What Is Anglican Worship?

By Robin G. Jordan

Writing the conclusion to my most recent article on the ACNA “theological lens” prompted to me to reflect upon the nature of Anglican worship. “What are its essential qualities?” I asked myself. ‘What are its general characteristics, its distinctive marks, its collective peculiarities?” Here are the fruits of my reflection.

1. Anglican worship is primarily liturgical. It for the most part uses set forms of words. These forms are taken directly from Scripture or they are agreeable to Scripture. They may be forms used in the first or second millennia of Christianity, which have, wherever necessary, been corrected by Scripture. Or they may be more recent compositions that fully conform to the teaching of the Bible.

2. Anglican worship has in more recent times also made room for less formal patterns of corporate worship on Sundays and other occasions. These patterns of corporate worship have less obvious structure than those found in the Prayer Book.

This development predates the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the growing recognition of the need for shortened services in particular circumstances—school chapel services, preaching missions, and so forth—would lead to the adoption of measures for shortening Prayer Book services. The rubrics of the 1926 Irish Prayer Book, for example, permit upon special occasions, instead of the whole order for Morning or Evening Prayer, selections from “the Services of the Church” and the from the holy Scriptures may be used as are approved of for the purpose by the Ordinary. They also permit, subject to the approval of the Ordinary, the preaching of a sermon on special occasions without use of Morning or Evening Prayer, provided the sermon is preceded and followed by one or more prayers taken from the Prayer Book.

In the second half of the twentieth century it was recognized that the regular services of Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion were not meeting the needs of parishes in the Church of England and other Anglican provinces, particularly those which had large number of families that were unbaptized. This prompted the development of what was at the time called the “family service,” an order of service consisting of hymns, worship songs, Bible readings, prayers, a sermon or a talk. The family service might include a children’s address and/or an all age activity in addition to a sermon.

Both the Church of England and the Church of Ireland would develop guidelines, prayers and other liturgical texts for this type of service. They may be found in Common Worship (2000) (Church of England), New Patterns of Worship (Church of England), A Service of the Word (Church of Ireland), and The Book of Common Prayer (2004) (Church of Ireland)

The Anglican Church of Australia developed Another Order of Service for Prayer and the Hearing of God’s Word, which was published in An Australian Prayer Book (1978) as an alternative to Morning or Evening Prayer. The Anglican Church of Australia also developed A Service of Praise, Prayer, and Proclamation, which was published in A Prayer Book for Australia (1995) as an additional alternative to Morning and Evening Prayer. The Diocese of Sydney’s Sunday Services (2001) and Common Prayer (2011), an updated version of Sunday Services, both contain three orders of service for A Service of Praise, Prayer, and Proclamation.

In North America the Anglican Church of Canada developed an alternative form of Morning and Evening Prayer, which was published in the Book of Alternative Services (1985). This form was much more flexible than the order for Morning and Evening Prayer in the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book, and lent itself to use in a variety of settings under a variety of circumstances. It has not seen the use that it might have, largely due to the expectation in the Anglican Church of Canada’s dwindling churches for weekly communion and the loyalty of older Canadian Anglicans to the 1962 orders for Morning and Evening Prayer.

In the Episcopal Church, the 1979 Prayer Book, while providing An Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist, sometimes known as “Rite III,” which might be used under special circumstances, changed the rubrics of the orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, making them unsuitable as regular services on Sunday. The 1979 Prayer Book does permit the use of the Liturgy of the Word as a separate service. To my knowledge few congregations have taken advantage of this option. The 1979 Prayer Book also provided an alternative form of evening prayer in the Order of Worship for the Evening, based upon the ancient Cathedral office of vespers. Again to my knowledge few congregations have put this form to good use.

3. Anglican worship is congregational. It is shared in by the congregation. It is not the exclusive domain of the clergy. While the services of the earlier Prayer Books are not quite as congregational as those of more recent service books, they are far more congregational than the pre-Reformation medieval Latin Mass, in which the congregation said their own private prayers while the priest said Mass. They are also more congregational than the services of the Westminster Public Directory of Worship, in which the role of congregation was to a large extent limited to the singing of metrical Psalms.

The trend in recent times has been to give the congregation a greater role in services of corporate worship. The rubrics of more recent service books permit the people to join in prayers and other liturgical texts formerly reserved to the officiating minister or another minister. The service that is seen in some Anglican churches, in which the officiating minister and one or two assistant ministers monopolize a large part of the service, is not true to the Anglican tradition of worship.

4. Anglican worship is participatory. Those present at an Anglican service of worship normally have a share in it. (An exception is Cathedral Evensong.) They may not only participate in the service as members of the congregation but also as liturgical ministers—reading the Lessons, leading the Prayers of the People, preaching the sermon or homily, gathering and presenting the offering, and at celebrations of the Holy Communion, assisting at the Holy Table and distributing the bread and the wine.

5. Anglican worship is open to the use of extemporary and preconceived prayer in services of corporate worship. As early as the sixteenth century we find Anglican ministers offering extemporary or preconceived prayers before and after the sermon. A preconceived prayer is a written prayer that may be composed for a particular Sunday or occasion or general use and is typically read from a manuscript. In some instances it may be recited from memory.

More recent service books make provision for times of “free prayer” in the orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, any alternative forms of morning and evening worship, the Litany, and the order for the administration of the Holy Communion. During such times members of the congregation may offer their spontaneous petitions and thanksgivings.

