InterVarsity Press’s new 1662 Book of Common Prayer, International Edition surely made it smoothly through all the copyrighting wrangles, but it’s not the first book I have used that merits the title. In the country church where I was first a rector, one of my congregants was a scion of a venerable clerical family of the Old Dominion. It was a parish anniversary, and we were planning a historical service. He told me he had just what I needed.
Before the service John presented me with a worn leatherbound folio, handed down from a remote ancestor, a patriot rector of a parish that was then on the edge of the frontier. The 18th-century priest had carefully worked his way through the pages with a quill pen, striking out the name of the king, making “alterations in the Liturgy which became necessary in the prayers for our Civil Rulers, in Consequence of the Revolution,” as the preface to the first American prayer book would explain a decade or so later.
That 1789 book was, in comparison with its successors, a deeply conservative text. In its general structure and presentation, it hewed closely to the 1662 original, offering careful proof of its claim “that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or further than local circumstances require.” Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment