Liturgical revision in the Anglican Communion has proceeded relatively slowly since the days of Gregory Dix. While some changes have occurred, especially in the use of modern language, in other ways most rites remain uninfluenced by changes in society and by recent advances in scholarship.

This paper revisits the 1995 IALC Dublin Statement on the Eucharist, focusing on the Eucharistic Prayer. It reviews newer insights and studies on the Eucharistic Prayer, and suggests how that broadly may impact subsequent Anglican use of ‘classical patterns’, It also puts forward suggestions and questions posed by some more recent Anglican revisions as well as revisiting some areas of the Dublin Statement that are still useul or so far have not been fully embraced in Anglican liturgical revision.

In May 2022, the Diocese of Northern California submitted resolution C028 to the 80th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, in which they asked for a repeal of Canon 1.17.7, which limits reception of Holy Communion to the baptized. While the resolution did not make it out of committee, it touched off a church-wide debate about the practice of communion without baptism, generally referred to as ‘open communion’. This article examines the nature of the debate in the summer of 2022, and highlights some issues around discussions concerning baptism and Eucharist in The Episcopal Church. It is hoped that in doing so, this will aid further dialogues in the Church about the practice of open communion.

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been overwhelmingly condemned by the churches of the world, the support of the Russian Orthodox Church for the war poses difficult questions to the ecumenical community: in particular, whether that church’s support for the war and the extreme nationalist policies of President Putin constitute grounds for suspending it from the World Council of Churches (WCC) and other ecumenical bodies. The current ecumenical emphasis upon ‘dialogue’ acts as a deterrent to such action, but the WCC describes itself as a fellowship of churches that confess Christ as God and Saviour and therefore supreme over all other authorities. There are parallels with previous challenges in ecumenical history, most particularly 1930s Germany and the stand of the Confessing Church. While dialogue has its own importance the prime ecumenical commitment in conflict situations is to confess Christ, whatever the risks of division that this incurs.

This article will consider James K.A. Smith’s proposal for Christian educational reform by examining the historical animating principles and the contemporary embodied practices of Episcopal boarding schools in the United States. Drawing on historical accounts of the early years of Episcopal boarding schools, this paper will surface resonances between Smith’s vision for Christian education and the hopes of the first rectors of Episcopal boarding schools. Moving from the founding of these schools to their contemporary configurations, this paper will draw on ethnographic accounts of Episcopal boarding schools to complicate Smith’s vision of the formative Christian school. Ethnographic accounts of Episcopal schools offer further support for Smith’s cultural liturgies paradigm; at the same time, the concrete realities of Episcopal boarding schools will call into question Smith’s convictions regarding the potential for Christian schools to operate counter-liturgically. A consideration of the Episcopal Church’s ecclesial mission will demonstrate how it departs from Smith’s post-liberal ecclesiology to suggest realistic ways forward in the negotiation of Christian identity and practice in the context of Episcopal boarding schools.

As a devotional part of the eucharistic liturgy, the Agnus Dei also carries a missional aspect. Exegeting the verse Jn 1.29 (‘Behold the Lamb of God…’) two major theories of the atonement are seen to be involved and are applicable to the meaning of the Agnus Dei. These two theories of the atonement (ransom and substitutionary) in their relationship to each other are noted, and a primary emphasis on the ransom theory and its background of the Passover is argued for. The Passover Lamb focus is seen as liberative and missional. This leads to seeing the Agnus Dei in its referring to the redeeming death of Christ (‘Lamb of God’) as appropriately accompanied by the fraction of the bread. The history of the Agnus Dei and its Eastern Orthodox roots are brought to bear, as are our modern Anglican liturgical forms.

Nineteenth-century liberalism within the Church of England together with the opposition of Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings of the church created a confusing and volatile religious environment for many of its adherents. In the twentieth-century English modernism, adding scientific naturalism to the mix, rejected Christian creedal assertions which were seen as mere dogmatism. As the century progressed many Anglican scholar-clerics began the struggle to find a theological via media which accepted liberalism’s use of the historico-critical approach to the Bible but not the rejection of Anglican creedal affirmations. Alan Richardson was one of these and this article will examine his neo-orthodox development of a faith principal which rejected the modernist dichotomy between theology, science and history that he believed was undermining public faith.