The Genesis of the American Prayer Book Re-examined

By Robin G. Jordan

In his article “The Genealogy of the American Book of Common Prayer,” published in the September/October 2009 issue of Mandate, the Rev. Charles Flinn sketches a rather broad outline of the genealogy of the American Prayer Book. Unfortunately this outline omits a number of important details related to the genesis of the American Prayer Book.

The first Prayer Book, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, was a transitional Prayer Book and was, after three years, replaced by a Reformed liturgy, the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. This liturgy represented Archbishop Cranmer’s mature thinking.

The 1552 Book of Common Prayer was short-lived due to the untimely death of the young king Edward VI. Edward’s older sister Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon and a devote Roman Catholic, ascended to the English throne. Mary abolished the Book of Common Prayer and restored the Latin Mass. Mary took other steps to stamp out Protestantism and to reestablish Roman Catholicism and papal authority in her kingdom. Her persecution of English Protestants earned for her the epithet of “bloody.” Mary burned as heretics women and children as well as leading figures of the Edwardian Reformation such as Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer.

The 1552 Book of Common Prayer, however, did not perish with Thomas Cranmer in the flames at Oxford. The 1552 Prayer Book was resurrected in the form of the 1559 Prayer Book, which was the 1552 Book with a minimum of changes. The 1552 Prayer Book in its 1559 form would be “the” Prayer Book of the Church of England for almost 100 years.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer far from represented a defeat for the High Churchmen. The Restoration bishops who compiled the book were High Churchmen. They included John Wren who had helped to compile the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book. They had available to them John Cosin’s The Durham Book containing a number of Laudian proposals for the revision of the Prayer Book at the restoration of the Stuarts to the English throne after the Interregnum. They had the full backing of the new monarch, Charles II.

In his case study of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer Brian Douglas makes the following observations:

"The fact that the 1662 revisers choose to follow the more Reformed model of 1552, 1559 and 1604 in the main, and not to return to the more Catholic model of 1549, may indicate both a satisfaction with the Reformed model and desire for conciliation between the various parties. The proposals of the Laudians, as expressed in The Durham Book, were not, in the main, adopted. The proposals of the Presbyterians in The Exceptions and The Reformation of the Liturgy, were also, in the main, not adopted. The previous prayer book model was substantially maintained with only slight, although important changes to the Eucharist. The changes were suggestive of moderate realism and these have been discussed above."

He goes on to write:

"The eucharistic theology of the 1662 BCP is indicated as much as, if not more than, by what it does not include, as what it does. For example, the omission of sacrificial language at the Offertory, with a specific ‘offering up of the elements’ such as is found in the Scottish Liturgy of 1637 or in The Durham Book, and the failure to include an epiclesis in the Prayer of Consecration, suggest that the revisers, despite the small number of significant changes, were keen to maintain the previous model. The failure of the revisers to include any of the more radical Puritan suggestions (e.g. those found in Baxter’s Savoy Liturgy) also suggests that they were satisfied with the prayer book at it existed."

He further writes:

"If Maltby is correct, then this may help to explain why the bishops were happy to maintain the prayer book in much the same form as it previously existed and why they generally rejected the proposals for change from both the Laudian and Presbyterian parties. In so doing the theology of the eucharist, principally moderate realism, was also maintained, although this was in a milder form than it otherwise may have been. It has been this milder form of moderate realism that has persisted in Anglicanism so strongly (e.g. The Church of England and The Anglican Church of Australia)." [1]

In 1689 Archbishop Sancroft, eight bishops, and 400 priests were ejected from their livings after they refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new king, the Protestant Prince William of Orange. Parliament had invited William to assume the English throne after the deposed Roman Catholic King James II had fled the country. The bishops and clergy in question believed that they were still bound by their oath to James II. For their refusal to swear allegiance to William they were known as the “Non-Jurors.” After Sancroft’s death the Non-Jurors perpetuated their schism by the ordination of new bishops and clergy. The schism would last more than a century.

The Non-Jurors were divided into two groups - the "Usagers," a tiny minority of the Non-Jurors who argued for the addition of an epiclesis and an oblation of the bread and wine in the Prayer of Consecration and the "Non-Usagers," the majority of the Non-Jurors who did not. The first group maintained that without an epiclesis and an oblation of the bread and the wine in the Prayer of Consecration, the eucharist was not a means of grace; the second group, while viewing an epiclesis and an oblation of the bread and the wine in the Prayer of Consecration as desirable, did not considered these liturgical practices necessary or practical. The dispute over these usages became so heated that a majority of the Non-Juror College of Bishops issued a remonstrance against the Usagers for disturbing the peace of the Church.

