What Is Wrong with the Proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book?

By Robin G. Jordan

Among the major defects of the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book is that it is a highly partisan book. It strongly favors the doctrinal views and liturgical practices of the Catholic Revivalist wing of the Anglican Church in North America. It does next to nothing to comprehend the doctrinal views and liturgical practices of the other theological schools of thought represented in the ACNA. What little it does do in that direction is purely cosmetic. When the book is viewed as a whole, it is quite evident that the book in doctrine and liturgical usages is unreformed Catholic. It may be shorn of such elements as petitions to the Blessed Virgin and the saints and references to the offering of “this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim” in conjunction with the offering of the bread and wine in the Eucharistic Prayers However, their absence does not make the book any less unreformed Catholic. It incorporates many doctrines and liturgical practices that the English Reformers rejected for good reason in the sixteenth century.

When measured against Anglicanism’s long-recognized standard of faith and practice—the classical Anglican formularies of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the Ordinal of 1661, and the Articles of Religion of 1571 (and by extension the two Book of Homilies which expound upon the doctrines set forth in the Articles of Religion) the proposed 2019 Prayer Book comes up short. Indeed it is in many places at odds with these formularies which draw their authority from the Scriptures. The Jerusalem Declaration in identifying what it viewed to be the basic tenets of Anglicanism affirms this standard. The Anglican Church in North America is a signatory to the Jerusalem Declaration.

The events leading up to the formation of the Anglican Church in North America  and the events following the first Global Anglican Future Conference provide an explanation of why the ACNA, while having signed the Jerusalem Declaration, has never honored its provisions. Former Archbishop Robert Duncan who now chairs the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force, while on a speaking tour before the formation of the ACNA, called for a “new settlement” to replace the Elizabethan Settlement. He called for a return to a time before the English Reformation. The English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement established the shape of Anglicanism not only in the sixteenth century but in subsequent generations. The Jerusalem Declaration in affirming the classical Anglican formularies affirms the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement.

Bishop Jack Iker, when he returned to the United States after the first Global Anglican Future Conference assured his fellow Catholic Revivalists that the Anglican Church in North America would not be bound by the Jerusalem Declaration but by the much weaker Theological Statement of the Common Cause Partnership. Iker threatened a Catholic Revivalist walkout at the inaugural Provincial Council if any substantive changes were made to the Theological Statement which had been incorporated into the ACNA’s proposed constitution. By this time the affirmation of the Jerusalem Statement which had formed a part of that statement had been removed from it and moved to the preamble of the proposed constitution where it was purely incidental to an explanation of the events leading to the formation of the ACNA and could not be interpreted as binding the new province.

I have long contended that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans has been nurturing a cuckoo’s offspring in the Anglican Church in North America. The cuckoo is a parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds which hatches them and raises the offspring. The cuckoo’s offspring pushes the host bird’s hatchlings out of the nest so that it has no competition for the host bird’s attention. The host bird feeds it, mistaking it for one of its own hatchlings. When the cuckoo’s offspring reaches maturity, it flies away.

One only has to examine the ACNA’s ordinal, catechism, and proposed prayer book to see that its doctrines and practices are a rejection of what the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans affirms. Yet the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans continues to recognize and support the ACNA.

One might argue that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But the Arab sheik to whom this proverb has been attributed was murdered by an enemy of his enemy. History is also full of incidences in which alliances have been formed against a common enemy only to have one member of the alliance turn against the other members of the alliance in the future.

As former Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola pointed out, two cannot walk together unless they agree. The sacramentalism and sacerdotalism that dominate Catholic Revivalist thinking form the basis of a different gospel from what Anglicans have historically understand to be the gospel of the New Testament. The greatest achievement of the English Reformation was the recovery of the New Testament gospel which the English Reformers sought to preserve not only through the Articles of Religion and the two Books of Homilies but through the liturgy itself. The Catholic Revivalist movement seeks to undo the English Reformation and return the Anglican Church to the early high Middle Ages which it idealizes as a golden age of the Church.

Rather than recognizing and supporting the province, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans should be recognizing and supporting the clergy and congregations in the Anglican Church in North America with which the FCA has a real affinity, the clergy and the congregations that genuinely subscribe to the tenets of Anglicanism identified in the Jerusalem Declaration. One way that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans can provide this support and recognition is by thoroughly scrutinizing the ACNA’s ordinal, catechism, and proposed prayer book, and drawing attention to where they depart from Anglicanism’s long-recognized standard of doctrine and practice.

The Anglican Church in North America is almost 10 years old. It is not so fragile that it is in danger of imminent collapse. It is time to hold the ACNA accountable for its departures from the tenets of Anglicanism identified in the Jerusalem Declaration to which it is a signatory. It is no longer necessary to go easy on the ACNA.

