Liturgy started out as a tax on rich Athenians, not a prayer
In ancient Greece a leitourgia was a costly public duty. A wealthy citizen might be told to fund a festival or even a warship, and was repaid in prestige. Christians later borrowed the word for their Sunday service, and today it covers everything from Buddhist chanting to Quaker silence.
Liturgy means the customary public worship of a religious community, a shared act of praise, thanks, remembrance, petition or repentance through which people approach the divine. Strictly it is one kind of ritual. The Greek leitourgia joins words for people and for work, so it meant labour done on behalf of the public.
That labour was literal. Rich Greeks paid for particular civic rites, and could do so meanly or lavishly, rather than handing over a fixed sum. M. I. Finley counted at least 97 such festival appointments in Athens in the time of Demosthenes, climbing to 118 in the years of the four-yearly Panathenaic games. By the 3rd century AD these duties had become compulsory, a disguised tax. Under Rome, where they were called munera, they swelled to include games, road and aqueduct repairs and feeding passing troops, and grew so ruinous that people dodged them when they could.
Early Christians adopted the term for their main Sunday gathering, variously called the Eucharist, Mass or Divine Liturgy, which they understood as a sacrifice and as a two-way service between God and worshippers. Many churches name a liturgist, lay or ordained, to read scripture and announcements while the minister preaches. Christians sometimes sort churches into liturgical and non-liturgical by how scripted they are, though critics reject the split: even Quakers waiting for the Spirit to move someone follow a set form, sometimes called the liturgy of silence.
Other faiths have their own versions. Buddhist monastic communities in almost every tradition hold services, often daily, that differ between Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. They centre on chanting sutras, gathas and, especially in Vajrayana, mantras, usually before a revered object with offerings of light, incense, water and food. In Islam, salat, the obligatory physical prayer, counts among the Five Pillars and is distinct from dua, or personal supplication.
Source: Liturgy
