A Prayer Book for Whom? The Challenges of a Common Liturgy—Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

“Common Liturgy” is a term with multiple meanings. It can refer to the collection of rites and services typically found in a modern Anglican service book. It can also just refer to a particular liturgy—the service that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer refers to as “The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion” or simply “The Communion.”

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “common” as “belonging to or shared by two or more individuals or groups.” It defines “liturgy” as “a fixed set of ceremonies, words, etc., that are used during public worship in a religion,” “ eucharistic rite,” “or “ a rite or body of rites prescribed for public worship” The English word “liturgy” is a conflation of two Greek words and literally means “the work of the people.” It related to English word “laity,” which is derived from one of these Greek words—laos.

Among the implications of these definitions of the term “common liturgy” is that it must, whether a rite or body of rites, be owned and accepted by the entire denomination. It cannot be a rite or body of rites preferred by one ecclesiastical party in the denomination, embodying its theology, and imposed upon the other groups in the denomination. In that case, while it may be the official liturgy of the denomination, it is by no means the common liturgy of the denomination. It must enjoy widespread ownership and acceptance.

This challenge is one of several major challenges that face a working group commissioned to develop rites and services for a denomination. It is also one of the reasons that such a working group should include representatives from all schools of thought and interested groups in the denomination and separate panels representing each such school and group should be established to review each draft, provide feedback, propose changes, and even demand a new draft.

The ideas of denominational leaders for a particular rite or service should not be given preference over any other ideas. Additional safeguards should be implemented to keep any one group or individual from unduly influencing the process for developing rites and services for the denomination.

One of the weaknesses of the ACNA process for developing a liturgy and a Prayer Book is that the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force is too willing to incorporate the suggestions of individual bishops which in all likelihood represent the personal preferences of the bishop in question and do not take into consideration how these suggested changes affect the doctrine of the rite or the rite’s usability on the North American mission field.

The development of a common liturgy can be even more challenging when the schools of thought in the denomination hold sharply divergent views on key issues such as the number of sacraments and the presence of Christ in the eucharistic species.

When faced with this particular challenge, a basic approach is to develop a rite or rites that are plain vanilla. Each rite is the simplest, most basic version of the rite possible—no adornments, no special features.

Texts or wording that are controversial or have historically divided members of the denomination or the global community of churches of which it is part are avoided. Texts or wording that are deliberately ambivalent and open to multiple interpretations may be used in their place.

Any embellishments are not printed in the rite itself but in a section at the end of the rite and are purely optional. Additional notes for the conduct of the rite are printed in this section.

It may also be necessary to provide alternate texts and alternate rites, give clergy permission to make minor alterations in the rites and services, and even to permit judicatories to develop their own rites and services. The Anglican Church of Australia has adopted all three approaches.

But is the result a common liturgy? In reality it may be the closest thing to a common liturgy that the Anglican Church of Australia in its particular circumstances can achieve. Indeed the Anglican Church of Australia has three common liturgies—The Book of Common Prayer (1662), An Australian Prayer Book (1978), and A Prayer Book for Australia (1995). The last two books are authorized for use together with the Prayer Book. The Anglican Church of Australia is a loose federation of formerly independent dioceses with separate ties to the Church of England. (The constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia would have been a good model for the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America.)

Of the 23 dioceses forming the Anglican Church of Australia’s five province and one extraterritorial diocese, only two—Ballarat and Sydney—have produced liturgies of their own. The Ballarat liturgy was produced during the episcopate of Anglo-Catholic Bishop David Silk who retired in 2003. Silk did not consider the three books Catholic enough. In 2010 Silk announced his intention to convert to Roman Catholicism. I was not able to ascertain whether Ballarat has continued to use this liturgy since Silk’s retirement.

Sydney adopted Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel Shaped Gatherings, the latest revision of its liturgy in 2012. Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel Shaped Gatherings replaced Sunday Services: A Contemporary Liturgical Resource, adopted in 2001. Sydney’s Diocesan Doctrinal Commission took issue with the doctrine of A Prayer Book for Australia, resulting in the development of Sunday Services: A Contemporary Liturgical Resource.

How the Anglican Church of Australia has sought to meet the need for a common liturgy in that church is preferable to what the Anglican Church in North America is attempting to do—impose Procrustean standards on the worship of the churches in the denomination, forcing it into the same mold both liturgically and doctrinally irrespective of the particular circumstances of a church or its theological leanings.

