A New American Prayer Book

This article was originally posted in response to the publication of Services in Contemporary English from The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, a joint effort of the AMiA and the PBSUSA, in 2006. It identifies a number of characteristics that at that time I believed were needed in a Prayer Book for use of the North American mission field. I have not changed my mind.

By Robin G. Jordan

A number of ideas are circulating for a new Book of Common Prayer for Anglicans in North America. The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) is experimenting with a trial service book for a limited period. I have given some thought to this need over the past two years. Here are a few of my conclusions. I offer them as part of my contribution to the development of a new service book for North American Anglicans.

Biblical and Reformed
1. What is needed is a service book that retains the Biblical and Reformation theology of the classical Anglican Prayer Book. Most of the service books produced in the early part of the 20th century and since that time have in matters of doctrine moved away from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The 1928 American Book of Common Prayer is one of these service books as is the 1979 American Prayer Book that replaced it. In "The Anglo-Catholic Drift in Recent Prayer Book Revision" I examine one direction in which some of the 20th century service books have moved. Others have moved in the direction of “studied ambiguity” in which no clear doctrinal emphases can be discerned.

Understandable
2. What is needed is a service book that employs good contemporary liturgical English. Good contemporary liturgical English is written with the intention that it should be spoken or read aloud and not just read silently to one’s self. Indeed it has more power and vitality when it is spoken or read aloud than it does when it is simply read. It makes much greater use of repetition, simple words, alliteration, parallelisms, short phrases, the pairing of two words to convey a single meaning, and other rhetorical practices used in speaking than those used in writing. It avoids archaic and obscure words that most people do not understand and awkward and difficult phrases that trip the tongue. It is sparing in its use of unfamiliar theological terms. It does not indulge in floweriness or descend into the commonplace and the trite. It is easy-to-memorize and memorable – characteristics that it shares with oral literature. While it not written in verse, it has the good qualities of poetry. It creates word-pictures. It gives expression to the shared feelings and thoughts of the congregation. It stirs the heart and engages the mind. Through repeated use and hearing it becomes a part of the individual.

Simple
3. What is needed is a service book that also preserves the simplicity of the classical Anglican Prayer Book. We live in a time in which everything is becoming more and more complicated. People are overwhelmed by complexity. They hunger for greater simplicity in their lives. The language and order of the services should not be complicated or difficult to understand.

One of the reasons for the popularity of the Roman Rite in the 7th century was its simplicity. By the 16th century the Sarum Rite, a late Medieval English variation of the Roman Rite, had become extremely complicated. A separate book, the “pie,” was required just to figure out what should be used, how, where, and when. The Book of Common Prayer of 1552, the second Edwardian Prayer Book, greatly simplified the liturgy of the English Church.

Since the 16th century, however, Prayer Book worship has lost its simplicity. This has been in part due to unauthorized additions from other books beside the Prayer Book and in part to duly authorized alterations and additions to the Prayer Book. The adoption of alternative rites, which have been both criticized and praised for their numerous variable options, has also contributed to its complexity in the past 30 years. The Church of England has replaced the Alternative Service Book 1980 with a range of books, collectively titled Common Worship.

Flexible
4. At the same time what is need is a service book with enough flexibility to permit worship planners to tailor its services to a wide variety of circumstances – composition, size, ministry target group, and worship style of the congregation, cultural context of the community, availability of clergy and musical resources, worship setting, and other variables. It must be a service book that can be used in the informal setting of a living room, an office, a hotel conference room, a school auditorium or cafeteria, a movie theater, a picnic shelter in a park, or a storefront – all the places where 21st century Anglican Christians can be expected to meet for worship - as well as in the more formal setting of a parish church. The Anglican service books of the 16th and 17th centuries were compiled for use in parish churches, college churches, and cathedrals, as were the later service books modeled upon them. Many 21st century Anglican congregations may never own a building; they may never have the pews, kneelers, lecterns, pulpits, reading desks, altar tables, and other paraphernalia that we have come to associate with Prayer Book worship.

Adaptable
5. What is needed is a service book that both a congregation with a formal, traditional style of worship and a congregation with a more informal, more free-flowing worship style can use. The services should be adaptable to the type of worship which a congregation has discovered it can do well and which the congregation has concluded works best for it in reaching the spiritually-disconnected and the unchurched and drawing seekers and believers closer to God in its particular circumstances. They should not seek to force the worship of all congregations into the same mold. In the 21st century all sorts of churches and all kinds of worship are needed to fulfill the Great Commission and to make disciples of all people groups.

