The Doctrine of the Proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book: Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

The doctrine of a Prayer Book may be discerned in a number of ways—from the wording of its rites and services, from the arrangement of the elements in a particular rite or service, from their arrangement is a specific form in that rite or service, from the practices that the rubrics authorize or sanction, and from a comparison of its rites and services with other liturgical books. These ways are not the only ways that its doctrine may be discerned but they are important ones.

A common mistake is to assume that since the same text appears in two or more Prayer Books, it means the same thing in these books. Their use of common textual material, however, is no guarantee that they share a common doctrine. They may use this material quite differently.

In a way discerning the doctrine of a Prayer Book is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle: each piece adds to the picture until one has the complete picture. While some people really enjoy putting together jigsaw puzzles, I must confess that I get more enjoyment from teasing out the doctrine of a Prayer Book. The first step in unraveling a Prayer Book’s doctrine is to look for major clues.

In this article and the other articles in this series I refer to the purported 2019 Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church in North America as the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book or the proposed book because despite its claim that it has approved the book, the College of Bishops does not have authority to approve a Prayer Book for the Anglican Church in North America under the existing provisions of the ACNA’s constitution and canons. The College of Bishops may endorse a proposed book or withhold its endorsement as may any individual or group in the ACNA or outside the province.

In weighing the endorsement of the College of Bishops, it must be borne in mind that a number of the bishops are not fully committed to remaining faithful to the teaching of the Bible and historic Anglican doctrine and practices. The College of Bishops is dominated by a faction that seeks to move the Anglican Church in North America away from the reformed faith of historic Anglicanism in an unreformed Catholic direction.

One of the major clues to the doctrine of the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book is that the proposed book adopts the order of the 1549 Canon for so-called Standard Anglican Eucharistic Prayer. This order is also the order of the Roman Canon. In this regard it differs from the 1928 American Prayer Book and the proposed 1928 English Prayer Book which adopt the order of the Prayer of Consecration of the 1764 Scottish Communion Office. How do these two orders differ and what difference does it make?

In the order of the Roman Canon the Epiclesis and the Words of Institution precede the Anamnesis and Oblation. When the priest offers the elements, his words and actions may be interpreted as a re-offering or representation of Christ’s offering of himself on the cross. Roman Catholic theologians argue that what is occurring is not a reiteration of Christ’s offering but the very offering Christ made on the cross. Christ is present in the priest and is making the offering that he made on Calvary. The two offerings are not separated by time and space. They are one and the same. In any event this particular order lends itself to this particular doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice, the doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church held at the time of the Reformation, affirmed at the Council of Trent, and espouses today. While Anglo-Catholics who subscribe to this doctrine have sought to wiggle around it with various arguments, it is the doctrine that the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571 describes as the doctrine of the “sacrifice of the Masses.”

It is the Roman Catholic doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice that goes hand in hand with the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine maintains that Christ is substantively present in the consecrated bread and wine. The bread and wine, while they retain the appearance of ordinary bread and wine, undergo a change in substance. Bishop Steven Gardiner who was no Protestant but a staunch Roman Catholic had no objection to the 1549 Canon because, while its rubrics forbade the priest to elevate the elements or show the sacrament to the people, the prayer embodied these Roman Catholic doctrines.

The rubrics of the so-called Standard Anglican Eucharistic Prayer do not contain the 1549 prayer’s rubrical prohibition against the elevation of the elements or the showing of the sacrament to the people, Medieval practices associated with the adoration of the sacrament species, which Cranmer and the English Reformers regarded as a form of idolatry. The ACNA rite contains two forms for use when the priest shows the sacrament to the people, one borrowed from the Eastern liturgies and used in the eucharistic rites in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the other borrowed from the Roman Rite and found in a number of Anglo-Catholic service books influenced by that rite.

The only thing that softens the unreformed Catholic doctrine embodied in the so-called Standard Anglican Eucharistic Prayer is the retention of the phrase, “may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood,” from the 1552-1662 Prayers of Consecration.

In the 1764 Scottish Prayer of Consecration the Anamnesis-Oblation follows the Words of Institution and precedes the Epiclesis. This is the Eastern position. While the Scottish Non-Juror bishops who compiled the prayer subscribed to a doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice, it was different from that of the Roman Catholic Church. They championed the view that Christ had made his “one oblation of himself once offered” not on the cross but at the Last Supper. Consequently, the original 1764 Scottish Prayer of Consecration omitted the words, “who made there” after the words “to suffer on the Cross for our redemption.” While the language of the Epiclesis is startlingly realist, the Scottish Non-Jurors had a receptionist view of the sacrament. The order of Word and Holy Spirit in the Epiclesis is reversed from that in the 1549 Epiclesis.