Another challenge facing a working group tasked with developing a common liturgy for a denomination is what material it should use from existing service books and which books. Top considerations in the choice of this material should be the elegance of its language, its biblical orthodox and theological soundness, its suitability for twenty-first century congregations and twenty-first century contexts, and the need to strike a balance between the old and the new, the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Evaluations of this material should be weighed against the evaluators’ past history and their liturgical and doctrinal proclivities evidenced in this history. In other words, the evaluation of the material should itself be evaluated. Too often criticism of a particular liturgy or a particular liturgical element boils down to it not fitting the critic’s notions of an ideal liturgy or liturgical element.

A case in point may be Arnold Klukas’ “Contemporary Anglican Prayer Books 1928-2009,” in which he examines the divergence of the more recent Anglican service books from “classical standards.” Klukas is a Professor of Liturgy at Nashotah House and a member of the ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force. From what I gather he has played a leading role in the rites and services that task force has drafted to date. An article published in 2001 revealed that he displayed a marked preference for the older liturgies in his parish ministry. This preference may color his evaluation of more recent Anglican service books and their contents.

What is noticeable about the rites and services that the ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force has so far produced is they do not appear to stray far from the source books listed in “The Unmaking of the Classical Anglican Prayer Book.” The ordinal, for example, is an adaptation of the 1928 Ordinal, adopting rubrics from the 1549 Ordinal and features from the 1979 Ordinal. They appear to do very little borrowing from the larger corpus of Anglican service books, old and new. One might say that they suffer from liturgical inbreeding.

The ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force has not attempted to integrate the rites and services of that denomination into the broader stream of Anglican liturgies. The task force has taken little advantage of the wealth of liturgical material produced in and outside of North America in the twentieth century and during the past fourteen years.

The rites and services that the ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force has so far produced are classifiable as representing a Anglo-Catholic offshoot of the American Prayer Book tradition but lacking the comprehensiveness of the 1789 and 1892 American Prayer Books, which permitted the omission of the signing of the cross on the forehead of the newly baptized and provided alternative wording at the laying on of hands in the ordination of a presbyter, modest concessions to evangelical sensibilities. Rather the task force has incorporated into these services and rites doctrine and liturgical usages historically associated with an advanced form of Anglo-Catholicism. The only thing missing is the invocation and veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints.

What is also noticeable about these rites and services is that they incorporate very little if any material from the Canadian Prayer Book tradition or the Reformed Episcopal Prayer Book tradition. Both traditions at one time displayed a strong evangelical influence. The Reformed Episcopal Church has no representative on the ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force and the Anglican Network in Canada’s representative is an Anglo-Catholic.

A third challenge that faces a working group entrusted with the development of a common liturgy for a denomination is the context in which the rite or body of rites will be used. The kind of service book that an older denomination with a large number of established churches and a small number of new churches will need will be entirely different from the kind of service book a young denomination with a small number of established churches and a large number of new churches will need.

In the twentieth century we saw the emergence of the house church movement and the formation of house church networks. In the twenty-first century we are seeing the emergence of the mobile church movement—"church in a box." New churches are not the only churches meeting in a wide-range of unconventional settings. Established churches are selling their buildings and renting facilities. They have found that becoming a mobile church has transformed their ministry. They have not only expanded their population base and seen corresponding increases in worship attendance, church membership, and giving but also have increased their impact upon the community.

The context of worship has changed dramatically from what it was in the mid-twentieth century. Yet the ACNA Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force is producing rites and services not for the twenty-first century Church but for the mid-twentieth century Church. Worship context does not appear to enter into its thinking. The task force is developing rites and services for a Church that is largely a product of its imagination.

Worship context, however, is a critical factor in the twenty-first century. Rising real estate values, a slow economy, and tighter zoning laws increase the likelihood that a large number of congregations may not own a building and worship in a conventional setting. These are the realities of the North American mission field. A number of congregations have bought or constructed buildings that they could not afford and have lost these buildings to bank foreclosure. The best some congregations can hope for is to rent a large house or storefront and modify it into a worship center provided their landlord permits such modification and they do not run afoul of local zoning laws.

In upcoming articles in this series we will look at how a working group commissioned with the development of a common liturgy for a denomination can meet this challenge and other challenges that it faces. 

An Australian Prayer Book (1978) is online in PDF format. Copyright information is available at Broughton Publishing.“Members of the Anglican Communion and churches of other denominations are welcome to make print or electronic copies of An Australian Prayer Book, in whole or in part for liturgical or church purposes, free of charge provided they are attentive to the integrity of the text, that copies are not made available for sale and that the source of the extract is appropriately acknowledged e.g. title and page number." A Prayer Book for Australia Full Edition (1995) is available from Australian Church Resources. Amazon no longer stocks the soft-cover edition. Copyright information is also available from Broughton Publishing.

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