Language in the Liturgy
Past, Present, Future
by Barry Spurr
Paperback (No longer our product)
(January 2025)
ISBN: 9780227179796
Price: $38.00
On back order
Language in the Liturgy is an historically-based, linguistically-focused account of the development of liturgical language in English in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches over the past half-century. It analyses issues of style and expression in a wide range of texts, setting this analysis within larger contexts of ecclesiastical and societal change since the 1970s. The Book of Common Prayer is taken as the benchmark of classical liturgical composition in English, not only because it was the first liturgy to be composed in the language, but also because of the universally acknowledged beauty of it. Professor Spurr makes a detailed comparative and analytical linguistic study of the Prayer Book and the liturgies composed in English in the modern idiom. He argues for a ‘renewal of the renewal’ by the restoration of an appropriate solemnity and sacredness of linguistic expression, as exemplified in the traditional Prayer Book rites. The book also includes chapters on the role of music and of silence in worship. This stimulating study will be of interest to all concerned about the future direction of liturgies in English in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches.
Barry Spurr was a member of the English Department at Sydney University for forty years, and was Australia’s first Professor of Poetry. He has published extensively on Renaissance and Modernist poetry, religious literature and liturgical language. His internationally-acclaimed study of T.S. Eliot’s Christianity, Anglo-Catholic in Religion, is the standard account of its subject. Professor Spurr is currently Literary Editor of Quadrant.
- By (author) Barry Spurr
"This book encourages Anglicans and Roman Catholics alike to trust in the words of liturgies which have stood the test of time, and to invest themselves in language which has been purified in the fire of faithful praying. The linguistic richness and semantic density of religious language is an icon of faith itself; and Barry Spurr has produced a passionate apologia for the living stones of language which, by staying still instead of rolling, have gathered layers of truth and power which newer, plainer words cannot rival." Dr Carolyn Hammond, Dean, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge "As only a devoted reader of poetry can, Barry Spurr illuminates the many splendors of Cranmer's prayer book and the "old rite" from which it draws; and, with the mordant thoroughness of a prosecuting lawyer, uncovers the blunders, confusions, evasions, infantilizations, and serial diminishments of over a century of liturgical "reform" in the Catholic and Anglican worlds. If you value liturgy, you will prize this book." Kevin Hart, Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School "Spurr has demonstrated past all gainsaying that the use of a "high language" in liturgy-which comprises not only speech but also music, vesture, regulated actions-is no mere aesthetic fancy but a constitutive element of identity, piety, catechesis, and fervor. Spurr's razor-sharp critique and his animated apologia place us doubly in his debt." Dr Peter Kwasniewski, author of The Once and Future Roman Rite "Spurr's well-researched, comprehensive account. a compelling perspective on what liturgical language should aspire to. any church or denomination that takes liturgy seriously would profit from a careful perusal of this book." Dr Louis Groarke, Philosophy Department, St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada "Spurr's book is directed both to members of a Roman Catholic Church that is threatened by a polarised clash between traditionalists and so-called progressives and to an Anglican Church which may well be on the way to extinction. But any church or denomination that takes liturgy seriously would profit from a careful perusal of this book." Dr Louis Groarke in Quadrant, No. 613, Volume LXIX, number 1-2, Janeuary-February, 2025, pp. 97-100
—
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and Ê¿Umar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
