Buildings, Faith and Worship

This is the first major study for over forty years of the liturgical arrangement of Anglican churches in the period between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement. The study is based both on surviving buildings and on a wide range of archival sources, such as seating plans, which are used to document internal changes and to suggest reasons behind them.

In the course of the book Nigel Yates challenges many widely held assumptions about the liturgical outlook of the Pre-Tractarian period, and about the impact of ecclesiology on the Church of England. In particular, he emphasizes the existence, hitherto disregarded, of a Church of England movement for liturgical renewal between 1780 and 1840, which to a degree anticipated some of the ideas previously attributed solely to the ecclesiologists. The discussion is firmly set within the context of European Protestantism, and comparisons are drawn with the liturgical practices both of Calvinists and Lutherans.