Prayer Book Revision Blues

By Robin G. Jordan

In his article, “Post-Uniformity in Anglicanism,” Jordan Lavender draws attention to one of the facts of life in American Anglicanism—the lack of a common liturgy among American Anglicans. To give readers an idea of the extent of the doctrinal and liturgical diversity in North America to which Jordan refers in his article, I have listed the worship resources that are presently used in the Anglican Church in North America and its ministry partner, the Anglican Mission (formerly the Anglican Mission in the Americas):

The Book of Common Prayer (1662) – Church of England
The Book of Common Prayer (1928) – Protestant Episcopal Church USA
The American Missal
The Book of Common Prayer (1962) – Anglican Church of Canada
An Australian Prayer Book (1978) – Anglican Church of Australia
The Book of Common Prayer (1979) - Episcopal Church USA
The Book of Alternative Services (1985) – Anglican Church of Canada
An English Prayer Book (1994) – Church Society
The Book of Common Prayer (1996) - Church of Nigeria
Common Worship (2001) – Church of England
The Book of Common Prayer (2003) – Reformed Episcopal Church
Our Modern Services (2002, 2003) – Anglican Church of Kenya
An Anglican Prayer Book (2008) – Anglican Mission in America; Prayer Book Society
The Book of Common Prayer(2011) – Keith Acker
A Modern Language Version of the Book of Common Prayer (2011) – Reformed Episcopal Church

This list is not exhaustive. One church to my knowledge is using Peter Toon’s modern English version of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

A number of churches are also using local patterns of worship. A popular contemporary worship pattern is introduction, worship set, video, sermon, invitation, prayer, final song, and conclusion.

In a sense the ACNA and the AM are a microcosm of the global Anglican Church. Until the twentieth century most Anglican churches used the same Prayer Book. It was the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The exceptions were the churches of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA and the Scottish Episcopal Church, which had their own Prayer Books. In the Church of England a small group of hyper-Catholics used the Anglican Missal.

The twentieth century saw the compilation of a spate of new Anglican service books. The 1958 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops would commend an ecumenical shape for the Holy Eucharist to provinces revising their Prayer Books. The same conference would also commend what was described as an ecumenical doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. The floodgates of Prayer Book revision were opened.

One trend has been that Anglican service books have become more Anglo-Catholic in doctrine and liturgical usages. This trend was evident before the 1958 Lambeth Conference. It deserves explanation. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church is relatively small. However, Anglo-Catholics have tended to dominate the commissions undertaking Prayer Book revision. This can be attributed to the proclivity of Anglo-Catholics take a greater interest in the affairs of the province than evangelicals. The latter have tended to be parish ministry-focused.

There have been exceptions—the Anglican Church of Australia and more recently the Church of England. In these provinces evangelicals have taken a more active role in Prayer Book revision. In both provinces the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is the official doctrinal and worship standard of the province. Prayer Book revision has focused upon producing alternative rites and forms to use together with the 1662 Prayer Book, not to revise the Prayer Book itself.

The Church of England produced The Alternative Service Book 1980 and more recently Common Worship (2001). The latter includes New Patterns of Worship, which essentially places the crafting of the parish liturgy into the hands of the minister and/ or parish worship committee. In Common Worship (2001) the Church of England opted to embrace doctrinal and liturgical diversity. Local patterns of worship have displaced the use of a common liturgy.

Unlike the Episcopal Church the Church of England never adopted a denominational hymnbook but left to the individual parish to decide what music collection it would use. Now the Church of England has gone a step further and given the parish the option of deciding what liturgy it is going to use. One of the results is that Church of England parishes are offering different liturgies on different Sundays to the satisfaction of no one. This may in part account for the drop in attendance in the Church of England.

My former rector in the Episcopal Church tried rotating rites in my former parish, using Rite I and Rite II at both services on alternating Sundays rather than have a Rite I service and a Rite II service every Sunday. It did not work. Folks would attend a Rite I service and come back the next Sunday expecting the same kind of service only to be disappointed. They would not return again. A Rite I service at one hour and a Rite II service at another hour would have enabled the church to reach a much larger group of people. However, the rector stubbornly refused to consider this option.

The Anglican Church of Australia produced An Anglican Prayer Book (1978) and A Prayer Book for Australia (1995). One of the guidelines followed by the commission that compiled An Anglican Prayer Book was that if the commission could not agree upon a proposal, whatever was done in the 1662 Prayer Book would take precedence. This kept An Australian Prayer Book closer to the classical Anglican Prayer Book than some modern English service books. A Prayer Book for Australia employed the principle of “studied ambiguity,” wording texts so that Anglo-Catholics could read it one way and evangelicals another. Both the doctrinal commissions of the Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Ballarat and the evangelical Diocese of Sydney would find substantial problems with A Prayer Book for Australia. Both dioceses would produce their own alternative rites and forms, which they were able to do under the canons of the Anglican Church of Australia.

