The battle for Christian Britain. Sex, humanists and secularization, 1945–1980. By Callum G. Brown. Pp. xii + 326. Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. £22.99 (paper). 978 1 108 43161 3

Abstract

Movement – indeed, celebration at the appropriate times of the day, as well as revised material, were some of the early reforms undertaken in the Roman Catholic Church in the \uf644\uf64c\uf648\uf643s. These were further revised in the wake of Vatican II, and influenced a wider revival amongst other Western Churches. The main focus of this book is to document and explore the revival within the Episcopal Church in the USA and some other selected Anglican Provinces. As noted, the beginnings can be traced to certain publications of Anglo-papalists in the wake of the Tractarian movement. Again, in the \uf644\uf64c\uf648\uf643s Catholic organisations such as the Church Union published material for Anglo-Catholics which was borrowed from Roman Catholic forms. Revival on a more widespread scale is traced to the impact of the Liturgical Movement on the wider Anglican communion, and in detail through the Services for Trial Use, and the work of H. Boone Porter through the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer to the final \uf644\uf64c\uf64a\uf64c Book of Common Prayer. The role of Associated Parishes in facilitating the introduction of the services is documented. In England Moore examines the role of the Joint Liturgical Group in providing ecumenical forms for UK churches to use as a resource, as well as the \uf644\uf64c\uf64b\uf647 Lent, Holy Week, and Easter services of the Church of England and the current Common Worship. She looks more briefly at the forms of the Episcopal Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales, as well as identifying some more recent Anglican prayer books which do not make provision for the revived Holy Week services. Her conclusion is that within a span of less than fifty years the liturgies of Holy Week went from the periphery of the life of the Church to the centre of the American Prayer Book. Now that the Episcopal Church has begun a conversation about revision of the \uf644\uf64c\uf64a\uf64c book, questions about the popularity of these services and possible modifications are up for consideration. This is an important book for those who are concerned specifically with the reintroduction of these services in the Episcopal Church of the USA. It also invites the documentation and examination of Holy Week services in the same detail across the wider Anglican Communion to provide a fuller and broader narrative.