The Episcopal Church, when it adopted the 1764 Scottish Prayer of Consecration in 1789, made several major changes to the prayer. It restored the words, “who made there,” and replaced the realist language of the Epiclesis with the language from the 1552-1662 Prayers of Consecration. In its wording of the Epiclesis it avoided the implication that “the Invocation makes or changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.” It retained the order of Word and Holy Spirit in the Epiclesis. At same time it capitalized “Word” so that it would not be confused with the Words of Institution.

Interestingly the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book adopts the 1764 Scottish order of Word and Holy Spirit in the Epiclesis of the Standard Anglican Eucharistic Prayer, rather than the 1549 order of Holy Spirit and Word. Among the ramifications of this change is that the Anamnesis-Oblation refers to the consecrated elements. In the muted language of the Anamnesis-Oblation the priest is reoffering or representing Christ’s offering of himself on the cross, or as Roman Catholic theologians would argue, through the priest Christ is offering himself on Calvary.

Evangelical Episcopalians were comfortable with revised 1764 Scottish Prayer of Consecration. They interpreted the Oblation as a preliminary offering of the unconsecrated elements to God before their consecration. They overlooked that fact, while the Bible contains a number of references to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon people and to prayer for the Holy Spirit’s descent upon people, it contains no reference to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon inanimate objects or to prayer for the Holy Spirit’s descent upon these objects.

This is one of the reasons that the 1552-1662 Prayers of Consecration, which include the 1559 and 1604 Consecration Prayers, do not contain an elaborate Epiclesis of the Eastern type. Rather they contain a more primitive form of Epiclesis in the form of a simple petition, “Hear us, O Father, we beseech thee: and grant that that we, receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood.”

As Massey Shepherd points to our attention in The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, the Epiclesis in An Alternate Order of the Ministration of Holy Communion in the 1928 proposed English Prayer Book and in the Scottish Communion Office in the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book “is more nearly patterned after the Eastern idea of a ‘change’ or ‘becoming’ of the elements into the Body and Blood of our Lord.” 

Among the reasons that Archbishop Cranmer did not use in the more reformed 1552 Prayer Book the type of Epiclesis that he used in the transitional 1549 Prayer Book was that it suggested that the elements underwent a change in substance. While Anglo-Catholics claim that Cranmer was pressured into producing a second Prayer Book, the reality is that the 1552 book, not the 1549, represents his mature thinking as can be seen from his later writings. The purpose of the 1549 book was to facilitate the transition to a more biblical, more reformed liturgy. It was a stepping stone to the 1552 Prayer Book.

The 1928 American Prayer Book added the offering of the bread and wine, the Lesser Oblation, at the offertory but retained the 1789 Prayer of Consecration with its offering of the elements during the consecration. This may have nudged the Holy Communion Service of the 1928 American Prayer Book in a more unreformed Catholic direction but not to the satisfaction of the Anglo-Catholic critics of that book. They regard the 1789 Prayer of Consecration as insufficiently Catholic because it lacks explicit language in regards to Christ’s offering of himself in the Eucharist and retains the receptionist language from the 1552-1662 Prayers of Consecration in the Epiclesis.

When we take all of these factors into consideration, it is clear that so-called Standard Anglican Eucharistic Prayer of the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book departs not only from the doctrine of the 1552-1662 Prayer Books but also the 1928 American Prayer Book. To add insult to injury, the Preface of the proposed book makes the preposterous claim that the book embodies Archbishop Cranmer’s vision of a biblical, reformed liturgy for the Church of England.

What about the so-called Renewed Ancient Eucharistic Prayer? If we take time to closely examine the prayer and compare it with Eucharistic Prayer II, the Roman Catholic Church’s adaptation of the Anophora of Hippolytus, also known as the Anophora of the Apostolic Tradition, we cannot help but notice the similarities between the two prayers. This goes beyond the fact that the two prayers are modeled upon the same anophora. The so-called Renewed Ancient Eucharistic Prayer shows the influence of Eucharistic Prayer II.

During the last century it became what might be described as an ecclesiastic fad to compile modern versions of the Anophora of Hippolytus. This may explain the inclusion of the so-called Renewed Ancient Eucharistic Rite in the proposed ACNA Prayer Book. The proposed book contains two rites, one that reflects the interests of those who want an unreformed Catholic liturgy modeled upon the 1549 Prayer Book and designed to appeal to those who share their interests and one that reflects the interests those who want an unreformed Catholic liturgy derived from earlier sources and designed to appeal to those who share their interests.

