Any mention of English-language religious choral works must include the three big oratorios by Elgar:
The Dream of Gerontius;
The Apostles and
The Kingdom. These dramatic works, however, are more likely to be heard in concert halls than in churches. The inexpensive
box set conducted by Adrian Boult is well-aclaimed. People who like this music may also turn to
Belshazzar's Feast by William Walton
More intimate, and written mainly for church use, are the many motets, small cantatas and choral settings by Edmund Rubbra, an English composer who deserves to be better known: in his mostly small-scale works, Rubbra deftly underpins the text with just the right choral and instrumental color, and coaxes the most expressive power out of every word. My first recommendation is
Inscape, a setting of four religious poems for chorus, harp and string orchestra.
Among the English-language choral works by John Tavener, you'll find pieces both brief (e.g.
Hymn for the Dormition of the Mother of God) and sprawling (e.g.
Akathist of Thanksgiving). But I find sitting though a long Tavener a trying experience.
Although it is not "liturgical" per se, I feel I should mention Michael Tippett's
A Child of Our Time, a three-part oratorio modeled after Handel's
Messiah, but interspersed with Negro spirituals. Tippett's concern is not primary religious, but psychological-political (namely that men project their unsavory natures to people they call their enemies, giving themselves pretexts to murder and wage war against one other; and that true salvation can only be attained when men recognise and accept their own lights and shadows). However, the music, with its woven counterpoint and its division into recitatives and arias, harks back to the Baroque liturgical tradition.
