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The 20th-century liturgical movement grew in tandem with the biblical, ecumenical, ecclesiological, and patristic movements, all part of a wider movement of resourcement—a return to biblical and patristic sources. Indeed, the success of the liturgical movement in the 20th century, ultimately ratified in the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), can be seen precisely in its collaboration with those other ecclesial movements for church reform. Especially important was the ecumenical liturgical cooperation that grew across denominational lines as the movement took shape in different churches. Belgian Benedictine Lambert Beauduin (d. 1960) of Mont César is considered the founder of the Roman Catholic liturgical movement; during a national Catholic labor conference, held in Malines in September 1909, he delivered a conference on the liturgy as the “true prayer of the Church.” Taking his cue from Pope Pius X’s 1903 motu proprio “Tra le sollecitudini,” in which he spoke of the liturgy as “the true and indispensible source” for the Christian life, Beauduin argued that liturgy was foundational for Christian mission and social outreach. This message was consistent with the parish communion movement within the Church of England at the dawn of the 20th century and, indeed, in what the founder of the liturgical movement within the Church of England, A. Gabriel Hebert, S. S. M., wrote in his classic 1935 text Liturgy and Society. In Germany, the movement centered on the Benedictine monastery of Maria Laach and was more scientific in scope. Soon the movement took hold in Austria, France, and the rest of Europe, as well as in the Americas, in Anglican, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches in particular. It is precisely because of this common return to the sources that the 20th-century liturgical movement can only be understood in its wider ecumenical context.

Beginning with the Renaissance, the architecture of churches in the West was shaped by new cultural and liturgical demands that reshaped the spaces of Christian worship. Renaissance Christians found models of urban monumentality and geometric harmony in the architecture of classical Rome that they deemed lacking in their existing Gothic forms. At the same time, both Catholics and Protestants placed new emphasis on preaching and on the ability of worshipers to see the liturgy. These factors decisively reshaped church architecture. The rational austerity of the Renaissance, however, soon gave way to the more exuberant decoration of the baroque and, in time, to a revival of the Gothic. Beginning in the late 18th century, it became valued for its association with mystery, organic development, and the endurance of faith amid the rise of scientific rationalism. By the mid-19th century, an eclecticism in architecture had developed where many church builders used varied styles to actualize buildings of many plans in order to bring the desired historical and emotional associations to the structure, or simply to distinguish it from its neighbors. Yet, architectural principles—often associated with the Gothic—that emphasized the integral relation of form, structure, and function led many church builders to embrace architectural modernism. They rejected applied ornament, especially that which hid the structure of the building. Concrete, steel, and glued laminated wood beams made possible new designs often with a minimalist aesthetic and innovative ground plans. As in the 16th, so in the 20th century this architectural shift was associated with new values and liturgical demands. For many there was a fundamental concern with the architectural expression of the immanence of God. Historical styles and dim light seemed wrongly to suggest that God was not part of the contemporary world. Along with this, liturgical ressourcement fostered throughout the 20th century by the Liturgical Movement and endorsed by the Second Vatican Council championed the idea that liturgy was “the work of the people,” a corporate activity in which all participated. This led to the development of the “modern communal church” as a liturgical form. Many historic buildings were significantly altered. Within thirty years, a sizable revolution was insisting on more traditional, often classical, architectural forms ensuring that future church building would be shaped by a dialogue between tradition and the modern.