Volume 149 of the Journal includes an interview with Dru Johnson about his book Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments. Today’s Feature supplements that interview. It is a review by Peter J. Leithart of Lori Branch’s Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment & Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth. Branch argues that the modern rise of a non-liturgical form of Christian faith is “the most dramatic sea change in 2,000 years of Christian worship and practice.” Leithart helpfully summarizes and evaluates her arguments. Leithart’s review was originally published in Touchstone magazine under the title “Freedom & Propriety.”
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A forgotten prophet — Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: “Moderns are puzzled by the perfectly unsystematic, irrational, antilogical institution, the poorest organization on earth but yet fully alive — the family.”
