
Professor of Liturgy, and the Quintard Professor of Theology
I am often asked to describe Sewanee’s distinctive liturgical tradition. One church historian, not a Sewanee insider, has referred to it as “Sewanee High Church.” What he means is that we are totally devoted to the American prayer book tradition and the best of Anglican church music. We are not low church as that is usually understood, but neither are we Anglo-Catholics with reference to what that generally implies. Reginald Fuller once called Sewanee “pre-Tractarian catholics in the prayer book tradition.” Bishop Judson Child, a Sewanee alum and our 19th University chancellor, often spoke of Sewanee as the place where he learned “catholic liturgy and evangelical preaching; it’s where I learned to be an Anglican.” We care about these things now as much as ever. The Book of Common Prayer and The Hymnal 1982 are the heart of our life in worship and devotion, ever present in our classrooms for theological study, and the standard to which we hold ourselves in nearly every way imaginable.