.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I am absolutely on board with Remembrance Day. I think it is culturally important. It is not only good for us to remember the horrors of war and, in doing so, aim to remind ourselves just what we want to avoid happening over again. I also think it is important for us to specifically remember, and be grateful for, those who fought. Not only those who gave their lives – who we owe a debt of thanks – but those, like my grandfather, who fought and survived and lived with the not inconsiderable consequences. It is worth remembering there was a whole generation of people, but particularly men, who were absolutely traumatised. They similarly deserve our undying respect and thanks. For those reasons, I am all for civic acts of remembrance.

What I am much less for, however, is Remembrance Sunday. Not Remembrance Sunday as such. I’m fine with you taking the time to remember and give thanks for those who gave their lives for our freedoms on a Sunday in principle. What I am specifically not much in favour of are civic acts of remembrance in the middle of our church service. Now, before you explode at your keyboard and insist I must hate the war dead and have no care or concern for them, can I please ask you to re-read the paragraph above.

If you are going to disagree with me (which you are free and entitled to do), let’s just make sure we understand exactly what I am objecting to and specifically what I am not talking about. Acts of remembrance; great! Remembrance day; great! Remembrance Sunday, if you like as well; no problem! There is no fight here with me; have at it! I am very specifically talking about inserting an exclusively cultural, civic act into the heart of a church service or even building the entire service around it. If you want to do that after the service, outside the church, no problem here either. It’s very specifically doing the act of remembrance as part of the God-ordained church service.

Now, I accept, much of my disquiet centres on my understanding of the regulative principle of worship (RPW), some of which you can understand by following that link. Specifically, I simply don’t find the biblical warrant for adding a civic, cultural addition into our services. As I said above, I am all for acts of remembrance and showing gratitude to those who fought for our freedoms. I just don’t think we have any biblical warrant to shoe-horn that into our church services. It is, at the end of the day, not strictly speaking part of our prescribed worship.

The basic principle behind RPW is not, as many seem to think, if it isn’t expressly in the Bible we can’t do it. Rather, the principle is much closer to the following, less pithy form:

Anything that is done must be warranted biblically. That is, either expressly in a particular form, a valid form of a wider command or biblically warranted within a wider framework and understanding of Christian worship.

There is much we can or might do that is biblically warranted. It might be a form of something we are commanded to do in church or part of our wider understanding of Christian worship in some way. But that inevitably means there are certain things that, whilst not at all sinful or wrong in themselves, ought not to be part of our formal weekly worship. They might be acceptable in general, but not appropriate for a Sunday service.

There are quite a lot of things that fall into such a category. Many Brits baulk at the politicisation of some American pulpits and bristle at regular mention of veterans and the almost auto-reflex pronouncement, ‘thank you for your service’. Not that it is in any way wrong to be grateful for veterans (again, please read the key paragraph near the top). But many Brits think this is not the stuff of church. A lot of that simply boils down to cultural conditioning and expectation. But it is odd that some of the most vociferous voices against these American pronouncements might be so favourable to British forms of exactly the same attitudes being expressed in the church. For that is all Remembrance Sunday and the act of remembrance in church is.

The other fact I am frequently conscious of – particularly in my context – is that so many in our church simply aren’t from Britain, or even from commonwealth countries, and so the whole matter is entirely alien. Now, alien doesn’t necessarily equate to wrong. Communion would be alien to Muslim-background new believers when they first see it too, but we aren’t going to sack that off! The reason we aren’t going to stop it is because it is biblically mandated and has specific relevance for them. The same would apply if the act of remembrance in a yearly church service was similarly biblically mandated. But, of course, it isn’t.

Again, that doesn’t mean we oughtn’t to do it of itself. Again, my main case for not doing it rests on the RPW. However, a secondary consideration is whether it is helpful to non-British, or at least non-commonwealth-nation believers, to impose a particular cultural, civic element of the service on them that is both culturally alien, biblical unwarranted and peculiarly Anglican. It strikes me this runs the risk of bringing civic-national cultural concerns into what ought to be our international, multicultural service of worship. Concerns that are not illegitimate, which have genuine cultural and civic value, but are not biblically warranted.

If we are committed to including such elements in our formal church services, we are inevitably going to need to ask on what basis can we say no to any other such cultural element? Britain, for example, has a similarly culturally important and civic-significant reason to remember the 5th of November too. The consequences for Christian religion, and for our country, were just as significant in 1605 and would also have meant foreign powers limiting the freedom of the English people. And yet few of us think it worthwhile, or even appropriate, including such things in our services of worship. I am sure you can think of lots more examples – some probably more or less appropriate on face value than any other – but we must ask: on what basis are we prepared to include this? If it is a question of what is biblically warranted, what ground have we really got for the inclusion of any of these things? Unless we rely on the RPW, what is really stopping us from ended up with the blessing of the asparagus? But if we can see we don’t have biblical warrant for such cultural intrusions, can we really make a special exception for this cultural, civic thing?

And so, once again, let me reiterate: I am not arguing that we should not remember those who fought for our freedoms. I think it is both culturally and civically important that we do. I am not arguing that there should be no Remembrance Day – I am quite glad there is one. I am not necessarily even arguing there should be no Remembrance Sunday (I’m okay with it). I am just suggesting that, if we don’t have biblical warrant for an act of remembrance in our church service, and I don’t see that we do, we shouldn’t add one in because we have decided it is important. After all, God is the one who will decide how he is worshipped and if this isn’t something he has called us to do – and I can’t see that he has – then we have no business determining that we will do it on the basis that it is culturally or civically significant. Rather, I think we should keep the worship of God centred on just that – worship of God – and keep the civic and culturally important ceremonies in their proper place, outside the church.