George C. Marshall, P.D James
Sir John Betjeman, Rose Macaulay
The 1928 Book of Common Prayer:
An Appreciation
By David Hein
of the
George C. Marshall Foundation, in Lexington, Virginia
This article was originally published on 31st July 2021
on The Imaginative Conservative website and is reproduced here by permission.
You will recall Parson Thwackum in Henry Fielding’s classic novel History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749). Mr. (never, in proper ecclesiastical usage, Reverend) Thwackum is a Church of England clergyman and young Tom’s tutor. Recent commentators have called him horribly insular and self-congratulatory, which, of course, he is; but he is also a highly memorable character. The parson famously affirms that “When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and