"Why is it that some modern Christians require so much variety in that which is the central Service to God and for man of the Christian Church?"
Do the laity require this, or is it merely that their hierarchs and some clerics, for reasons best known to them, require it?
I have a question. I've read here on FR about "evangelical" Anglicans. What are these, how long have they been around and do they/did they use the Anglican type liturgies I remember from my youth which for all the world looked like a Tridentine Mass?
In the case of the Destroying Worship a.k.a. "Renewing Worship" project of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America it seems to be purely (and crassly) market driven by a publishing house hell bent on foisting a new, improved, brighter, whiter (no, with political correctness, that should be rainbow hued) "constellation of resources".
The secondary agenda seems to be to make everything in the liturgy Propers...everything revolving around the Revised Common Lectionary instead of focused on the unchanging Eucharist.
Um. As I understand it (I am not a historian, among my various lacks), this goes all the way back to the "Elizabethan Compromise" under which anglo-protestant and anglo-catholic were forced to co-exist. A simplification is the distinction between "low-church" (more evangelical) and "high-church" (more catholic). The Book of Common Prayer (1928 and before) was a uniting factor; the same book was in use in the low-church diocese I grew up in (Eastern Michigan) and in the higher-church diocese to our west (Western Michigan). The form and practice of services was and is different between the two.
There have been "issues" on the Evangelical wing. The REC (Reformed Episcopal Church) was the result of such in the 1800s -- ironic that they are now in the process of unification with the rather catholic APA.
The Evangelical wing is probably the strongest numerically, as it incorporates the African churches. And in consistent faith too. The Anglo-catholic is (I am sad to report) likely by far the weaker numerically today; this is where the greatest liberal incursion has occurred and so many of our Evangelical brethren consider us all suspect (not that any great reason was ever needed for suspicion, one way or the other).
(I am far from expert in all these issues, and welcome correction/addition...)