A potential purchaser, merely glancing at the title, might assume that this book covers a wide range of subject matter, but in fact it is precisely focused on the themes of evil and the devil in the Church of England liturgies of initiation, healing and deliverance in the current Common Worship series of texts. Before that, however, the opening chapter engages in a quite complicated discussion of the interrelation of liturgy and doctrine, and a second chapter provides a useful brief account of the references to the devil and the demonic in the liturgical history of the Church of England. Next follows a chapter on the methodology adopted in this study, the structural analysis of the relevant liturgical units attempting to discern their theological and scriptural themes, and finally one on the various names used in Common Worship for the powers of evil.
These preliminaries over, the Common Worship services are then examined in detail according to the method that was outlined, the initiation services first, then those for healing, and lastly those for deliverance. In the third case, the task requires the author to look at individual diocesan rites, as there are no authorized Common Worship forms. This naturally makes any comparison uneven. There is no question that all this is done with very great thoroughness, which will help to make this an invaluable work of reference.
However, for many readers the most interesting parts of the book will be those sections where the author moves on from description and analysis and reflects on the texts he has examined, especially the very substantial concluding chapter. These are where he raises critical questions about aspects of the rites which bear upon their portrayal of sin and evil. Not surprisingly, a major concern is a lack of consistency in the treatment of evil and the diabolical in the rites as a whole. Because members of the Church of England espouse a wide range of beliefs about these and other matters and because the composition of liturgical texts is a highly democratic process, it is unreasonable to expect it to be able to achieve the sort of uniformity possible in, for example, comparable Roman Catholic texts. Nevertheless, it is right that the author should point out the weaknesses that he perceives in these services which might be rectified in future. Among them are the great flexibility that is provided in the inclusion and positioning of certain features in the initiation services in order to cater for the breadth of belief, which results in a lack of coherence in the expression of Anglican doctrine about evil and the devil.
The book began life as a PhD dissertation. As I know well from experience with my own doctoral candidates, the form required for academic purposes and the degree of detail needed to satisfy examiners does not often translate well into a book intended for a wider audience. Such often benefit greatly from substantial reworking and the generous exercise of the delete key. However good the contents, this action would also have improved the readability of this particular work too.
