Liturgical Reform in English Pamphlets and Tracts, 1828-1833

Abstract

The article deals with some projects of liturgical reform in England created in 1828-1833. It analyzes goals, proposals and arguments of the “reformers”. The authors of the projects aimed to join dissenters to the state Church and to diminish popular anticlericalism. They believed it necessary to make liturgy less weary, more intelligible, instructive and edifying, as well as politically neutral. The pamphleteers actively appealed to history, e.g. to the history of the Reformation, “the Liturgy of Comprehension” (1689), and the Episcopal Church in the USA. They thought that the contemporary “Age of Reform” was quite appropriate for making changes in the Church.