Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints

Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints. (New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 2010, Pp. xi, 785. $30.00.)

Liturgy is best studied in its orchestration of rite: actions, words, music, objects, places and people taken together, not as isolated words on a page. For that reason, a book that is intended to be living liturgy - the calendar by which a group of Christians lives into the revelation of God in time and space - needs to be reflected on with regard to both its content and the implications of its use. This review will attempt to do so for Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints.

Holy Women, Holy Men is the result of "a review and revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts," undertaken by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music of the Episcopal Church at the bequest of its then presiding bishop, Frank T Griswold (vii). In addition to the foreword and brief preface, Holy Women, Holy Men reproduces the instructions of the Book of Common Prayer 1979 for the "Calendar of the Church Year" and the major...