As the title indicates, this is a study of the renewal of Holy Week liturgies in the twentieth century, but the book is in the Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History series, and so is mainly concerned with the renewal of the services in the Anglican tradition. A preliminary chapter outlines the development of the Holy Week services, particularly the testimony of the fourth-century pilgrim/tourist to the Holy Land, Egeria, through the development in the West, the Reformation and provision (or lack of) in the Books of Common Prayer. This chapter is a backdrop to the main subject material of the book, but it is surprising that no reference was made to the excellent 2011 historical study by Philip Goddard.

Moore notes that the English Reformation resulted in the suppression of the traditional Holy Week ceremonies and provided very little ‘proper’ material other than appropriate lections for the Offices. In the nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics of the Anglo-papalist faction borrowed some of the Roman Catholic material, and many more Anglican churches also began to adopt the Good Friday Three Hours devotion. So popular did this latter become that it was easily assumed that it was an Anglican service. When I was curate of St Nicolas, Witham, in 1977, the new vicar, Desmond Sherlock, made it clear to me that he was not interested in the Church Union type of Good Friday service, but held to the ‘traditional’ Anglican Three Hours Devotion on the last words from the cross. It is strange how a devotion that supposedly originated with a Jesuit in Peru in the eighteenth century should have come to be regarded as a ‘traditional’ Anglican service. It testifies to the belief that ‘what I experienced in my past’ and ‘what I like’ must equate with ‘traditional’.

Moore documents the importance of the revival of Holy Week with the Liturgical 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 1950s. 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 1950s 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 1979 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 1984 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 1979 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.