Why does communion frequency vary in different denominations?

Question

Different churches celebrate the Eucharist (Communion, Lord's Supper, ...) with different frequency. At one extreme, Catholic and high Anglican churches tend to celebrate it at least daily. Many Protestant churches offer it only once a month, though they will have a Sunday service each week. Some churches have Communion even less often - quarterly or annually.

What factors have caused the divergence in practice (between Catholics and Protestants) and how does each modern model compare to the frequency of its celebration in the early Church?

Answer 1

As you note, there are lots of different traditions here. My ancestry is Scottish and some old Scottish churches only celebrate communion once a year. I've looked through the some liturgies for these services that basically run all day, and it's quite an affair. I have even heard it advocated that once in a life-time ought to do the job, sort of like baptism. I don't think this is at all the spirit of the thing we find in the NT.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who say that every meal we eat together as believers counts, so basically we do it a couple times a day. For several reasons I don't think this argument holds much water.

By personal background growing up was the "traditional" once a month celebrations. I wouldn't argue that this practice is inherently wrong or sinful, but I think it is arbitrary and not the best representation of what the Lord's Supper is supposed to be about.

I believe the best representation and celebration of the Lords Supper is to do it once a week during the normal Sunday gatherings. This is consistent with the description we have of the early church gathering together (we know they did this specifically in celebration of the resurrection on the first day of each week) and the description we have of them celebrating the sacrament whenever they were gathered together.

Answer 2

The reason for the different traditions of frequency of communion is that there are a wide variety of views within Christianity about what communion actually is. It is so widely disagreed over that Christians often can't agree over what name to call it. The different theologies give rise to different practices of communion, including different frequencies.

It would be far too long and complicated to discuss in detail the different views of communion here. This Wikipedia article gives a reasonable overview, and I will attempt to pull out some salient points.

The Catholic view of Mass (which differs slightly in a technical way from communion, but which we will treat as the same thing for this answer) is that in the Mass the body and blood of Jesus become actually present. Moreover the Mass is an actual sacrifice by the participants, by which the benefits of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross are made available to the participants. (I will state here, because of common misconceptions, that this does not imply that the sacrifice of the Mass either adds to or replaces the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus). While the details are complex, the implication of this is that participation in the Mass is beneficial in and of itself. This explains the Catholic practice of attending Mass frequently - once a week for normal members and even more frequently for priests and other religious. Each attendance brings with it benefits, and the more frequently it is done the better.

At the other end of our oversimplified spectrum is the view that communion is simply a memorial - a ritual in which each person remembers the sacrifice and death of Jesus. This was the view espoused by Zwingli, and is generally held by Baptists and similar churches. It is usually referred to as Memorialism. The benefit of participating in this memorial is limited to the extent to which it is helpful to the individual, producing thoughts and feelings that assist the participant's spiritual life. Because there is no intrinsic benefit to attending a service of communion, frequency of attendance is much less. It was thought that since the effects were dependent on the state of the participant's mind, then over-frequent attendance was counter-productive and seen as idolatory by the reformers.

Many churches hold different views to those, and they can roughly be arranged on a line from 'real presence' to 'entirely symbolic'. Frequency of attendance is typically reasonably correlated with being close to the 'real presence' end. Anglicans and Lutherans typically believe in the 'real presence' without necessarily endorsing the doctrine of transubstantiation, and typically celebrate weekly, with celebrations more frequent than daily being discouraged for everyone.