The rubrics should be deliberately kept to a minimum and simplified to allow flexibility. Where they occur, directions to stand, sit, or kneel should be suggestions only. Where parts of the service are sung to a musical setting, the use of the words for those settings were composed should be permitted. The singing of hymns, psalm, canticles and other songs should be permitted with the services otherwise than where provision is made for them. The use of other versions and forms of the canticles should be permitted in the services of Morning and Evening Prayer. The substitution of metrical versions of the psalms for prose versions should be allowed. The use of other versions of the Gloria in Excelsis, and when appropriate, another suitable hymn of praise should also be permitted in the service of Holy Communion.

Familiar
6. What is needed is a service book that offers familiarity and variety. In the past five years I have come to appreciate the strengths of a familiar liturgy – of continuity from week to week, of participation without a book or a piece of paper in one’s hand or one’s eyes glued on the wall screen. I have also come to appreciate the place of variety in worship – the use of different styles of music, opening rites, and forms of intercessions. Both elements are needed in a service book. The difficult task is striking a balance between the two.

Some variety is desirable in a service book but not so much as to overwhelm the congregations who will be using the service book. When several options are provided in a service, congregations have the unfortunate tendency to use all the options instead of making judicious use of one or two of the options that are appropriate to the season, day, or occasion.

One of the hallmarks of Anglican worship at its best has been simplicity and restraint. It has been sparing in its use of gesture and posture in the liturgy. It has avoided excessive, fussy and unintelligible ceremonial. It has kept away from cluttering the liturgy with superfluous prayers and devotions that needlessly prolong the opening and close of the service and give unwarranted emphasis to the ingathering and presentation of the people’s alms and oblations. It has practiced the liturgical principle that “less is more.”

Instead of trying to fit everything under one cover a modest supplemental collection of occasional prayers, thanksgivings, collects, forms of intercessions, concluding prayers, and blessings might be authorized for use with the service book. As in the case of the service book itself any supplemental liturgical material should conform to the Biblical and Reformation doctrine and principles of the classical Anglican Prayer Book.

While God does not look at outward appearances as do men but at the heart, we nonetheless owe him our best efforts in whatever we do (See Colossians 3:23). This is where small congregations with limited resources run into difficulties. They tend to associate “best” with a particular style of music or worship, usually found in a larger church with more resources. 20 years ago this particular music or worship style might have required a semi-professional SATB choir, a top-notch choir director, a reed organ, and a skilled organist. Today it is likely to require an expensive sound and video projection system, computers, technicians, a first-rate worship leader, and a professional quality music group. Both are resource-intensive and generally beyond what most small congregations can do. Popular culture makes matter worse because it encourages the expectation that whatever music we use in worship, it should be professional in quality. This is why the elements of flexibility, adaptability, and variety are so important in a service book. These elements enable a congregation to try a number of options, discover what it does well, and do it. They do not impose upon a congregation a mold into which it must struggle to fit itself, a set of standards that the congregation cannot meet and that damages its self-esteem when it fails to meet them. The small congregation will have enough challenges as a small congregation.

Congregational
7. What is needed is a service book that makes ample provision for popular participation in the services. Worship in the Anglican tradition is an enactment of both priest and people as on a stage or in life with God as the audience or onlooker. The people should play a large part in the liturgy if it is to truly to be the common prayer of the Church, the work of the people of Christ. When the priest and a few others dominate the liturgy and the people become passive spectators, the liturgy is no longer common prayer. The royal priesthood that all Christ’s people share is obscured.

Among the better features of the newer service books is that the people may join the priest in prayers that formerly were said by the priest alone. These include the Prayer of St. Chrysostom, the General Thanksgiving, the Grace, the Collect for Purity, the Preface of the Thanksgiving, the Prayer of Humble Access, and the Post-Communion Prayers. The Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church Militant and other forms of the Intercessions may be read by laypersons and may consist of a number of sections. After each section a versicle and response may be said. The Intercessions may be crafted locally in accordance with guidelines in the service book. They may also be in silence with biddings, or may be in the form of open prayer where the members of the congregation contribute. Laypersons may read the Lessons, including the Gospel; prepare the Table; and distribute the Bread and Wine at the Holy Communion. They may, when licensed, preach the sermon.

Classic
8. What is needed is a service book that maintains continuity with the past. Those using the service book must be able to see the connection between the book and previous Anglican service books. It should incorporate contemporary English versions of the collects, confessions, absolutions, exhortations, prayers and thanksgivings from the classical Anglican Prayer Book and even the older versions, using the old where it may be well used rather than devising everything anew. The order of each service and the order of the services in the book should be recognizably that of the classical Anglican Prayer Book.

