Prayer Book Development to 1662

It is fitting that on this third centenary of the 1662 Prayer Book we should reconsider its distinctive features in relation to preceding books. It is also appropriate that we should briefly consider possible revision in the light of current needs. The fact that the established book is still the authorized standard of public worship is no small tribute to the enduring quality of this work which consummated the liturgical side of the English Reformation. It raises of itself the question as to the characteristics which have enabled the work to meet the liturgical requirements of successive generations. It also raises the challenge that in any revision undertaken the principles underlying the authorised book should not be lightly abandoned but carefully evaluated and perpetuated.

The 1662 book was the final product of a process of development which belonged essentially to the Reformation period. Luther himself, followed by his own adherents and also by Zwingli in Zurich, set the pattern of providing public worship as well as the Bible in the language of the people, and of revising as well as translating existing services to bring them into conformity with new needs and doctrines. Hence it is not surprising that, once the English Bible was set up and the crisis of the 1539 Act had passed, Cranmer set in hand as his second major task the giving to the English people of revised forms of worship in their own tongue. To read more, click here.

2012 is the 350th anniversary of the classical Anglican Prayer Book--The Book of Common Prayer of 1662. With the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Homilies, the 1662 Prayer Book is a foundational document of Anglicanism.