Liturgical Movement - Anglican Communion

Anglican Communion

At the time of the English Reformation, the liturgy was revised and replaced with the Book of Common Prayer. The changes were relatively conservative and did not substantially shift after the sixteenth century. In Victorian England, interest in medieval liturgy had grown through the work of the Oxford Movement, which drew attention to the church's history and relation to the Roman Catholic Church. The Cambridge Camden Society (1839–63), originally formed for the study of ecclesiastical art, generated an interest in liturgy that led to the ceremonial revival of the later nineteenth century. The revival brought Anglican scholars into conversation with their Roman colleagues.

By the 20th century, the Church of England had made quite radical ceremonial and ritual changes, most of them a revival of medieval Christian practice.Tractarians, followers of the Oxford Movement who published religious tract were initially concerned with the relationship of the Church of England to the universal Church. They became interested in liturgy and, in particular, in the practice of Communion. Gradually, dress and ceremonial were altered with adoption of traditional Roman aspects from the Middle Ages, e.g. stoles, chasubles, copes and birettas; the use of candles multiplied, incense was burnt; priests learned to genuflect and bow. Gradually, the Eucharist became more common as the main Sunday Service, often enhanced by using prayers translated from the Missal. The English Missal, published first in 1912, was a conflation of the Eucharistic rite in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Latin prayers of the Roman Missal, including the rubrics indicating the posture and manual acts. It was a recognition of practices which had been widespread for many years. The changes were the subject of controversy, opposition, hostility and legal action. Some viewed such liturgical change not as reform, but a retreat to mediaeval models; many bishops and clergy perceived such change as 'popish'.

The attempt to revise the Book of Common Prayer in 1927 and 1928 was still rooted in the past, owing little to the researches or practices of continental scholars. With the publication in 1935 of Gabriel Hebert's Liturgy and Society, the debate in England began about the relationship between worship and the world. Hebert, a Kelham Father, interpreted the liturgy on wider social principles, rejecting, in the process, the idea of the eucharistic fast as being impractical. Its members wished for more frequent communion, not merely attendance at Mass; they wanted to relate the eucharist to the world of ordinary life. Through its influence, the offertory was restored, though not without protracted controversy. The ideas of the Parish Communion movement, as it came to be called, were in advance of English Roman Catholic scholars. The liturgy remained officially unaltered until the 1960s, when the synodical process began which was to produce the Alternative Service Book in 1980 and Common Worship in 2000.