The story of the revisions of the English Book of Common Prayer is sometimes told with astonishing attention to what seem, to some non-specialists, to be insignificant details. This is no doubt why in the opening pages of his book John Maiden feels free to say, “thankfully, some might say—what follows is not a study of Anglican liturgy” (2). But his comment also gives an early indication of the burden of his study. The English political controversy of 1927–1928 is for him a case study in the lingering political significance of public religion in what has been widely agreed to be an age of aggressive British secularism. The actual liturgical and theological issues are for him secondary, or even tertiary.

Yet Maiden takes quite seriously the weight of any attempt to revise what was still considered to be a national treasure in the 1920s—both by those inside and outside the Church of England. The Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549 during the reign of the young Protestant, Edward VI, received its most significant revision soon after—in 1552—though it wasn't significant to the point of bewildering the public. It remained a carefully revised book of Catholic worship, thus frustrating European Protestants and enduring the scorn of European Roman Catholics. Thereafter, several revisions had taken place (notably in 1662), but small ones, taken slowly and very carefully.

The tensions created over the centuries by differing theological opinions within a national church with a unified liturgy had been contained by the stretching of the meaning of words, and a sometimes tighter, sometimes looser interpretation of the “rubrics” governing worship practices. When, after some years of successes by the Victorian anglo-catholic movement, words and rubrics were stretching to the point of legal disputes between the most extreme “Protestants” and most extreme “Catholics” within the Church of England, a consensus emerged. The matter of another significant (but not bewildering) revision was finally to be mooted to better accommodate the more “catholic” without frightening the more “protestant” within the Church of England.

The facts of the attempted revision are clear, and clearly stated by John Maiden. The bishops were overwhelmingly in favor of the revised order of worship. And its draft was handily passed in 1927–1928: in Church convocations, 286 to 36; in Church Assembly, 517 to 133 (with 253 clergy and 230 laity voting for it, and 37 clergy and 92 laity voting against it); and in the various 1927 diocesan conferences, 8,415 for it, and 1,969 against it. Even the evangelical clergy (traditionally fearful of losing the protestant character of the Book of Common Prayer in any new revision), it seems, were in favor of the revised Book of Common Prayer at the ration of two to one. It is surprising then, when Maiden accompanies these statistics with the conjecture that, “it is debatable whether the great mass of parishioners were behind the bishops” (47). But this signals his first explanatory attempt at what ensued; the rejection of the proposed revisions by the House of Commons, a rejection which would not allow the Church of England to proceed.

Maiden's book is wonderfully successful in re-creating the political mood that led to the revised rite's dismissal by the House of Commons. He describes in some detail the shifting alliances of activist parties in the Church of England, who were not satisfied with due ecclesiastical processes and rejected the proposed revisions. He does a fine job of describing the pressure brought to bear on the members of parliament (MPs) by prominent individuals and various alliances (often composed of strange bed fellows). And he provides, in the end, the explanation, if not as clearly as one might expect, for the actions of the House of Commons. Maiden argues that the revision controversy was governed by political action first among the most opinionated, then in the press, and then among MPs (many with no clear idea of what the revision was all about and of whom many were not members of the Church of England) on the premise that allowing the revisions to pass would be to water down the “protestant” character of the book and make room for the corruption of the nation by more “catholic” worship. Anti-popery was in the air for several reasons, one of them being the surprising resurgence of Roman Catholic worship in England. And it had been clear that active worshippers of the Church of England had been on the decline at least since the few decades leading up to the religious census of 1851.

Where Maiden is not as successful is in his first, and often inferred, explanatory device noted above; that the average parishioner rejected revision in spite of the clear voice of their representatives. In large part, Maiden appeals to the somewhat illusory voice of the “laity”; but there is no measure he can invoke to convince his readers that a particular sitting MP was a genuine member of any parish. Indeed, he admits that many of them were members (some active) of other protestant denominations that had never held a Book of Common Prayer in their hands, but were keen to resist the specter of a “despotic papacy” undermining the “liberties” of the nation, and responded to the call to vote down medieval relapses by means of the anachronistic liturgical authority of parliament of which they were members.

But this is secondary to Maiden's central scholarly passion: that what he has written is a case study in the lingering political significance of public religion in what has been widely agreed to be an age of aggressive British secularism. Maiden argues that his study successfully challenges the assumptions of Alison Light, Peter Mandler, and others who are convinced that by the 1920s religion was largely eclipsed in British public life and culture and so perpetuate a “traditional narrative of decline” (167). At the very least it would seem Maiden's study successfully challenges the idea that religious rhetoric—however detached from theological or ritual meaning—was no longer viable in 1920s Britain. It certainly was viable. In any case, this is a book that no doubt will stimulate further debate, and so make Maiden's efforts both worthwhile and fruitful. Perhaps it may even provoke further studies on the actual liturgical dimensions of the 1927–1928 political controversy. Or perhaps it will encourage studies on the distant Erastian consequences and dislocations of a sixteenth-century decision to break with an international papacy and throw the church at the merciful feet of the king, the most powerful layman in the nation.