ACNA's Prayer Book 2019: A Revisionist Prayer Book

By Robin G. Jordan

Revisionism  has found fertile ground in the North America Anglican Church for the past 185 odd years. While it has flourished in a number of forms, its two primary forms have been liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism. These two theological streams have not only flowed separately from each other but they have also flowed together. The early twentieth century saw the emergence of what Les Fairfield, retired professor of Church history at Trinity School for Ministry, describes as Catholic Modernism, a fusion of liberal and unreformed Catholic theology. It is the dominant form of liberalism in the Episcopal Church.

In the second half of the twentieth century emerged what may be described as broad Catholic Revivalism. Influenced by the ecumenical and liturgical movements of the mid-twentieth century and the worship renewal movement of the last 20 odd years, its adherents seek to revive what they believe are the practices of the Church before the East-West schism of the eleventh century out of the belief that the revival of these practices will enrich the worship of the Anglican Church and foster church unity. They have similar interests to the English and Scottish Non-Jurors who broke with the Anglican Church in the eighteenth century and developed their own distinctive theology and practices. The Non-Jurors were influenced by the writings of the early Church fathers and the practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Traditional Anglo-Catholicism has its origins in the nineteenth century Oxford and Ritualist movements. It has been strongly influenced by late Medieval and post-Tridentian Catholic doctrine and practice. Although its adherents claim to represent a longstanding tradition in the Anglican Church, both nineteenth century and more recent scholarship does not support this claim.

While the claims of the adherents of these various forms of revisionism have been repeatedly debunked, these claims continue to circulate because writers who have not investigated the truth of the claims but have accepted them at face-value keep repeating the claims. Indeed the persistence of these claims is proof of what very propagandist knows: If a lie or half-truth is repeated often enough, it will take on a life of its own.

A false belief that has been around for a long time and has gained wide acceptance does not morph into a truth. It is still a false belief. It is testimony to the willingness of people to belief a lie over the truth, even when they know that the lie is untrue.

These forms of revisionism have not only sown confusion regarding the character of the Anglican Church but also they have eroded its doctrinal foundation. The Anglican Church’s doctrinal foundation has been primarily the Holy Scriptures and secondarily the historic Anglican formularies—the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the Forms of Making, Ordering, and Consecrating Deacons, Priests, and Bishops of 1661, and the Books of Homilies of 1547, 1562, and 1571. The Thirty-Nine Articles recognize and affirm the two Books of Homilies as containing “a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and as “necessary for these times.” They expound the reformed doctrines of the Anglican Church in greater depth and detail than in the Thirty-Nine Articles.

The historic Anglican formularies derive their authority from the Holy Scriptures and are authoritative where they agree with the Holy Scriptures. They are subject to the Holy Scriptures and in their interpretation the teaching of the Holy Scriptures as well as historical context and authorial intent must be given full weight.

With the 1559 Book of Common Prayer and the 1559 Ordinal, the Thirty-Nine Articles form the doctrinal core of the Elizabethan Settlement which would shape historic Anglicanism. The 1559 Prayer Book is essentially the 1552 Prayer Book, which represents Archbishop Cranmer’s mature thinking, and not the 1549 Prayer Book. Only a few revisions were made in the 1559 Prayer Book and they were conservative ones. The revisions did not make the Prayer Book more Catholic as Anglo-Catholics are wont to claim nor did they make the book less Protestant. The 1559 Prayer Book was the prayer book of the reformed Anglican Church for almost a hundred years. It survives in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is essentially the 1559 Prayer Book with some minor alterations and additions.

The shape that the Elizabethan Settlement gave to historic Anglicanism is Protestant and Reformed. The Reformed theology of historic Anglicanism is close to the early Reformed theology of the Swiss city states and southern Germany. Calvinism has also been a significant influence upon historic Anglicanism.

