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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
While Percy Dearmer’s influence on Anglican liturgy through The Parson’s Handbook and The English Hymnal are well known, his lectures on The Art of Public Worship, given in 1919 when he was visiting professor at Berkeley Divinity School in Connecticut, USA, introduce a different phase of his liturgical thought. A new emphasis on modernizing language, brevity of form, and alternative forms of worship would later have expression in England via his association with the Guildhouse in London, and in the hymnal Songs of Praise. Comparing The Art of Public Worship with the later Prayer Book Interleaves by Berkeley Divinity School’s Dean William Palmer Ladd leads to the suggestion that this ‘second Dearmer’ also had an afterlife in the American liturgical movement.
Andrew McGowan is Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School and McFaddin Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale University.
2 Dearmer, Percy, The Art of Public Worship (The Bohlen Lectures 1919; London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1920), p. 2Google Scholar.
3 This is the impression one gets in (for instance) Donald Gray’s treatment of Dearmer’s liturgical contribution, ‘Percy Dearmer,’ in They Shaped Our Worship: Essays on Anglican Liturgists (ed. Christopher Irvine; London: SPCK, 1998), pp. 71-76; Gray’s own sense of Dearmer’s thought (rather than of its actual influence) is better depicted in his biography, Percy Dearmer: A Parson’s Pilgrimage (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009). For Shaw’s reassessment, see the article in this volume and the chapter ‘Percy Dearmer: Beauty’ in her Pioneers of Modern Spirituality: The Neglected Anglican Innovators of a ‘Spiritual but Not Religious’ Age (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2018), pp. 49-72.
4 Dearmer’s two biographies are Nancy Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940) and Gray, Percy Dearmer: A Parson’s Pilgrimage.
5 Percy Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook: Containing Practical Directions Both for Parsons and Others as to the Management of the Parish Church and Its Services According to the English Use, as Set Forth in the Book of Common Prayer (London: H. Frowde, 6th edn, 1907).
6 Percy Dearmer, The English Hymnal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906).
7 ‘The Warham Guild’ (Anglican Bibliopole, n.d.), http://anglicansonline.org/archive/special/old/warham-A4.pdf (accessed August 17, 2020).
8 N. Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 19.
9 Frances Knight, Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siècle: The Culture of English Religion in a Decadent Age (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), pp. 219-20.
10 A Prayer-Book Revised; Being the Services of the Book of Common Prayer, with Sundry Alterations and Additions Offered to the Reader (London and Milwaukee: A.R. Mowbray; Young Churchman Co., 1913); see David J. Kennedy, Eucharistic Sacramentality in an Ecumenical Context: The Anglican Epiclesis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 106-107.
11 Percy Dearmer, Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book (London: A.R. Mowbray, 1912).
12 See Gray, A Parson’s Pilgrimage, pp. 115-16.
13 Percy Dearmer, The Power of the Spirit (The Page Lectures 1919; Oxford: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1919).
14 The Living Church, July 24, 1920, p. 435.
15 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. vi.
16 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. iii-iv.
17 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 82.
18 The four additional chapters were on ‘The Art of Making Collects,’ ‘Some Remarks on the Revision of the Psalter,’ ‘Popular Services,’ and ‘A Few Examples of New Services.’ The two notes, only a page or two each, were on ‘Artists and the Church’ and ‘Sitting for the Psalms’ respectively.
19 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 15.
20 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 7 and 10; see Shaw, Pioneers, pp. 51-52.
21 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 20 and 21.
22 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 31.
23 ‘It must have been in 1904 that I was sitting in my study in Barton Street, Westminster, when a cab drove up to the door and “Mr. Dearmer” was announced. I just knew his name vaguely as a parson who invited tramps to sleep in his drawing-room; but he had not come to see me about tramps. He went straight to the point and asked me to edit the music of a hymn book.’ Vaughan Williams, cited in ‘Vaughan Williams and The English Hymnal,’ The British Library, n.d. https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-music/articles/vaughan-williams-and-the-english-hymnal (accessed April 24, 2020).
24 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 46.
25 Walter Howard Frere, Some Principles of Liturgical Reform: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer (London: John Murray, 2nd edn, 1914), pp. 154-62.
26 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 43, 56.
27 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 186.
28 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 48.
29 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 49.
30 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 50.
31 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 50 and 51.
32 Walter H. Frere, The Principles of Religious Ceremonial (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1906), pp. 36-37.
33 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 84-85.
34 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 90.
35 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 77.
36 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 79-80.
37 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 120.
38 See Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook, p. 5.
39 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 131.
40 Jane Shaw, Pioneers, pp. 63-70; and ‘Percy Dearmer Goes to America,’ Journal of Anglican Studies, forthcoming, doi:10.1017/S1740355320000157.
41 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 133.
42 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 134.
43 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 207.
44 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 136.
45 Shaw, ‘Percy Dearmer Goes to America.’
46 See, for instance, Alfred Kalisch, ‘London Concerts,’ Musical Times, 1921; the activities of the League are often mentioned in contemporary news publications.
47 Shaw, Pioneers, pp. 63-70; ‘Percy Dearmer Goes to America.’
48 Percy Dearmer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw (eds.), The Oxford Book of Carols (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1928); Percy Dearmer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw (eds.), Songs of Praise (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1931).