Uncompromising
9. What is needed is a service book that draws from other service books, past and present, without compromising the Biblical and Reformation theology of the classical Anglican Prayer Book. In adapting and using liturgical material from the 1928 American Prayer Book and the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book, the compilers of the AMiA trial service book, Services in Contemporary English from The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, regrettably produced a book that belies its title. The services in the book are not contemporary English forms of the services of the classical Anglican Prayer The theology of the 1928 American Prayer Book and the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book departs from that of the 1662 Prayer Book at a number of points. Both are much more “Catholic” in tone than the 1662 book. The liturgical material that the editors of the trial service book adapted and used came from these points of departure. It places the trial service book outside the tradition of the reformed 1552 Prayer Book. In my article, "The Blessing of the Water in the Font," I examine the points of departure in more detail and how the use and adaptation of material from them affects the theology of the rites of baptism in the trial service book.

On the other hand, the 1926 Irish Prayer Book is essentially the 1662 Prayer Book although its editors have made some minor alterations and additions in the book that are not found in the 1662. For example, the 1926 Irish Prayer Book permits the use of the canticle Urbs Fortitudinis, Isaiah 26:1-4,7,8 or Laudate Dominum, Psalm 148, in place of the canticles Te Deum Laudamus and Benedicite, Omina Opera in the service of Morning Prayer. The 1926 Irish Prayer Book also provides a selection of collects that may be said after the Collect of the Day, or before the blessing, at the discretion of the minister, at the Communion Service. This option provides the minister an opportunity to offer a suitable concluding prayer before the parting blessing and final hymn of the Communion Service, thereby greatly reducing the temptation to draw out the end of the service with superfluous prayers and devotions after the closing recessional.(One of peculiarities of the AMiA trial service book is that it encourages protracted service endings when it is generally desirable from a liturgical standpoint for a service to move to a swift conclusion after the last hymn.) The changes do not affect the theology of the Irish Prayer Book. Its theology is that of the 1662.

An example of the liturgical material that might be adapted and used from the 1928 American Prayer Book without seriously compromising the classical Anglican Prayer Book’s theology is the rubric permitting the use of the Gloria Patria after each section or the entire selection of the psalms in the services of Morning and Evening Prayer or after each individual psalm. A similar example from the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book is the use of the bidding “Let us pray for…” before each prayer and the bidding “Let us give thanks for…” before each thanksgiving when the occasional prayers and thanksgivings, or other prayers authorized by the ordinary, are read at Morning or Evening Prayer. A third example from the 1979 American Prayer Book are the rubrics permitting the substitution of hymns for the canticles and a time of open or silent prayer at Morning and Evening Prayer These are fairly minor alterations or additions.

It is both reasonable and practical to use liturgical material from the 1928 and 1979 American Prayer Books and the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book, which comprises the better features of the three Prayer Books, and which does not compromise the Biblical and Reformed theology of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. At the same compilers of the new service book need to recognize that these books are flawed in their theology, and not to rely too heavily upon material from them.

Missional
10. What is needed is a service book that stresses the Church’s participation in the missio Dei, that is, the mission of God in the world. God calls all Christians to serve him as missionaries wherever he has placed them – in their hometown as well as on foreign shores. Every Christian is expected to be a messenger of God’s grace, embodying God’s love for a fallen humanity, sharing their faith with others, and serving in the Spirit of Christ. The services should not only draw the attention of the local congregation of the faithful to their part in the divine mission but also that of the individual follower of Christ to his part. Indeed the services should celebrate God’s mission in the world and our role as fellow workers with God.

In light of the present direction of The Episcopal Church and the contribution of the two most recent American Prayer Books to the movement of The Episcopal Church away from the Biblical and Reformation theology of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, anyone seeking to develop a new Book of Common Prayer for Anglicans in North America would be wise to distance the new service book from the existing American Prayer Book tradition. A new Anglican Prayer Book tradition is needed in North America, a tradition that is orthodox and Biblical, evangelical and Reformed, one that stands within the reformed 1552 Prayer Book tradition. If The Episcopal Church continues to choose to walk apart, withdraws from the Anglican Communion or is expelled from that body, it certainly makes no sense to use a service book that is closely tied to the divergent tradition of that denomination and therefore may carry its corrupting influence.

A large part of the urgency behind the movement to replace the 1979 Book of Common Prayer with a new service book in the Anglican Mission is the flawed theology of the 1979 book. The theology of the 1928 Prayer Book is also flawed. Its adoption of the Scottish Prayer of Consecration has always set the American Prayer Book apart from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The 1928 Prayer Book was the first major revision of the American Prayer Book; it moved the American Prayer Book even further away from the 1662 Prayer Book. As long as the 1928 Prayer Book is used in the Anglican Mission, clergy will be tempted to construe or base doctrine or practices upon the services of the 1928 Prayer Book. Its replacement, however, is much more problematic. Some clergy and congregations are strongly attached to the book; its forced retirement in The Episcopal Church contributed to an exodus of clergy and congregations from that church. Yet while the 1928 Prayer Book is used in the Anglican Mission, the missionary organization will never fully realize its commitment to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and their Biblical and Reformation theology as its standard of faith.