The Church of Nigeria is likely the largest in the Anglican Communion in terms of membership. Nigeria was first evangelized by Anglican missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1842, and to this day maintains the evangelical character typical of areas where the CMS was active.
The Anglican Church in Nigeria used the 1662 BCP (plus, of course, translations of it into indigenous languages) up until the independent Province of Nigeria was created in 1979. Nigeria approved a Book of Common Prayer of its own in 1996, from which this booklet presumably was taken. David Okeke, in an essay on the BCP in Nigeria in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer, states that the 1996 Nigerian BCP "on the whole relies on adoption and adaptation rather than on liturgical creativity and innovation". One can see that in the service presented here, which should be easily recognizable and familiar to anyone used to modern Eucharistic services in the Anglican West.
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2 comments:
I'd be right at home in Nigeria, more so than the American exilic sojourn. Commendable.
I suppose that our family--the seven of us--needs to move to Nigeria to get an old school Anglican Prayer Book service. It won't be forthcoming with the American know-it-alls.
Like the Eucharistic services in the Anglican West the Nigerian service shows the influence of the 1958 Lambeth Conference’s Sub-Committee on the Holy Communion Service and its doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. As J.I. Packer and Roger Beckwith have pointed out in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, this doctrine is no more consistent with the teaching of the Bible and the principles of doctrine and worship laid out in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion than the Medieval Catholic doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. It also shows the influence of the twentieth century Liturgical and Ecumenical Movements and incorporates elements from the Roman Rite. It reflects the worldwide shift from the 1662 Prayer Book’s “plain Reformation structure to embellished pre-Reformation forms.” It was the early stages of this shift that the 1958 Lambeth Conference’s Sub-Committee on the Holy Communion Service affirmed in its report and commended to the assembled bishops of the Anglican Communion, which they in turn commended to the Anglican Communion. It opened the floodgate of doctrinal and liturgical change in the Anglican Communion. It set the restoration of the structure of the Roman Canon in Anglican Prayer Books as the trajectory of liturgical change in the Anglican Communion. While the two Nigerian Eucharistic Prayers do not go as far along this trajectory as do the ACNA Eucharistic Prayers, they do adopt forms and language that places them on this trajectory. This is attributable to the influence of the Eucharistic services of the Anglican West – particularly the Church of England’s –which is discernible in the Nigerian service. Among the results of the shift away from the “plain Reformation structure” of the 1662 Prayer Book is the doctrinal and liturgical incoherence that we find in the Anglican Communion today.
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