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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
This article reconsiders the lay Dominican community of artisans which gathered in Ditchling, Sussex, in the 1920s. It does so by situating Ditchling in its distinctively Dominican context and by relating it to a form of sacramental politics powerfully evoked in the work of Herbert McCabe OP. In this way, it aims to reaffirm the continuing political-theological relevance of aspects of Ditchling, and to assert a measure of continuity with the Catholic New Left of the 1960s, with which Herbert McCabe is associated. The article identifies Ditchling's distinctively Dominican charism in a concern for contemplation, liturgy, and the regular life, alongside an aesthetic that brings together art, sacrament, and preaching, and relates such priorities to wider debate within the Dominican Order. These concerns are related to themes in McCabe's work on the relationship between Church, world, and community within the broader context of a theological politics that is both radical and sacramental. The article concludes that Ditchling's perceived ‘otherworldliness’ deserves re-evaluation, and that in the light of McCabe's sacramental politics Ditchling was not, in fact, quite ‘otherworldly’ enough.
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