The Usagers initially used the 1549 Book of Common Prayer instead of the 1662 Prayer Book. They published their own Communion Office in 1718. In addition to incorporating an epiclesis and oblation of the bread and wine in the Prayer of Consecration, they reintroduced the mixed chalice and prayers for the dead in the Communion. They issued a complete Prayer Book in 1734. Other distinctive practices of the Usagers were triple immersion at Baptism, the use of chrism at Confirmation, and the Unction of the Sick.

Two Usager bishops outlived their opponents and produced the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Communion Office. It eventually became the Communion Office of the Scottish Episcopal Church. For an explanation of the eucharistic doctrine of the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Communion Office, see the accompanying article, “What’s Wrong with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer?”

Scotland is an early example of a country where two Prayer Book traditions existed side by side. English Evangelicals in Scotland refused to use the Prayer Book of the Scottish Episcopal Church or submit to the oversight of the Scottish bishops. Their rejection of the Scottish Prayer Book was doctrinal; their rejection of the Scottish bishops was both theological and political. Instead they established what became known as the “English Episcopal Chapels,” licensed chapels in which the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was used.

At the urging of Bishop Seabury the 1789 General Convention of the fledgling Protestant Episcopal Church adopted the 1764 Scottish Communion Office with some important changes. The changes that the 1789 General Convention made to the 1764 Scottish Communion Office included the omission of the offering up of the bread and wine at the offertory and the versicle and response, “The Lord be with you” “And also with thy spirit” from the Sursum Corda. Both of these liturgical elements were associated with the doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice and Transubstantiation. The General Convention restored the word "there" in the Scottish Prayer of Consecration to "who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sinnes of the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue a perpetuall memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, untill his coming again." The General Convention omitted the decidedly realist language of the epiclesis with its petition that the bread and the wine might "become" the Body and the Blood of Christ. The Prayer for the Church Militant was restored to the 1552 position between the offertory and invitation to confession; the Lord’s Prayer to the 1552 position after the distribution of the communion; the invitation to confession, the general confession, the absolution, and the comfortable words to the 1552 position immediately before the Sursum Corda; and the Prayer of Humble Access to the 1552 position immediately after the Sanctus. The ending of the Scottish Prayer for the Church Militant was replaced with that of the 1662 Prayer for the Church Militant. The rubric “And when he receiveth himself, or delivereth the sacrament of the body of Christ to others, he shall say…” was changed to “And when he delivereth the Bread he shall say….” The Words of Administration were replaced with those from the 1559 Prayer Book. All these changes were adopted to bring the Communion Office closer to the 1662 Communion Service, as well as to eliminate any further liturgical elements associated with the doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice and Transubstantiation.

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer was the first major revision of the American Prayer Book. It predecessor, the 1892 Prayer Book, differed little in substance from the 1789 Prayer Book. The changes in the 1928 revision of the American Prayer Book, however, were far-reaching and even radical. These changes are detailed in the accompanying article, “What’s Wrong with the 1928 Book of Common Prayer?”

The 1920s marked a watershed in Prayer Book revision. While the new Prayer Books—the 1926 Irish Prayer Book, the 1928 American Prayer Book, the 1928 Proposed English Prayer Book, the 1929 Scottish Prayer Book, the 1929 South African Prayer Book—may have resembled each other superficially, incorporating and adapting forms and rites from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, as well as retaining the use of Tudor English and the second person familiar, their theology differed significantly from that of the 1662 Prayer Book, The exception is the 1926 Irish Prayer Book, which is the closest doctrinally to the 1662.

The addition of material from the Anglican Missal and other manuals to the services of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer alters the theology of the 1928 Prayer Book, moving it even further away from the doctrine of the classical Anglican Prayer Book.

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer goes well beyond being an edition or local adaptation of the 1662 Prayer Book. The 1928 Prayer Book played a major part in the Prayer Book revision of the 1960s and 1970s. It broke new ground, opening the way for more extensive revision of the American Prayer Book. It wetted appetites for further change. The result was the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Endnotes:
[1] Brian Douglas, “The1662 Book of Common Prayer,” Anglican Eucharistic Theology, electronic article on the Internet at: http://web.mac.com/brian.douglas/Anglican_Eucharistic_Theology/Blog/Entries/2006/4/22_The_1662_Book_of_Common_Prayer.html