49 Not all judgements have been favorable. Geoffrey Cuming describes its texts as ‘bowdlerized’; A History of Anglican Liturgy (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 193.
50 Percy Dearmer, Songs of Praise Discussed: A Handbook to the Best-Known Hymns and to Others Recently Introduced (London: Oxford University Press; H. Milford, 1933).
51 He is not mentioned at all in the quite comprehensive account of the liturgical movement by John Fenwick and Bryan Spinks, Worship in Transition: The Twentieth Century Liturgical Movement (London: T & T Clark, 1995).
52 Jane Shaw, Pioneers, p. 70.
53 Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 217.
54 This may actually constitute another piece of the conjunction between Dearmer and Ladd, on which see further below. On blue, see J. Barrington Bates, ‘ “Am I Blue?” Some Historical Evidence for Liturgical Colors,’ Studia Liturgica 33 (2003), pp. 75-88.
55 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 26.
56 N. Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 218.
57 ‘…the books edited by him’; N. Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 218.
58 Edward R. Hardy, ‘The Berkeley Divinity School One Hundred Years 1854–1954,’ Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 24.1 (1955), p. 33. Hardy’s nod to Dearmer’s visit in the same account is perceptive if understated, however; Dearmer is described merely as ‘unconventional liturgist’ (p. 31).
59 ‘Episcopalians Revise Hymnal,’ https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/10/us/episcopalians-revise-hymnal.html (accessed April 25, 2020).
60 Matthew Hoch, Welcome to Church Music and the Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing, 2015), p. 9.
61 Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 220.
62 James F. White, Christian Worship in North America: A Retrospective, 1955–1995 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), pp. 69-70.
63 Urban T. Holmes, ‘Education for Liturgy: An Unfinished Symphony in Four Movements,’ in Worship Points the Way: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr (ed. Malcolm C. Burson; New York: Seabury Press, 1981), p. 120.
64 Michael Moriarty, ‘William Palmer Ladd and the Origins of the Episcopal Liturgical Movement,’ Church History 64.3 (1995), p. 442.
65 The more focused studies of Ladd by Michael Moriarty are his article ‘William Palmer Ladd and the Origins of the Episcopal Liturgical Movement,’ already cited, and ‘William Palmer Ladd,’ in They Shaped Our Worship: Essays on Anglican Liturgists (ed. Christopher Irvine; London: SPCK, 1998), pp. 57-63.
66 The unsigned biographical sketch in a memorial pamphlet published after his death is the fullest of which I am aware; see Berkeley Divinity School. In Memoriam: William Palmer Ladd, Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School 1918–1941 (Berkeley Divinity School Bulletin 99; New Haven, CT: Berkeley Divinity School, 1942), pp. 16-20. Hardy’s brief account is also worth reading; ‘The Berkeley Divinity School: One Hundred Years 1854–1954,’ pp. 30-31.
67 Edward Watson, ‘A Lesson from the Socialist Controversy at Berkeley Divinity School,’ https://edseyeview.wordpress.com/2017/01/12/pastoral-lessons-from-the-socialist-controversy-at-berkeley-divinity-school/ (accessed September 13, 2020).
68 Shaw, ‘Percy Dearmer Goes to America’; Bryan Spinks, ‘The Intersection of “English Use” Liturgy and Social Justice: Snapshots of Augustus Pugin, Percy Dearmer, Conrad Noel and William Palmer Ladd,’ Journal of Anglican Studies, forthcoming.
69 Michael Moriarty, ‘William Palmer Ladd and the Origins of the Episcopal Liturgical Movement,’ pp. 438-51.
70 N. Dearmer, The Life of Percy Dearmer, p. 217.
71 Holmes, ‘Education for Liturgy,’ p. 120.
72 William Palmer Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves: Some Reflections on How the Book of Common Prayer Might Be Made More Influential in Our English-Speaking World (ed. Ailsie Taylor Ladd; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1942).
73 William H. Baer, ‘Review of Prayer Book Interleaves, by William Palmer Ladd,’ The Journal of Religion 38.3 (1958), pp. 212-13. Prayer Book Interleaves was published a third time in 2018 for the centenary of Ladd’s appointment, by Wipf and Stock in conjunction with Berkeley Divinity School.
74 Shepherd gave his own Bohlen lectures in 1959; they hold Ladd up as an inspiring figure for the reforms then coming into view. See Massey H. Shepherd, The Reform of Liturgical Worship: Perspectives and Prospects (The Bohlen Lectures 1959; New York: Oxford University Press, 1961).
75 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 82.
76 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 82.
77 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 77-78.
78 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 11; cf. p. 26.
79 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 51.
80 Joseph Britton, ‘The Berkeley Rite,’ in The Serious Business of Worship: Essays in Honour of Bryan D. Spinks (ed. Melanie C. Ross and Simon Jones; London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2010), pp. 119-29.
81 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 136.
82 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 196-97.
83 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 129.
84 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 82 etc.
85 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. iv-v.
86 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 148.
87 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, pp. 158-59; Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, pp. 26, 42.
88 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, pp. 166-67.
89 Ladd, Prayer Book Interleaves, p. 167.
90 Matthew S.C. Olver, ‘Did General Convention Authorize Prayer Book Revision?’ Covenant, August 24, 2018, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2018/08/24/did-general-convention-authorize-prayer-book-revision/ (accessed June 20, 2020).
91 Dearmer, The Art of Public Worship, p. 148.