This is a discussion of the historical background and immediate theological context of the compilation of the communion liturgy in the 1968 Liturgy and Psalms of the Reformed Church in America, which is descended from those Dutch Reformed congregations that settled in the American colonies in the seventeenth century. Although many Churches revised their rites in the 1960s and again more recently, the 1968 book remains the most recent revision in the RCA to date. Two chapters cover the historical tradition of the Dutch Church, from the adoption and translation of the German Palatinate 1563 liturgy by Petrus Datheen in 1566 to its English translation in New York in the eighteenth century. In the newly emergent United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Dutch congregations were overseen by the German Reformed Church, and although the Dutch Church in America eventually became independent, it continued to be influenced by movements in the American German Reformed Church, especially the Mercersburg Movement associated with Nevin and Schaff, and the Provisional Liturgy of 1857. The RCA revised its liturgy in 1873, but was still a conservative rite retaining most of 1563/1566. A committee was formed in 1950 and, under the guidance and influence of Howard Hageman, the rite of 1968 was adopted by the Church, and alongside the traditional Palatinate communion rite, a new communion rite was also included which contained a eucharistic prayer based on that of the French Reformed Church of 1963. Dorn considers the influences which led to the compilation of the 1968 eucharistic prayer, and examines its theology and structure in the light of liturgical scholarship. A study of the making of this rite is to be welcomed. However, although Dorn carefully examines the influences on Hageman and the committee during the period 1950–68, such as Odo Casel, Yngve Brilioth and Gregory Dix, he curiously offers no critique of these now dated and seriously questioned writers. Instead Dorn homes in on the subsequent, but also seriously questioned, theory which was rife in the 1970s and 1980s, that the Birkat ha-mazon is the parent of all eucharistic prayers. He does so seemingly to encourage a future direction of revision in his denomination. As with the exponents of that era, he gives considerable attention to the prayer of Didache 10, without the qualification that this represents one Jewish-Christian community which might have deliberately Judaised its prayer genre. The idea that all eucharistic prayers, or even all those of Jewish-Christian communities, were derived from the Birkat ha-mazon has now been generally abandoned by most liturgical scholars. Equally curious is that although the bibliography cites the work of Paul Bradshaw et al. on the so-called Apostolic Tradition, in which it is argued convincingly that this is best dated to the late third or even fourth century, and is an idealised reconstruction, Dorn happily treats the ‘Hippolytus’ eucharistic prayer as though it was by Hippolytus in 215 ad, and a normal Sunday eucharistic prayer. (Even at face value, the text itself acknowledges that it is an ordination eucharistic prayer.) Dorn uses the so-called Hippolytus text to argue that whereas the French Reformed eucharistic prayer contains the institution narrative (like Hippolytus and the classical anaphoras), the RCA 1968 rite unfortunately placed it after the prayer. Dorn overlooks the fact that the French Reformed parent is two prayers, separated by the institution narrative, which is not prayed, but read as a warrant. Afterwards the minister announces, ‘Prions Dieu’ and begins the second part of the eucharistic prayer. Furthermore, the eucharistic prayer of Addai and Mari, which unlike ‘Hippolytus’, is an authentic eucharistic prayer, probably third century, and still in use today, like 1968, has no institution narrative within the prayer. This very useful study is thus marred by dated scholarship. The 1968 eucharistic prayer, and the rite, could have been critiqued in the light of the questionable elements in Casel, Brilioth and Dix, and future revision in the RCA would better be guided by criteria other than outmoded theories of the evolution of eucharistic prayers.