A development in Anglican worship, which I am including under this general characteristic of Anglican worship is the greater openness to more free flowing forms of worship and the exercise of the gifts of the Holy Spirit seen in some Anglican churches due to the influence of the charismatic movement. With this development has been a corresponding openness to the use of silence in worship, as well as the more exuberant and joyful singing of hymns and worship songs.

6. In Anglican worship everything is done in a proper and orderly way (1 Corinthians 14:40). Anglican worship at its best is dignified and reverent but also heart-felt and warm. Unfortunately in some Anglican churches the apostle Paul’s words “Let all things be done decently and in order” has been interpreted to mean with a rigid attention to form that stifles the worship of the heart. Paul’s admonition appears to have been directed at two groups in the church at Corinth—those who sought to monopolize the gatherings of the church with attention-seeking displays of their gifts and those who kept up a constant chatter during these gatherings. It is not an injunction to be excessively formal.

7. Anglican worship is edifying. It takes with due seriousness the apostle Paul’s words, “Everything must be of help to the church” (1 Corinthians 14:26, Good News Bible) Learning and encouragement are major goals (1 Corinthians 14:31). The reading and exposition of God’s Word is central. Most Anglican services of worship include two or three Lessons from the Scriptures and a sermon or homily. A sermon in an Anglican service of worship typically expounds a text of Scripture, usually but not exclusively from one of the Lessons. It unpacks the meaning of the text for the congregation and draw out its implications for their lives. It may take a topic from the Bible such as repentance and examine it, relating to the congregation what the Bible says on the subject and how it applies to them.

Among the reasons that Anglican worship is liturgical is that the texts of the liturgy—the Penitential Sentences, the Exhortations, the Offertory Sentences, the General Confession, the Occasional Prayers, the General Thanksgiving, the Prayer of Consecration, the Post-Communion Thanksgivings, and so on—serve to build up the church. This is why it is so important that the texts used in the liturgy not only come from Scripture or are agreeable to Scripture but also embody sound doctrine.

8. Anglican worship not only proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ to the ear but also to the eye and the other senses, through the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. For Anglicans the sacraments “are trustworthy witnesses and effectual signs of God’s grace and goodwill to us.” They are “effectual signs” in that they answer the purposes for which God intended them. By the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper “God works invisibly in us, both arousing and also strengthening and confirming our faith in him” (Article 28).

9. Anglican worship affirms that when two or three are gathered in the Lord’s name, he is in the midst of them. The Lord fulfills his promise to be with his followers always to the end of the age.

For Anglicans the Lord’s Supper is more than a “bare memorial.” Anglicans may disagree upon whether Christ is present in, under, or with the forms of bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper but they agree that he is present with his gathered people. They also understand that the New Testament teaches that the cup that is used in the Lord’s Supper and for which thanks is given to God: when they drink from it, they are sharing in the blood of Christ. And the bread they break: when they eat it, they are sharing in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).

While weekly communion has become the norm in some provinces of the Anglican Communion, monthly and even quarterly communion is the practice in other provinces. While frequent and regular communion is desirable, it is not essential to the spiritual growth of the Christian, much less to his salvation. It is no substitute for faith in Jesus Christ. Those in whom a vital faith is absent eat and drink the Lord’s Supper to their own condemnation (Article 29).

As The Order for the Visitation of the Sick in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer reminds us, if we truly repent of our sins, and unhesitatingly believe that Jesus Christ has suffered death on the cross for us, and shed his blood for our redemption, with all seriousness remembering the benefits we have by Christ’s death, and giving Christ heart-felt thanks for those benefits, we eat and drink the body and blood of our Savior Christ profitably to our souls’ health even though we do not receive the sacrament with our mouths.

10. Anglican worship recognizes that Christians have no need of any other mediator than Christ. The role of the officiating minister in an Anglican service of worship is to lead Christ’s gathered people in prayer and to ensure everything is done with decency and in order. He does not serve as an intermediary between Christ’s people and their Lord, representing them before Christ and Christ before them. When he prays the Collect of the Day, the General Intercession or the Prayer of Consecration, he prays as the tongue of the people. At the conclusion of the prayer, the people add their “Amen,” claiming the prayer as their own.

Obviously more can be written on the subject of the nature of Anglican worship. This brief article should give readers a general idea of how the Prayerbook and Common Worship Taskforce of the Anglican Church in North America might have gone about answering the question they posed.

If the taskforce had, on the other hand, given a straightforward answer to that question, it might have revealed more about their views on a number of issues than they cared to reveal. It might have shown that they hold positions that are even more at odds with authentic historic Anglicanism than the positions that they do articulate. It might have put the College of Bishops in the position of having to reject the report even though members of that body shared the taskforce’s views because the report disclosed how far their views were from authentic historic Anglicanism. Otherwise, the report might have eventually caused embarrassment to the College of Bishops. As it is, their approval of the report reflects poorly upon the bishops of the Anglican Church in North America. However, since the decision has not produced a loud outcry, they are not likely to reconsider it.

The Anglican Church in North America is like a house being built by incompetent contractors and inexperienced, unskilled workers on a cracking, shifting foundation with substandard materials. It is only a matter of time before the poor workmanship is exposed—a wall collapses or the roof falls in. Then folks will be rushing about, demanding to know, “Where were the building inspectors when the house was built? Where were the owners?” To which there is only one reply, “You are the building inspectors! You are the owners! You are the ones who let it happen!!”