Dom Gregory Dix

1901-1952. Anglican scholar. Born George Eglinton Alston, son of a clergyman, he graduated from Oxford and held a lectureship in modern history there, 1923-26, afterward entering monastic life among the Anglican Benedictines at Nashdom Abbey. He received his final vows in 1940 and became prior in 1948. While well known for his religious broadcasts, his most important contribution lay in his comprehensive study of Christian worship, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945). Earlier, his edition of the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus had provided pointers about how in the Roman Church theological thinking is moved to confirm what the worshiping Christian already espouses. Several posthumous publications reflect his thinking even in the midst of terminal illness. The two cautions expressed in Jew and Greek (1953) bear out the essence of his theological thought: “religions pray” and “history happens through men and women, not through abstractions.”