Buildings, faith, and worship - Nigel Yates

This is a study of the liturgical arrangement of Anglican churches in the period between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement. Based both on surviving buildings and on a wide range of archival sources, it documents internal changes, such as in-seating plans, and the reasons behind them. In the course of the book the author challenges many widely-held assumptions about the liturgical outlook of the Pre-Tractarian period, and about the impact of ecclesiology on the Church of England. In particular, he emphasizes the existence, hitherto disregarded, of a Church of England movement for liturgical renewal between 1780 and 1840, which to a degree anticipated some of the ideas previously attributed solely to the ecclesiologists. The discussion is firmly set within the context of European Protestantism, and comparisons are drawn from the liturgical practices both of Calvinists and Lutherans. The work is aimed at theologians, students of architectural and liturgical history, and the general reader.