In an addendum to his article Jordan writes:

When we believe in the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi, we have to have a standard text, which in most provinces is the 1662 BCP, while in TEC it is the 1979 BCP (a number of other provinces have revised BCPs too, such as Canada). With ACNA, there is no standard text, the 1662 is acknowledged with the "books that preceded it" standards of Anglican worship. I have re-titled this piece, "Post-uniformity in American Anglicanism," because it reflects the position of many in ACNA that a standard text is not needed until an ACNA BCP is released. I strongly disagree, either ACNA needs to hurry up and produce a standard text or strengthen, at least, doctrinal uniformity to the 1662, if not uniformity in worship.

One of the reasons that many in the ACNA do not see the need for a standard text until the release of the ACNA Prayer Book is that they no longer practice the principle of lex credendi, lex orendi. This principle fell by the wayside in the Episcopal Church. Those who left the Episcopal Church to form the ACNA and the AM and those who have joined the ACNA and the AM from other denominations do not give serious thought to this principle, much less apply it. Belief and text have become separated. People no longer believe what they pray. The liberal in the Episcopal Church can recite the Creeds and not believe a word of them. A self-identified evangelical in the ACNA or the AM who rejects the idea that the eucharist is a reiteration or representation of Christ’s sacrifice or a participation in Christ’s supposed ongoing sacrificial activity can in the eucharistic prayer ask God to accept our sacrifice with Christ’s. Meanings have become divorced from words. Words mean whatever we want them to mean. Or they can mean nothing at all. This may be attributable to the influence of post-modernism and relativism. Other factors may the cause. It is a serious problem because it promotes a kind of theological laziness that results in divisive or erroneous doctrinal statements going unchallenged.

An accompanying attitude is that it does not matter what Prayer Book is used. What matters is what preached from the pulpit and taught in the classroom. This attitude fails to recognize that the Prayer Book is not just a book of services. It is a collection of doctrinal statements. When a jurisdiction adopts a Prayer Book, it adopts the doctrine of that Prayer Book as the official doctrine of the jurisdiction. The minister who does not preach and teach the doctrine of the Prayer Book opens himself to the charge of promoting doctrine contrary to the teaching of the Church. He gives those who do not share his doctrinal views a way of ridding the jurisdiction of him and the doctrine that he preaches and teaches. If the minister accepts another cure of souls, the minister who replaces him may undo what he preached and taught, using the Prayer Book to do it.

The texts of the Prayer Book will over time influence the thinking of the congregation. They will reinforce what other ministers have preached and taught if they have preached and taught the doctrine of the Prayer Book. While for some people belief and text have become separated, for others they have not. They may no longer be connected for the minister but they may continue to be connected for members of the congregation. Or it may be the other way around.

On this topic the GAFCON Theological Resource Team has this to say:

Anglican orthodoxy agrees with the historic traditions that ‘praying shapes believing’, and that liturgies are of great importance, both in communicating the faith and in sustaining Christian disciples. In particular, it sees the classic Book of Common Prayer (1662), and its authentic translations and modernizations, as expressing the substance of the faith in the context of worship. As with the Articles, it sees the Prayer Book as constituting a lasting contribution to the wider Christian church. (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 101)

In its fundamental declarations the ACNA recognizes the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the annexed Ordinal as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline. The fundamental declarations infer that other standards exist. The ACNA also recognizes the 1662 Prayer Book-Ordinal, “with the Books that preceded it,” as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship. The fundamental declarations do not identify which books. Among the books that preceded the 1662 Prayer Book-Ordinal are the pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic service books.

The fundamental declarations treat the Thirty-Nine Articles as a relic of the past or a historical background informing the church’s life and witness but not comprising a test of faith. They do not treat the Articles as the doctrinal standard for interpreting the Prayer Book, which is one of their purposes.

Whatever standard text the ACNA produces is not likely express the doctrine of the classical Anglican formularies. It is also likely to go unchallenged for the reasons that I already given.

There is a real need in the ACNA to recover the formularies but there is little will to do so. I would not be surprised if the ACNA produces a Prayer Book similar to Keith Acker’s Book of Common Prayer 2011, which departs seriously from the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and its annexed Ordinal and moves the American Prayer Book in a decidedly unreformed Catholic direction. The adoption of such a Prayer Book would provide the final answer to the question as to whether there is a place in the ACNA for the Protestant/Reformed Catholic faith of the classic formularies. The answer would be “no.”