Addendance Required

Ever wonder why worship all of the sudden seems like a town meeting once announcements start getting read? Well, it turns out, that's exactly how the dang things started. It turns out that the reason Church attendance was required by law wasn't to enforce morality (that was the duty of the household in that era, btw). Rather, people had to attend worship once a month because after worship is when what we call public service announcements were made! Two hundred years later we're still shifting into town meeting mode - only now we don't speak for the town any more. Weird.

Comments

JimG said…
Kind of makes sense.... Of course I grew up in PA, where there wasn't mandatory attendance...
wezlo said…
Yes, this is mostly for Royal Colonies - but the Puritans had similar laws, perhaps for different reasons...
Unknown said…
Interesting. I always wondered why we put announcements in the service. (Especially in the middle. It seems so disruptive.)

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