Among the distinguishing characteristics of historic Anglicanism is its belief in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God and the sole rule of faith and practice. It does not require belief in any doctrine that cannot be found in Scripture or proved by Scripture. It recognizes and affirms the teaching of the three historic creeds and the first four ecumenical councils. Historic Anglicanism recognizes only two sacraments as ordained by God—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It views the Lord’s Supper not as a sacrifice but as a meal commemorating a sacrifice. It believes that Christ is present in the ordinance but not in the bread and wine. It rejects the medieval Catholic sacramental system as incompatible with the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Historic Anglicanism takes the position that God has not ordained any particular form of church polity. It retains episcopacy on the basis that it is “ancient and allowable” and not divinely-instituted.

While The Book of Common Prayer 2019 incorporates textual material from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, it is not an Anglican by any stretch of the imagination. It is a revisionist prayer book. The primary influence in the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 is traditional Anglo-Catholicism. A secondary influence is broad Catholic Revivalism but it takes a backseat to traditional Anglo-Catholicism. The book’s sacramental theology is Anglo-Catholic. Its theology of apostolic succession and ordained ministry is Anglo-Catholic. It also displays the Anglo-Catholic traditionalist’s penchant for rites and services that are modeled on the late medieval and later Catholic liturgies and which emphasize the role of bishops and priests as dispensers of sacramental grace. Its view of the clergy stands in sharp contrast to that of historic Anglicanism which sees the clergy, including bishops, as primarily ministers of God’s Word and their administration of the sacraments as dependent upon the Word.

Archbishop Duncan has described The Book of Common Prayer 2019 in these words:

The Book of Common Prayer is the Bible arranged for worship. The 2019 edition takes what was good from the modern liturgical renewal and also recovers what had been lost from the tradition.

Archbishop Duncan’s description of The Book of Common Prayer 2019 does not tell the whole story. A prayer book can be described only as “the Bible arranged for worship” if its use of passages of Scripture are consistent with their use in the Bible and its contents are agreeable to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. The ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 falls short in both areas.

The Book of Common Prayer 2019 revives the medieval Catholic sacramental system and the doctrine and practices associated with that system. The English Reformers rejected the medieval Catholic sacramental system on solid Scriptural grounds in the sixteenth century. It was irreconcilable with what the New Testament taught. It particularly conflicted with the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

Both Archbishop Duncan and Archbishop Beach have made conflicting statements about The Book of Common Prayer 2019. On one hand they claim that the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 stands in continuity with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. On the other hand they claim that is a part of a global reassessment of the 1662 Prayer Book. What they do not mention is that the 2008 Global Anglican Future Conference affirms the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. “While we should not be expecting uniformity of liturgy across the Anglican Communion,” GAFCON’s Theological Resource Group states in Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, “we should look for a common theological basis [emphasis added]. It further states:

The 1662 Prayer Book provides a standard by which other liturgies may be tested and measured. One key principle of revision is that the new liturgies must be seen to be in continuity with the Book of Common Prayer.

This means that the new liturgies should have more than a superficial resemblance to 1662 Book of Common Prayer. They should embody its doctrine.

GAFCON’s Theological resource Group goes onto to state:

A second key principle of revision should be that of mutual accountability within the Anglican Communion. The further removed a proposed liturgy may be from the 1662 Prayer Book, the more important it is that it should be subject to widespread evaluation throughout the Communion.

While the ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force cannibalized texts from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, these texts were incorporated largely for the sake of appearance. Any resemblance that The Book of Common Prayer 2019 has to the classical Anglican Prayer Book is cosmetic.

Doctrinally The Book of Common Prayer 2019 bears no resemblance to the 1662 Prayer Book. As I noted earlier, the 1662 Prayer Book is a conservative revision of the 1559 Prayer Book, which is essentially the 1552 Prayer Book. The doctrine of the ACNA's Prayer Book 2019 is a far cry from the doctrine of the 1552 Prayer Book and its 1662 revision. The 1552 Prayer Book is an embodiment of Reformed Protestant theology. The Book of Common Prayer 2019 is an embodiment of unreformed Catholic doctrine, doctrine which the English Reformers, including Archbishop Cranmer, rejected as repugnant to the Word of God.

