THE NEW PASSOVER:
Rethinking the Lord’s Supper for Today
By Nigel Scotland
Cascade Books. 184 pages. £20
ISBN 978 1 498 218 139
This plea to rethink the Lord’s Supper argues that it should, ideally, be a ‘a sit-down evening meal for small groups of Christian believers.’ (p.184).
Something happened, it is claimed, by the mid-fourth century, that changed a home-based fellowship meal for real believers, into a priest-led, complicated ritual to which nominal believers were invited (p.18). Scotland attributes this change to the reaction to abuses which arose, Corinthian-like, in the fellowship meal. This meant there was a need to separate out and preserve the ‘Eucharist’ element which focussed on the remembrance of Christ’s death.
