The use of incense in the parish church

Incense was introduced at the Abbey Church in 2008 for special services during the year to test the reaction of the congregation and if they find it agreeable, it is likely to become an integral part of worship in the future.

The basic ingredients of incense are gums and resins extracted from various aromatic biotic materials such as wood, seeds, roots, flowers and leaves, and it releases fragrant smoke when burned, the term incense referring to the substance itself rather than to the odour it produces, having been used for a multitude of purposes since the dawn of civilisation.

Not only has it been used in medicine and for its aesthetic value but it has also been associated with religious and ritual ceremonies from pagan times and can be used to obscure less desirable odours. The church have used it since the middle of the fourth century, one of the earliest applications being in the botafumeiro, the famous thurible or swinging metal container installed in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela to hide the smell of the many tired, unwashed pilgrims huddled together there, and still in use today to greet the thousands who gather there every year after making the walk along the Way of St James, the mediaeval pilgrims' route to the city through northern Spain.

The use of incense in religion is prevalent in many cultures, especially in the east and particularly in India, Japan, Vietnam and Tibet, and one common belief is that it was included as a form of sacrificial offering to a deity. Throughout history, a wide variety of materials have been used in making incense although there has always been a preference for locally available ingredients. Sage and cedar, for instance, were favoured by the North American Indians while on the other side of the world there was much ancient trading in incense materials from one area to another which comprised a major part of commerce along the Silk Road and other trade routes, one notably called the Frankincense Trail. Its origins are therefore deeply rooted in the pre-Christian past and with many spiritual associations, hence its appeal to those who endorsed the hippie subculture during the early 1960s.

Opposition to incense and indeed many forms of ritual was prevalent in the Church of England during the later years of the 19th century when certain practices were frowned upon including the use of vestments such as the chasuble, biretta, cope, and mitre, unleavened (wafer) bread in communion, the use of bells at the elevation of the host, the decoration of churches with statues of saints, pictures of religious scenes and icons and the use of Catholic terminology such as describing the Eucharist as the mass. Those who opposed them were defending what they saw as the fundamentally Protestant identity of the Church of England and that Catholic worship was somehow un-English, Catholicism being deeply associated in many minds with cultural identities which historically, many English people had commonly treated with suspicion, especially the Spanish, the French, and the Irish.

In recent times, incense continues to be associated with the Roman Catholic Church, the smells and bells of ritual and ceremony so beloved by its clergy, but occasionally still makes an appearance in some Protestant churches although not all will sanction its use for fear of upsetting the congregation. For instance, I spent my early years as a choirboy in a small parish church seventy years ago where the aged vicar and his young curate were both traditionalists who abhorred anything that smacked of high church, knowing that the slightest whiff of incense would be regarded as a sinister and sickly intrusion and likely to result in rows of empty pews at evensong.

The experiment at the Abbey Church comes after the parochial church council agreed to use it for a one year trial on high days and holy days, at those services which are celebrated at Epiphany, Easter, Whitsun, Christmas, and other special festivals. The reaction of worshippers will then be considered when the situation is reviewed at their meeting in February 2009. The result will be an interesting reflection on the religious motivation of those who regularly attend the church and whether they are prepared to accept more symbolism in their worship in an age where simplicity of style is becoming increasingly fashionable.

However, by the summer, there were clear signs that the use of incense has not found unanimous approval and that some worshippers have stayed away as a result. The issue was subsequently addressed by the vicar, the Rev Christopher Atkinson, in the August issue of the parish magazine, in which he said that incense is an important part of Christian worship but understood that some disliked it on health grounds while others preferred to attend services without it, as they have done in the past.

“Everyone is entitled to their view”, he wrote, “but I think it is insufficient to base that view simply upon the assertion that ‘We’ve never done it that way before’. After all, if they were able, the walls of Bourne Abbey would remind us that they had absorbed 400 years and then some of holy smoke!”

This presumably refers to services at the church prior to the Reformation and may or may not be true for although incense was used in many, it was not used by all and certainly not in the poorer parishes which could not afford it. There is also the danger of harking back to the past in an attempt to prove a point in the present because, as L P Hartley so eloquently pointed out, the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

A far more important consideration today is the current state of the Church of England, riven by schism and endangered by declining congregations. Any move therefore which alienates worshippers should be shunned and even if only one stays away because of unpopular ritual then the experiment has failed.

WRITTEN JULY 2008

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