In the Preface to The Book of Common Prayer 2019 the two Archbishops make this claim:

The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is indisputably true to Cranmer’s originating vision of a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people, and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice.

Despite the claim of the two Archbishops the services of The Book of Common Prayer 2019 lack the kind of flexibility that permits their adaptation to a wide variety of circumstances and situations. This kind of flexibility is a must on the twenty-first century North American mission field. It enables worship planners to tailor the worship of the local church to its particular circumstances and situation. The structure of the Holy Eucharist in the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 is far too rigid. The number of forms for the prayers of the people and the number of eucharistic prayers are quite limited. The service makes no provision for occasions when a congregation needs a simpler entrance rite, a shorter form for the prayers of the people, or a shorter eucharistic prayer. This omission will be felt keenly by small congregations that meet in non-traditional worship settings and by congregations that have a large number of young children and/or adults with limited reading skills. The rigidity of the structure of the Holy Eucharist in The Book of Common Prayer 2019 makes little room for diversity in style of music and worship.

The Book of Common Prayer 2019 also makes no provision for occasions when the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion do not meet the needs of the local church. It has nothing that is equivalent of the Service of Word that is found in most of the more recent Anglican and Lutheran service books. It makes no provision for a lay reader to read all that is appointed through the prayers of the people in the Holy Eucharist in the absence of a priest or deacon. While it permits administration of Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament, it restricts such administration to deacons, further evidence of the decided Anglo-Catholic traditionalist bias of the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019. It makes no provision for congregations that do not have a deacon. Where this practice is permitted in a number of Anglican provinces, an authorized lay eucharistic minister may administer Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament in the absence of deacon.

A number of the services could have been made much shorter and much simpler. The only apparent reason for their length and elaborateness appears to have been to emphasize the role of the bishop or priest as a dispenser of sacramental grace.

In Its bright red cover with a Jerusalem cross stamped on the front The Book of Common Prayer 2019 resembles a missal more than a prayer book. Due to its unreformed Catholic doctrine and practices The Anglican Missal 2019 might be a more appropriate title for the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019.

Unless the ACNA’s Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly at last week’s meeting enacted a canon authorizing the use of The Book of Common Prayer 2019, the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 has no official standing in the Anglican Church in North America, even though it may have endorsement of the ACNA’s College of Bishops. Under the existing provisions of the ACNA’s constitution and canons the College of Bishops does not have the authority to authorize an official prayer book for the province.

Under the same provisions it is well within the authority of the Provincial Council and the Provincial Assembly to withhold authorization of the use of The Book of Common Prayer 2019 and to commission a new task force to prepare a service book that conforms more closely to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and to the doctrinal and worship principles of the historic Anglican formularies and which more adequately meets the needs of congregations on the twenty-first century North America mission field. Individual bishops may prohibit the use of the ACNA’s Prayer Book 2019 in their dioceses on the grounds that is doctrine and practices do not conform to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures.

The ACNA’s College of Bishops’ endorsement of a revisionist prayer book and its uncanonical introduction of the book as the official prayer book of the province is evidence of the continuing need for a Biblically faith, authentically Anglican, missionary province in North America. It is quite clear that, while the Anglican Church in North America has broken with one form of revisionism—liberalism, the ACNA has not broken with another form of revisionism—Anglo-Catholicism. Like the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church, the ACNA is on a path that leads away from authentic historic Anglicanism. What is greatly needed in North America is a province that is fully committed to biblical Christianity, authentic historic Anglicanism, and the furtherance of the gospel. Without such a province North America will be bereft of a genuine Anglican presence and witness.

Image Credit: Anglican Pastor