'The Book of Common Prayer-- Heart of the Anglican Way'

On March 7, 1549, there came from a printing press in London "a "book, "which many "Anglicans still use each day in "many "languages for the daily, common prayer.Its full title was, The Book of The Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church after the Use of the Church of England. On Whit-Sunday of that same year this Prayer Book was in general use throughout England.

Instead of using Latin for The Common Prayer, the Church of England now used "the vulgar tongue."

The Book of [the] Common Prayer provides the objective form of the public (and, by extension and example, the private) worship of this part of Christ's Church. In doing so, it also provides the basic objective forms of Anglican doctrine and The Book of [the] Common Prayer became and is an Anglican Formulary.

It maintains those things in common that make or form both the Anglican "community" (the horizontal relation among persons claiming to be Anglican) and the Anglican "communion" (the supernatural or "vertical" relation of the members of the Church to the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Ghost).Since human beings cannot read minds, but still require unity to achieve their social and divine vocations, a fixed objective standard of doctrine, discipline, and worship is necessary for unity in the Anglican Way.

In America the last authentic edition of this hallowed Book is The Book of [the] Common Prayer (1928). (Note that from 1552 the second definite article was dropped in the title.) To say this is confusing to many Anglicans and Episcopalians because a new kind of prayer book, one similar to those called A Book of Alternative Services elsewhere in the Anglican world, was adopted by the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. in 1976/79 and falsely called The Book of Common Prayer (1979).

Instead of retaining as its primary prayer book the received, classic Book of Common Prayer used in the American colonies and then in the independent United States of America (in the editions of 1662/1789/1892/1928), and instead of also producing for use alongside it (and within its doctrinal tradition) A Book of Alternative Services, the Episcopal Church did produce a new book of varied rites and forms, and then proceeded to call it by the name of the classic Book. To add insult to injury it then set aside the classic Book. No other jurisdiction of the Anglican Communion did this. As with the ordination of women in the 1970's, ECUSA blasted a new trail in liturgy with little or no regard for the tradition of the Anglican Way.

Since 1979 most bishops, including so-called orthodox bishops, have been very active trying to extinguish the use of the classic BCP in the ECUSA. And also since 1979 no Episcopal seminary has used the classic BCP for its worship. Thus the 1789/1892/1928 American B.C.P. is virtually unknown to thousands of priests today. They merely have prejudices against it, picked up in their classes on liturgy. Further, many Anglo-Catholics have made (false) claims that the 1979 prayer book is a real catholic book and evangelicals have made (questionable) claims that its modern English and short services make it a better evangelistic tool than the classic BCP.

By making this new book with a false title into its only Prayer Book, the ECUSA gave to this book (along with the new Ordinal printed within it) the status of a Formulary. In the Episcopal Church before the 1970's the Formularies were identical to those of the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Canada the classic B.C.P., the Ordinal and the Thirty-Nine Articles with the inherited Canon Law. In the 1970's the ECUSA set aside these and created two new ones, the Prayer Book and the Ordinal of 1979, and gave to its revised canon law a primary authority. The Thirty-Nine Articles are now merely a "historical document."

The General Convention did not have the authority to replace The Book of Common Prayer with an entirely different book of its own composition. The arrangement that allowed the United States to become a sister church in communion with the Church of England as recounted in the Preface to the 1789 BCP precludes any such change. The communion of the Church of England with the Church in the United States depends on the objective fact that their editions of The Book of Common Prayer are (or were) equivalent in doctrine, discipline, and worship; and that they were sufficient Formularies to allow them to be in communion on an objective spiritual basis (over and above a political agreement to be so connected).The first edition of the English Formulary was labeled "The Book OF the Common Prayer," indicating that it was not, even then, a new composition, but a rendering into English of the "common prayer" of the undivided Church, according to the use of the Church of England. This same claim lies behind the American editions of 1789, 1892, and 1928.

The 1979 book, however, makes the claim that the church in the United States is entitled not only to its own "use," but to a separate doctrine, discipline, and worship of its own choosing and devising. If the officials of the Anglican Communion had paid more attention to history and to truth than to politics and finance, they would have been forced to treat the adoption of the 1979 prayer book and ordinal as a breach in communion.

The General Convention and the House of Bishops have a three-fold obligation to maintain the Anglican Formularies: first, to God; second, to the member churches of the Anglican Communion; and third, to the people of the Church. The Convention and Bishops have no authority to abrogate these obligations. When they do so, as they have done with the 1979 book [BCP and Ordinal], the Episcopal Church ceases to be a coherent church, a coherent member of the Anglican Communion; it surrenders pastoral authority over the members of the Church. Without form, a general chaos prevails, as should be apparent from the subsequent results of the adoption of 1979.

If a husband announced to his wife that his previous vows were now mutable, and that he had decided to re-define the terms of their marriage, and to open it up to new expressions and new participants, our sympathy would be on the side of the abused and essentially discarded wife. Perhaps it is time that we had the same sympathy, and the same hunger for justice, for an abused Bride of Christ.

What is the way out of this situation?

It is very simple. Let bishops, priests, deacons and laity, let organizations and societies, let seminaries and colleges; and let dioceses and parishes which desire to recover the Anglican Way begin (a) to treat and use the 1979 prayer book as "An American Prayer Book" or "A Book of Alternative Services" and (b) restore the classic, received Book of Common Prayer for what it is a Formulary and a godly order for worship, doctrine and discipline.

In due time the canon law of a renewed ECUSA or a new North American Province of the Anglican Communion can be adjusted to take care of this return to sanity.