By Robin G. Jordan
The rites and services that the Prayer Book and Common
Liturgy Task Force has produced are not outward-focused The needs of the
congregations on the North American mission field appear to have been the last
consideration if these needs were given any consideration at all.
The rites and services lack the kind of flexibility that is
necessary on the twenty-first century North American mission field. They
greatly handicap ACNA churches in the area of worship, increasing the
likelihood that these churches will not be good matches with their part of the
mission field. They limit a congregation’s ability to tailor its worship to its
particular circumstances—such as the musical resources that are available to
the congregation, the setting in which it is worshiping, the culture of the
region in which it is located, and the population segment at which its ministry
is targeted. Churches that are mismatched with their community do not grow.
When its member churches do not grow, a denomination does not grow.
The trial services of Morning and Evening Prayer in Texts
for Common Prayer are modeled on the daily offices in the 1979 Prayer
Book. Despite their use of contemporary language, larger selection of
canticles, and permission to substitute metrical canticles in place of the
prose ones and hymns in place of the canticles, the 1979 services of Morning
and Evening Prayer are far less suited for use as the principal service on
Sundays than the 1928 services. This is attributable to the 1979 Prayer Book’s
emphasis upon the celebration of Holy Communion as the central act of worship
on Sundays and other times.
Other recent Anglican service books like the 1985 Canadian
Book of Alternative Services have made the services of Morning and Evening
Prayer more adaptable to local conditions and more useful to small
congregations without clergy as the main Sunday service. As well as providing a
larger selection of canticles and allowing the use of metrical canticles in
place of the prose ones and hymns in place of the canticles, these service
books permit the substitution of the litany or some other form of general
intercession in place of the Suffrages and the Collects, rather than requiring
their addition to the prayers. In this way these service books eliminate
unnecessary redundant elements that lengthen the service without enhancing the
worship experience.
The more recent Anglican service books make provision for
alternative forms of morning and evening worship, supplying patterns of
worship, liturgical texts, and guidelines for their use. They recognize that
the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion may not meet the
worship needs of a particular congregation. Texts
for Common Prayer makes no such provision.
The more recent Anglican service books also permit the use
of the liturgy of the Word in the service of Holy Communion as a separate
service, a provision that is found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and all the
American Prayer Books through the 1979 Prayer Book but not Texts
for Common Prayer. This allows a congregation to use a familiar liturgy in
the absence of a priest, as well as provides another useful addition to its
armory of worship resources.
The trial services of Holy Communion in Texts
for Common Prayer are oriented to the past, not the present. They,
like the other rites and services that the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task
Force has produced, reflect the particular liturgical preferences and
preoccupations of those who drafted them. They make idols of the 1549 Prayer
Book, the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer Book, the 1928 Prayer Book, and the Anglican
Missal and its variations, the Anglican Service Book, the English
Missal, and A Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion.
The 1549 Prayer Book was only partially-reformed and does
not reflect Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s mature thinking. It was intended to
help the English Church make the transition from the unreformed Catholic Latin
service books to a reformed Anglican vernacular liturgy.
The 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer Book was a throwback to
the 1549 Prayer Book and incorporated a number of the doctrines and practices
peculiar to the Usager party, which formed a small minority of the Scottish
Non-Jurors. It was the work of two superannuated bishops who outlived their
rivals in the Non-Usager party.
The 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer Book and the Scottish
liturgies modeled on it were notorious for putting congregations to sleep due
to their length and prolixity. These were eighteenth and nineteenth century
congregations accustomed to much longer services than twenty-first century
congregations.
The 1928 Prayer Book introduced a number of radical changes
in the American Prayer Book. A number of these changes were introduced
under the guise of enrichments to the worship of the Episcopal Church. The
changes that were introduced would remove American Prayer Book even further
from the classic Anglican Prayer Book in its doctrine and its liturgical
usages.
The Anglican Missal and its variation provide
liturgical texts, rites, and ceremonies drawn from the Roman Rite. The use of
these books permits a priest to expand the unreformed Catholic context in which
the liturgies of The Book of Common Prayer and other related service books are
used.
Both the Long and Short Forms of the trial services of Holy
Communion are lengthy and prolix. The Short Form is almost as lengthy and drawn
out as the Long Form. Its Eucharistic Prayer is shorter and the rite offers no
choice in Post-Communion Prayers. Otherwise,it is identical to the Long Form.
The two forms are not designed for congregations in the early part of the
twenty-first century. Even congregations in the opening decades of the
twentieth century would have experienced them as cumbersome and tedious.
Neither rite is suitable for a home or parish hall
Eucharist, important pre-requisites of a service of Holy Communion intended for
the North American mission field. If a rite works well in these informal
setting, it will work well in the entire range of non-traditional settings in
which ACNA congregations can expect to worship for the foreseeable future.