Since both rites use the same Liturgy of the Word, which includes elements from various periods in Church history, and the Renewed Ancient Eucharist Prayer reflects the influence of a modern Roman Catholic Eucharistic Prayer, the “Renewed Ancient Eucharistic Rite” is a misnomer. However, the Anglican Church in North America is prone to making exaggerated claims.

Conspicuous by its absence from the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book is a Holy Communion Service that stands in continuity with the English Prayer Book tradition, that is, with the 1552-1662 Books of Common Prayer and a Holy Communion Service that stands in continuity with the Scottish-American Prayer Book tradition, that is, with the 1789-1928 Books of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force and the College of Bishops have chosen to turn their backs upon two important strands in what Frederick Meyrick called “Old Anglicanism,” the beliefs and practices of the Reformed Anglican Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both the English Prayer Book tradition and the Scottish-American Prayer Book tradition have their roots in this period. It was the period in which authentic historic Anglicanism took shape.

Rather the members of these two bodies appear to have embraced the notion that in a church that identifies itself as “Anglican” whatever it believes and practices in a particular period in its history may be considered “Anglican.” It is a definition so broad that saying the rosary, invoking the saints, adoring the consecrated host in a monstrance, reading passages from the Quran, using Tibetan singing bowls, walking the labyrinth, smudging with burning sage or cedar, and just about anything else may be considered “Anglican.” It is a definition of “Anglican,” which is also shared by progressive Anglicans in the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and other Anglican provinces. Simply put, “Anglican is what Anglican does.”

There is really no good reason to exclude these two Prayer Book traditions from the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book. The proposed 1928 English Prayer Book makes an effort to comprehend the divergent beliefs and practices of English Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in one book. It was not quite successful, for example the Confirmation Service, but it did make the effort. So did the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book. It has two communion offices—the 1662 Order of the Ministration of the Holy Communion for English Evangelicals and the Scottish Liturgy for Scottish High Churchmen.

Among the more recent Anglican service books An Australian Prayer Book, A Prayer Book for Australia, and the Church of England’ Common Worship seek to accommodate the different schools of churchmanship in those Anglican provinces. An Anglican Prayer Book, produced by the Anglican Mission in America and the Prayer Book Society of the USA, took a stab at incorporating in one book the traditional English, American, and Canadian communion offices in modern language versions. Unfortunately the book makes additions and alterations to these offices that change their doctrine and liturgical usages. With the wealth of material available to the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force, it is surprising that the task force did not produce a more comprehensive book.

When one examines the different sections of the proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book and the ACNA’s catechism, To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism, one gets the distinct impression that the reason these traditions are not represented in the proposed book is that to those who had the final say in regards to what went into the book, they were too Protestant. From cover to cover the proposed book is unreformed Catholic as is the catechism.

Those who had the final say were not interested in providing the Anglican Church in North America with a book that comprehended the various theological schools of thought represented in the Anglican Church in North America, much less conformed to historic Anglicanism’s longstanding standard of doctrine and worship—the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, and the Ordinal of 1661. They were intent on giving the new province a Catholic catechism and a Catholic liturgy. They, however, have so far been thwarted in their efforts to give the province a Catholic order. The province’s constitution and canons permit the ordination of women.

The proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book and To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism are key statements of doctrine as are the constitution and canons. The constitution neuters the authority of historic Anglicanism’s confession of faith, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571. Through the greater weight its formularies give to unreformed Catholic tradition, the Anglican Church in North America also emasculates the authority of the Bible.

Those seeking ordination in the Anglican Church in North America or licensure for ministry must formally subscribe to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the ACNA, which means that they must accept whatever is taught in these formularies. Under the provisions of the ACNA’s canons they are subject to reproof, censure, and other forms of disciplinary action if they depart from the teaching of these formularies. Congregations and dioceses seeking to affiliate with the ACNA must meet a similar requirement. As well as acceding to its constitution and canons, they must subscribe to its doctrine, discipline, and worship.

Those who are firmly committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and to historic Anglican beliefs and practices, while they may have token representation in some of the ACNA bodies have no real voice in determining the direction of the province. The inclusion of J. I. Packer, in the Catechism Task Force and the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Force, for example, is just window dressing. It is quite evident from the doctrinal content of ACNA’s formularies that they are treated as insignificant or peripheral. This may have nothing to do with their actual numbers but rather the success with which the ACNA’s Anglo-Catholic-pro-Orthodox wing has entrenched itself in positions of authority in the province.

If any group in the United States and Canada need the support of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, presuming that the FCA truly stands for what it claims to stand for, it is this group within the Anglican Church in North America, not the ACNA itself. The FCA’s support for the ACNA is misplaced. However, by the time that the FCA comes to this realization, it may be too late for those the ACNA is marginalizing.

Image Credit: Anglican Church in North America