Another glaring defect of the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book is that it is poorly designed for the twenty-first century North American mission field, which includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, and adjacent territories. It lacks the degree of flexibility and adaptability that is a must on the mission field. Its rites and services are designed for use by an established church with a worship center of its own, a large congregation, several clergy, and ample resources. They are not easily tailorable to the kinds of conditions that are found on the mission field—non-traditional worship settings, shared facilities, small congregations, a shortage of clergy, limited resources, the presence of unconverted, unbaptized individuals who have no past experience with any kind of worship, much less liturgical worship, and the like.

Take for example the entrance rite of the liturgy of the Word of the four forms of the Holy Eucharist, which have been proposed for use in the Anglican Church in North America. It is unnecessarily cumbersome. Rather than reducing the clutter that tends to accumulate in the entrance rite and thereby enabling the entrance rite to better serve its function, the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force added to it. The Summary of the Law which historically been an optional element, they made a fixed element.

If one strips away the clutter that has accumulated in the entrance rite over the centuries-- the entrance song, Gloria in excelsis, and Kyries added in the fifth century; the Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for Purity, and the Ten Commandments added in the sixteenth century; the optional Summary of the Law added in the eighteenth century; and the acclamation added in the twentieth century; one will reduce the entrance rite to its primitive simplicity—a greeting and a prayer from which the Collect of the Day originated. Perhaps with an opening song such as a metrical version of the Gloria this is all that a small congregation celebrating the Holy Eucharist in one of its members’ living room needs to prepare to hear the Word. All of the other elements are superfluous. One might want to use some of them in a celebration of the Holy Eucharist in a cathedral on a major festival or at an ordination or the enthronement of a bishop but not at a home Eucharist or even at a small weekday day Eucharist.

It would have made far more sense to have kept the fixed elements to a minimum—a greeting and the Collect of the Day--and made the remaining elements optional, leaving to worship planners to decide which optional elements would be used and under what circumstances.

An important liturgical principle is that less is more. Overloading the entrance rite with fixed elements does not enrich the worship of the people. Rather it can weary the congregation at the very beginning of the service. It also gives undue emphasis to what is an ancillary rite.

A small congregation celebrating the Holy Eucharist in a living room also does not need a lengthy Eucharistic Prayer. A short prayer like the one below would suffice.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give him thanks and praise.

All glory and honor, thanks and praise, be yours now and always, holy Father, heavenly King, almighty and eternal God.

We give you thanks and praise, heavenly Father, that in your great mercy you gave your only Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our salvation. By this offering of himself once and for all time Jesus made a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world and commanded us to continue a remembrance of his precious death until his coming again.

Therefore with the whole company of heaven we praise your great and glorious name, forever praising you and saying.

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.

Hear us, merciful Father, and grant that we who receive these gifts of your creation, this bread and this wine, according to our Savior’s command, in remembrance of his suffering and death, may be partakers of his body and blood.

For on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and, when he had given you thanks, he broke it, then gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me’.

In the same way after the meal, Jesus took the cup and, when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from this, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’

With this bread and this cup we show forth Christ’s death until he comes in glory.

Strengthen with your Holy Spirit, Father almighty, all who share this bread and this cup that we may grow in faith and love and bear much fruit to your glory.

And now let us say together the prayer which Jesus taught us.

Our Father....

This prayer which is adapted from the 1662 Prayer of Consecration is patterned upon the Eucharistic Prayers found in The Church of Norway’s The Order of the Principal Service (See Section 4f) and concludes with the Lord’s Prayer.

During the second half of the twentieth century and even earlier it was recognized that a clear need exists for a form of service that can be used in place of the services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and the Holy Eucharist when circumstances makes the use of these services impractical such as when a congregation includes a substantial number of unconverted, unbaptized individuals who had no past experience with any kind of worship, much less liturgical worship. The Anglican Church of Australia, the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, and other Anglican provinces have developed what are commonly described as Services of the Word in response to this need. These forms of service follow the basic pattern of the services of Morning and Evening Prayer—praise, proclamation, and prayer--but are much more flexible and much less formal. A definite need for this type of service exists on the North American mission field but the proposed 2019 Prayer Book makes no provision for a service of this type. Indeed the proposed book appears designed more for an earlier century than the twenty-first.

What the Anglican Church in North America needs is a far more practical Book of Common Prayer than the one the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force has produced—a Prayer Book the doctrine and liturgical usages of which are consistent with the Scriptures and the classical Anglican formularies and which provides ACNA congregations with the kinds of liturgical resources they need to fulfill the Great Commission. The proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book does not meet these two very important criteria. If it is to serve the ACNA as the prayer book for the province, it needs to undergo an exhaustive revision until it does. Otherwise, it should be shelved. A new Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force should be formed, a task force far more committed to providing the ACNA with a prayer book that does meet these criteria.

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Image: Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast