Teachings of the Church Year by scholar, mystic, activist, and Christian Socialist Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954) was presented in 1918 as a lecture at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and subsequently published in the first volume of the ATR; a monograph with the same title was published three years later, including the entire liturgical year from Advent to Trinity Sunday interpreted through the lens of the social gospel movement. The original lecture was one of the first given by a woman in an Episcopal seminary. By her own admission, Scudder published the monograph for liberal Christians with affection for the Prayer Book. Scudder believed that spiritual formation should be available to all, and thus, she wrote Teachings of the Church Year not for trained theologians, but for the people of God, schooled in faith and love through participation in the seasons of the church year.Confirmed in the Episcopal Church in the 1870s by Phillips Brooks at Trinity Church, Boston, Scudder's spirituality and social consciousness was soaked in the liturgical life of the Book of Common Prayer. A devout Anglo-Catholic, and considered the second founder of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (SCHC)-a thirdorder devotional society for women combining social activism with intercessory prayer-Scudder was deeply committed to the creation of a new social order infused with Christian spirituality. She profoundly believed that lasting peace on earth would only come to pass in response to humanity's collective repentance and fervent prayers. Her belief in Social Christianity gave Scudder a means to connect her devotional life with public ministry in a church with limited vocational opportunities for women.Interested more in understanding Christian experience than in academic theology, Scudder believed that the liturgical year was both grounded in ancient truths and a living journey of the soul. Her 1918 lecture and later monograph were inspired primarily by three political convictions. First, Scudder believed that the earth was poised on the brink of a new democratic era, whereby private capitalism would yield to some form of socialism. Secondly, she was convinced that the new world order would only be safely accomplished if religion, freed from theological abstractions, nourished the souls of Christian radicals. Lastly, Scudder s vision was grounded in the teachings of Jesus, and a catholic vision of the social order as the mystical body of Christ, present in every eucharist, the sacrament of unity, and that which brings together all creation in the kingdom of God.Vida Dutton Scudder was a brilliant scholar, and one of the first women to attend Oxford University as a graduate student. Until her retirement in 1928 she combined a scholarly career at Wellesley College with intense social activism. For example, during one six-year period, 1887 to 1893, Scudder began the College Settlements Association, joined the Society of Christian Socialists, began her lifelong association with the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, and with Helena Stuart Dudley founded Denison House in Boston, the third settlement house in the United States. …