Why Anglicans Bow in Worship: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Throughout Scripture, we find God’s people worshipping not only with their voices and minds, but with their whole bodies. From the moment God created mankind from the dust of the ground and breathed life into them, it has only made sense to involve our very bodies in grateful reverence before him.
For this reason, Anglicanism has resisted a purely verbal or intellectual worship. Gestures such as kneeling, bowing, standing, and signing the cross give bodily voice to humility, reverence, repentance, and adoration, and they regularly appear in our services. The Prayer Book tradition invites our bodies to join the prayer our minds and hearts express.
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In what follows, we’ll focus specifically on bowing: when Anglicans bow in the liturgy, what we mean (and don’t mean) by it, common objections, and how this simple practice can train us in reverence.
Embodied Worship in Anglicanism
Anglican theology has regarded bodily worship as both expressive and instructive. Clergy such as the bishop and Caroline divine Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) argued that external reverence helps train internal reverence; bodily habits shape the soul.
In his classic work The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), another seventeenth-century bishop and Caroline divine, writes,
External worshipping is an act of the body as well as of the soul; and therefore is to be expressed in bodily significations of worship and honour.
Jeremy Taylor, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living
Christian worship has always involved the body as well as the mind. Human beings are not disembodied intellects; we learn and love through physical habits. Gestures such as bowing, therefore, function as embodied prayers meant to train our hearts in reverence.
Anglicans and the Second Commandment
With reverence, however, comes risk. During the Reformation, many Protestant traditions moved away from physical gestures in worship, fearing a return to medieval Roman Catholic superstition—especially gestures connected with objects such as altars, crosses, and crucifixes, as well as representational images.
Accusations of breaking the Second Commandment remain a point of contention between Protestants and our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters. Anglicanism recognizes that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians distinguish between the worship owed to God alone and the reverence shown toward objects associated with divine worship. The disagreement is less about whether bodily reverence is appropriate at all, and more about how we frame such gestures theologically, especially regarding the Eucharist. Due to these differences, Anglicans still find that these other two branches of Christianity still too often fall into idolatry through their veneration.
Anglicanism has generally occupied a middle space: retaining ceremonial reverence while also expressing Reformation concerns about superstition and devotion detached from an object’s liturgical use. It distinguishes between reverence and adoration, symbol and object, and ceremony and superstition.
When and Why We Bow
Anglican worship makes few requirements for physical gestures, in contrast to the Second Council of Nicæa, which required veneration of images on pain of anathema. The Prayer Book requires kneeling (when able) during prayers, and the 1604 Canons commend us to bow at the name of Jesus.
While those are the only recorded instructions, bowing has long been a meaningful custom in many Anglican services. Practices vary between churches and individuals, but in a typical Anglican church, you will often see bowing
- at the mention of Jesus or certain references to the Divine Trinity.
- toward sacred objects, such as the processional cross and Lord’s Table (also called the Holy Table, Communion Table, or altar). These particular gestures are often seen as acts of personal devotion rather than public worship, though they clearly occur well within that public context.
Some Anglicans bow frequently; others rarely or never do so; it belongs more to reverent custom than binding doctrine.
Bowing at the Lord’s Name
Anglicans bow at certain spoken points in the liturgy—often at the name of Jesus, and during texts such as the Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit…”) and the Sanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts…”), which worship Jesus as a person of the Triune God.
Bowing during the liturgy at the mention of Jesus’ name appears very early in the Anglican tradition, based on Philippians 2:9-10:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
Philippians 2:9–10
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth…
Canon 18 of the Church of England’s 1604 Book of Canons even instructs,
When in time of divine service the Lord Jesus shall be mentioned, due and lowly reverence shall be done by all persons present…
The Book of Canons
Indeed, perhaps no physical gesture exists with more scriptural warrant than bowing at the name of our Lord.
Bowing at the Cross and Lord’s Table
Anglicans also often bow toward sacred ceremonial objects, most commonly the Lord’s Table and the processional cross. We usually bow
- whenever we approach the Lord’s Table or cross the center aisle in front of it. Some also bow when entering and exiting their pew from the center aisle. This acknowledges the Table as the set-apart place where we receive Christ’s spiritual gift of himself as we participate in the Eucharist.
- As the crucifer processes the cross into and out of the nave at the beginning and end of the service, it represents the cross on which Jesus gave his life to atone for our sins. We likewise do this when the cross leads the procession of the Gospel Book for the Gospel reading.
Many have misunderstood these gestures, so it is worth considering their history and scriptural rationale.
Retraining in the Reformation
To retrain congregations against medieval ritualism, bowing before the altar disappeared during the early Reformation. Reformation Anglicans took breaking God’s Law seriously; until recently, many Anglican churches expected recitation of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) in Eucharist services.
Yet leaders of the Protestant English Church knew the descent into idolatry did not result from objects—or even gestures—in themselves, but from erroneous (or absent) teaching. These practices required catechesis from Scripture to be used well.
The Caroline Restoration
By the Caroline era of the seventeenth century (especially by the reign of Charles II), the Prayer Book and other formularies, alongside scriptural preaching and access to English Bibles, had catechized churchgoers into what the sacraments and other elements of worship were and were not, allowing for a revised approach to objects and gestures.
