Christopher Webster (1)

At the start of a new millennium, in a society overwhelmingly made up of those whose only visit to a church is for a wedding or a funeral, there remains a remarkably consistent idea of what an Anglican church should look like, and how its clergy should dress and conduct themselves. Virtually every detail in this image, however, comes not directly from ancient tradition but from the innovations introduced under the influence of the Cambridge Camden Society. The Cambridge Camden Society was founded in 1839. Its famous journal, The Ecclesiologist , was published between 1841 and 1868, and combined scholarly articles with trenchant criticism. In 1879 the Society was re-founded as the St Paul's Ecclesiological Society and for more than fifty years it published scholarly transactions under that name. In 1937 the Society again became known as The Ecclesiological Society and today has about 800 members. In this substantial collection of fifteen essays, leading architectural historians review the history and achievements of the ecclesiologists during the 'Camden' period. The volume is moreover issued with an introduction and a postscript, an index, a sequence of 87 photographic plates and a remarkably comprehensive appendix (pp. 359-452), contributed by Geoffrey Brandwood, listing every known member of the Society with their biographical and career details.… (mehr)