Members of the College of Bishops have voiced a preference
for the shorter Eucharistic Prayer in the Short Form of the two rites. This is
a tacit admission that the Eucharistic Prayer of the Long Form is too long and
prolix. The rubrics of Texts
for Common Prayer, however, require the use of the Long Form on Sundays and
festivals. The Short Form may be used only on weekdays—at daily celebrations of
Mass. The latter is a reflection not only of the unreformed Catholic
orientation of the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force but also its
disconnection from the North American mission field. It presumes that all ACNA
churches have facilities in which they can have daily Mass celebrations.
The rubrics of Texts
for Common Prayer require the use of liturgical elements whose use
almost all of the more recent Anglican service books make optional. Alternative
texts and other optional liturgical elements that are best placed in a separate
section of supplemental texts after each rite are also printed in the rites.
When alternative texts and other optional liturgical elements are printed in
the rite itself, experience has show that the service leader will tend to use
the first of the alternative texts and in some instances all of them! They will
also tend to use all of the optional elements, rather than a selection of them.
The result is the whole purpose of providing alternative texts and other
optional elements is defeated.
In case of texts like the Gloria, the Creeds, the General
Confession, the Absolution or Declaration of Forgiveness, the Comfortable
Words, the Prayer of Humble Access, and the Lord’s Prayer the rubrics of these
Anglican service books make provision for their omission, as well as their use
at other points in the service. The Gloria or some other song of praise or even
a hymn echoing themes from the Gloria may be used at the beginning of the
service, before the Gospel reading, or after the Post-Communion Prayer(s), or
omitted altogether.
The Nicene Creed was not introduced into the liturgy in the
Western Church until the third Council of Toledo in 589. It took several
centuries for its use to spread throughout the Western Church. It was as late
as the eleventh century before Rome accepted the Nicene Creed as part of the
Eucharist. Rome would limit its use to Sundays and certain feasts. The American
Prayer Books through the 1928 Prayer Book permitted the substitution of the
Apostles’ Creed for the Nicene Creed. In the more recent Anglican service books
the Nicene Creed may be said before or after the Sermon, replaced by the
Apostles’ Creed, or omitted altogether.
In the more recent Anglican service books the penitential
rite—invitation to Confession, Confession of Sin, Absolution (or Declaration of
Forgiveness), and optional Comfortable Words (or Words of Assurance) may be
used at the beginning of the service or omitted altogether.
The Prayer of Humble Access was introduced into the liturgy
in the English Church with the Order of Communion of 1548. In the more recent
Anglican service books its use is optional, and it may be placed after the
Absolution and the Comfortable Words (if used) and before the offertory or the
preparation of the table. A number of these service books provide alternative texts.
In the more recent Anglican service books the Lord’s Prayer
may be used after the Prayers of the People, after the Fraction (or the
Eucharistic Prayer if the Fraction occurs in the prayer itself), or before the
Post-Communion Prayer(s).
A large number of Anglican service books are available to
the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force and with them a wealthy of
liturgical material. However, the task force chose to turn to a small number of
older books containing liturgies beloved by traditionalist Anglo-Catholics.
This choice as previously noted reflects the particular liturgical preferences
and preoccupations of the task force.
The Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force is working at
cross-purposes to those seeking to plant new congregations, expand the Anglican
Church in North America’s population base, and ensure its future growth. This
may sound harsh to some readers but the Provincial Council needs to thank the
present Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force for its work, shelve Texts
for Common Prayer and the proposed rites for Admission of Catechumens,
Baptism, and Confirmation, dissolve the task force, and begin anew. It could
start by forming a panel to study what congregations need in the way of worship
resources to reach and engage the unchurched population in the United States
and Canada. The Anglican Church in North America needs a liturgy and a Prayer
Book that is outward-looking, not one that caters to special interest groups in
the ACNA.
If the Provincial Council adopts an expanded version of Texts
for Common Prayer as the official Prayer Book of the Anglican Church
in North America, the denomination may be able to muddle along the best it can.
However, the ACNA will never realize its full potential. Some ACNA
congregations may grow. By and large the growth of most ACNA congregations will
be stunted.
It would be interesting to conduct ten to fifteen years from
now a study of ACNA congregations that are growing. Two questions should be
addressed in that study among others. Are growing ACNA congregations those that
are slavishly using an expanded version of Texts
for Common Prayer? Or are they the congregations that have for a large part
shelved that book and developed patterns of worship of their own? While I could
be wrong, based upon what is and is not working elsewhere, I suspect that it
will be the second group of congregations that are enjoying growth.
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