Much attention has been given to the liturgical developments of Anglican Eucharistic liturgies since the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, with a particular eye towards prayers of consecration. While scholars have noted the ways the offertory has been part of those larger developments, there has not yet been a dedicated history of how the offertory has changed in its own right. Shawn O. Strout’s Of Thine Owen Have We Given Thee: A Liturgical Theology of the Offertory in Anglicanism provides an account of this oft-overlooked part of the Eucharistic liturgy. Beginning with the reforms of the sixteenth century and moving to the present day, Strout provides an overview of the ways the offertory, as well as oblationary and propitiatory language, changed over the course of Anglican history, especially in the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and The Episcopal Church (USA).

After an introduction laying out the terms and liturgical theology undergirding the project, the first four chapters trace the development of the offertory in the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and The Episcopal Church. Chapters follow a helpful and similar framework, beginning with a basic historical overview of Anglicanism in the particular period, followed by a textual analysis of the liturgies in question. This then proceeds to a ‘contextual analysis’ (dealing with issues such as the poor man’s box, the chancel, Anglican missals and offertory hymns, to name a few), and concludes with theological considerations concerning the offertory in that period. The consistency of structure is particularly useful for students who may be using this book, as it helps the reader track certain changes over the course of time.

The fifth chapter deviates from much of the book in taking the reader to some churches around the Anglican Communion, in particular, the Church of South India, the Anglican Church of Aotearoa/New Zealand/Polynesia and the Anglican Church of Kenya. These examples provide the reader with an account of how the offertory has been inculturated in these several locations. While this is a helpful perspective, it runs the risk of isolating these developments into a separate category, as well as confining those developments to the twentieth century. More helpful, perhaps, would have been incorporating this global perspective into all of the chapters. As the Prayer Book was exported with English imperial ambitions as early as the mid-sixteenth century, so has the liturgy been shaped by congregations worshipping in those locations. This chapter also lacks the same structure of analysis presented in chapters one through four. While some of this may be due to a felt need to give more historical background of the churches in question, the result is a less robust discussion of the offertory in each of those contexts. The book concludes with a return to the theological emphasis of the first chapter, offering some helpful insights and considerations for further development of the offertory in future liturgical revisions.

The book covers a broad range of liturgical history and is admirable in its scope. There are some places, however, where particular historical nuances are skated over in the interest of concision, at times creating a jarring effect for readers who may have specialist knowledge of certain eras of Anglican history. Strout argues from the beginning that ‘the development of oblation in the offertory was neither arbitrary nor episodic but rather the result of sustained theological tension between the reformed/evangelical wing and the high church/Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism’ (2). While tensions within the Anglican tradition as it developed would lead to a number of liturgical developments, to refer to anything prior to the eighteenth century as ‘high church’, or prior to the nineteenth century ‘Anglo-Catholic’, raises a number of historical questions (and one can imagine the eyebrows raised by referring to John Cosin as a ‘High Church bishop’). Further, the emphasis on this tension between ‘reformed/evangelical’ Anglicans and ‘high church/Anglo-Catholic’ Anglicans speaks to a second issue in the book, which is a tendency that appears from time to time to conflate very real issues and debates within the Church of England with those elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. While the tensions Strout highlights shaped Anglican missional history – and thereby present realities around the Communion – in a fundamental way, it is nonetheless an oversimplification to say that such tensions are a hallmark of Anglican liturgical development everywhere. Indeed, as Strout himself notes throughout the book, the ways those tensions played out in The Episcopal Church have been fundamentally different from the Church of England. One could argue that this is even more true when examining Anglican provinces that grew out of particular English (and, to a lesser extent, American) missionary societies.

These two issues aside, Of Thine Own Have We Given Thee is a welcome addition to the liturgical history of the Book of Common Prayer. Readers will come away from this book with a deeper appreciation of the ways the offertory has been understood in Anglican liturgy, and how it continues to be shaped by worshipping communities around the world. As Strout concludes, ‘The human desire to offer God thanks, both verbally and sacramentally, cannot be quenched. It is an innate need for human beings to say to their Creator and Redeemer, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee”’ (227). Strout’s book offers the reader an important opportunity to reflect on how that desire has been lived out in Anglican liturgy since the sixteenth century, and points them to the ways the Church might respond to that desire as the liturgy continues to change.