For this reason, Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645) and other Caroline divines restored physical acts of worship within a framework of reverence rather than adoration. Communion Tables, once moved away from the wall, returned to the east wall and were railed off. Bowing toward the Lord’s Table also increasingly returned, to the vexation of nonconformists. A description of Bishop Andrewes tells us
His appearance outside the gate of the church in full canonicals, and his bowing towards the altar, gave offense to the Puritans…
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 32
Seventeenth-century Anglicans did not see themselves as reintroducing a potentially harmful Roman ritual. They believed they were restoring reverence in a reformed and properly catechized manner after a necessary but sometimes overcorrective reaction during the early Reformation.
Reverence, Not Ritual
Andrewes, Taylor, Laud, and other leading clergy of their day defended bowing not as worship of objects, but as reverence toward God in the place where the sacraments are celebrated. They argued that Christ’s incarnation sanctifies bodily worship and that sacred actions help form inward devotion. It’s important to note, then, that since we are ultimately reverencing God rather than the objects, they themselves do not receive bowing outside of their liturgical function (i.e., you don’t bow to the processional cross when it is not in procession).
The Temple and the Table
The Caroline divines denied that these gestures constituted idolatry. We bow toward God and Christ’s spiritual presence, they claimed, not toward material objects. They believed that when we take the bread and wine on earth, our souls participate in Christ’s body and blood in heaven. The elements and altar are not holy in themselves, but only as the means and place through which we engage in heavenly worship. To revere them otherwise would break the Second Commandment:
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…
Exodus 20:4-6
Yet we see in Scripture that Moses, when God makes his presence known through the burning bush, takes off his sandals in reverence (Exodus 3). When God later commands artisans to create representational imagery for his worship in the construction of the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25), the Tabernacle (Exodus 31), and, later, the Temple (1 Kings 5–8), they treat them with similar reverence. Thereafter, for ancient Jews, it also became fully appropriate to bow toward the Temple in Jerusalem wherever they were. As the psalmist proclaims,
…in reverence I will bow myself toward your holy temple.
Psalm 5:7b, New Coverdale Psalter (BCP 2019)
While an alternative translation could read “in your holy temple,” centuries of tradition support this reading, as praying toward the Temple remained a common practice. The Jews clearly knew that God is omnipresent, beyond the confines of a space, yet he had promised to make his Spirit particularly present with his people in the Temple.
The Church is not a continuation of the Temple system in a literal sense, since Christ himself fulfills the Temple and dwells among his people by the Spirit. Yet Christians have long recognized, like the Jews before them, that places and actions set apart for worship naturally invite reverence. Thus, since we believe that Christ is truly spiritually present with us through Holy Communion, the Lord’s Table is the place consecrated for us to engage with that presence; therefore, we bow in reverence toward it.
Bishop Taylor, in his engagement with a Jesuit Catholic priest named Fisher, distinguished the Anglican view from that held amongst Catholics of the day:
The honour done is not to the altar, but to God at whose altar we worship.
Jeremy Taylor, Conference with Fisher the Jesuit, May 24, 1622.
Contemporary Concerns
Even in recent years, some have complained that bowing toward the cross and the Lord’s Table might reopen the door to medieval ritualism and superstition, especially in an age in which both modernism and mysticism pull society to extremes detached from Christ. As always, the human heart searches for answers it can find only in Christ and can be easily led astray. We must instruct it.
Ceremonies are not spiritually neutral in the abstract; they shape our imagination and affections. They can be powerful tools if guided by the Gospel of Christ. For this reason, they must remain intelligible, restrained, scripturally grounded, and subordinate to the Gospel itself. If done, then these gestures pray with our bodies what we confess with our mouths.
The question, then, is not whether bodily gestures can become superstitious. Of course they can. Any good thing in Christian life can become distorted: preaching can become a personality cult, Bible study can become intellectual pride, spontaneous prayer can become performance, and ceremony can become empty ritualism or even idolatry.
However, avoiding anything that could possibly be abused can lead to scrupulosity. The better answer is to frame these good practices in light of the Gospel as revealed in Scripture to avoid the pitfalls, boldly living in light of what Paul told Timothy,
God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7
Ceremony and Catechesis
So, how does the Church form people not to avoid such practices, but to use them rightly? When properly understood, they are instructive and good; when misunderstood, they can lead to unorthodox belief and practice. Anglican tradition therefore emphasizes Scripture proclaimed, Christ preached, sacraments administered, and ceremony serving those realities rather than replacing them.
If a congregation bows at the name of Jesus, they should know that this arises from Philippians 2, that it confesses Christ’s lordship, and that it is directed toward Christ himself, not toward sounds or syllables. If people reverence the Lord’s Table, they should understand we are not worshipping furniture; the Table is honored because of the sacred meal celebrated there, and the reverence ultimately belongs to God.
When we teach about these gestures clearly, they are less likely to drift into magical thinking, and instead instruct us—body, mind, and soul—in an essential truth: God really does draw near to us in our worship in a way that calls for a response, even with our very bodies:
O come, let us worship and bow down, *
Psalm 95:6, New Coverdale Psalter (BCP 2019)
and kneel before the LORD our Maker.
Image: English parish church chancel. Photo by whitemay from Getty Images Signature, courtesy of Canva. Digital editing by Jacob Davis.
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