Before I begin my talk proper I should make three prefatory points. (And by the time I get through them my time will almost be up.) First, the only time I delivered a talk directly related to the title attached to it was the first academic conference I attended in April of 1995. Since then I have consistently surprised or offended my audiences with my thoughts on a topic related to but not bearing directly on the talk's original title. But that won't be a problem this evening: if you think about the title of this paper, "The Place of the Anglican Prayer Book Society in Canadian History." I can talk about almost anything, and as long as it touches in some way on something that has happened in Canada as of a minute ago, it's relevant-- at least as as my title is concerned. I shall certainly use examples from Canadian history to illustrate my points. but this presentation isn't strictly devoted to history; it is grounded very much in the present.
The second point I should make is that I am speaking to you as an outsider. I spent my childhood in a Pentecostal church From the age of twelve to twenty-six I attended a Southern Baptist church. And when, at the age of twenty-seven, I visited an Episcopalian church (in Redlands, California) for the first time, it was due more to the fact that the church building itself was beautiful— and that was what enticed me inside. It also happened to be near where I was staying for the weekend, so it was easy to get to of course, I was hooked on the Episcopal service immediately and it wasn't too long before my wife, Annemarie, and I were attending Trinity Episcopal Church in Redlands, California regularly. We were married in that church, and when we moved to Santa Rosa in northern California in 1993 we settled into an Episcopal Church there.
But even after three years of regular attendance at Episcopal churches neither of us felt a deep commitment to Episcopalianism, though we had come to appreciate liturgical services and the centrality of the Eucharist. The primary reason we never connected with Episcopalianism was that we knew the Episcopal church in the United States was a theological, political, and social mess, and though we had had the good fortune of finding two parishes where the priests seemed to believe in something (it wasn't always clear precisely what that something was), we knew that that would not be the case wherever we went.
So when we came to Ottawa in the Fall of 1995 we had no particular leaning towards Anglicanism. For a couple of months we attended a Catholic church in Quebec. Then we stumbled into a United Church in Ottawa and realized within the space of that one service that the United Church is in even worse shape than the American Episcopal one-- or at least it seemed so. And then we happened by St Alban's, and decided to go inside for the same reason I decided to enter that Episcopalian church in Redlands, California for the first time: the building itself struck us as beautiful.
Well, St Alban's is indeed a beautiful church, and Anne and I appreciated that. But what amazed us exceedingly was the first sermon we heard Father George Sinclair preach. He spoke about the Bible as if he really believed in it. He spoke about the Christian Gospel in clearly orthodox terms. Needless to say, Anne and I decided immediately that St Alban's would be our church. For here was what we had long hoped to find: a beautiful Anglican (Epsicopal) church, with a beautiful liturgy and a priest who obviously believed and proclaimed that Christ lived, died and rose again to save sinners.
But there was something else, and this is my third prefatory point. We both recognized that St Alban's service was beautiful but we had no clear sense as to why that was so, and that remained true until just a few weeks ago. Sure, we quickly learned to be proud of the fact that St Alban's was strictly a Prayer Book parish and, being thorough-going conservatives, we liked the idea that in standing with St Albans we were standing against a few of the wiles of this silly period in history. But that was simply that until a few weeks ago, when we attended an Anglican parish that uses the Book of Alternative Services. Relative to the Book of Common Prayer, with its marvelous language and its depth of theological and psychogical understanding, the BAS struck both of us as, to put it gently, shallow, boring, sometimes vulgar, and altogether too eager to pander to the easily-offended, spiritually obtuse sensibilities of this age.
We left that parish, full as it was with genuine believers, blessed as it was with a committed and devout minister and an obviously sweet community spirit, thanking God for St Alban's, for the Prayer Book and for the Prayer Book Society of Canada.
In spite of that revelation, however, I am still speaking to you as an outsider, for Anne and I will be leaving Canada soon (sometime between two months from now and this time next year), and simply knowing that prevents us, at least psychologically, from setting down deep roots here. But as an outsider I want to say that I think that the Prayer Book Society is an important institution. Indeed, I have an inkling that the future of the Anglican church in Canada and the extent to which the Prayer Book is truly appreciated in it are linked.
One might say that the Prayer Book is "just a book" and it can be replaced with other books. But surely the Prayer Book is much more than that. It is the repository of centuries of studied and prayerful reflection. But that of course, is precisely what sticks in many an Anglican's craw today. "Out with studied and prayerful reflection," many seem to be saying, "and in with my belly button, in with my feelings, in with my political agenda" and so on.
Which is to say that, in my view, the battle the Prayer Book Society of Canada is waging is a worthy one. The Prayer Book Society has many good reasons to press on in its mission. This evening I want to address two of those reasons. I want to give two reasons why I think the Prayer Book Society is important.
First, the Prayer Book Society is important because it is an organization that recognizes that Christians should know the Bible.
In light of the great importance of the Bible in Canada's history, this Society's defense of the Prayer Book --a book that is itself composed in large part of biblical texts woven beautifully together and is thoroughly reliant upon the Bible from cover to cover-- is a defense of the long-held Christian notion that the Bible should be the central text of our lives. As one who has read a bit of Canadian history, who has noticed that no Canadian historian has devoted much time to determining the extent to which the Bible has influenced the hearts and minds of Canadians, and who has recognized the grinding biblical illiteracy that prevails even among distinguished contemporary historians of Canada, I am convinced that this Society's stand for the Prayer Book, which is itself a stand for the Bible, is a very important one.
The Bible in Canadian History
Of course, we all recognize that the Bible has been a central source in the history of the United States. From the Puritans' claim that they had been called by Providence to establish a New Jerusalem in America to the rhetoric of such worthies as Herman Melville who wrote in 1849 that the American people comprised a new providentially blessed Israel, and from Abraham Lincoln's frequent use of biblical texts in his public discourse to Ronald Reagan's declaration that, still in the late-twentieth century, the United States was a "city on a hill." the Bible and its language pervades American public life. Long after Canadians and members of most other Western societies stopped reading their Bibles, or at least stopped talking publicly about what they read in them, debates over whether or not the Ten Commandments should or can, legally-speaking, be displayed in a public classroom still rage in the United States— most recently in Alabama. And in case our ears have become deaf to the invocations of the Deity and references to Jewish and Christian scripture that punctuate the political speeches of activists as disparate in their aims as Jesse Jackson and Pat Buchanan, President Clinton's unabashed and much-photographed weekly excursions to church -- Hillary in one arm, a thick, probably King James Version of the Bible in the other --remind us that the United States remains, or at least appears to remain, a Bible-soaked nation.
Of course, it isn't that most Americans still read the Bible. A recent survey revealed that only forty percent of Americans know which biblical figure delivered the Sermon on the Mount and only thirty percent of American teenagers can give an account of the traditional Easter story. So even were it true that, as the movie title has it, the Bible tells the "greatest story ever told," decidedly few Americans are reading it. Yet the notion that the United States, and particularly the old Southern Confederacy, remains the haunt of uncountable Bible-thumpers persists.
A perplexing thing is that while Americans continue to recognize, however dimly, the monumental influence of the Bible in their history, Canadians seem to have forgotten that its roots go deep in their own nation's soil as well. Of course, if we gave the idea some thought most of us would quickly recognize that this must be true. Certainly the generations of Canadians who have gone before us were, generally speaking, more familiar with the Bible than are this country's present generations-- and this in spite the higher illiteracy rates that prevailed among them. In the same way that those who were illiterate in the Middle Ages learned to "read" the Bible presented to them in sermons, stained glass windows, plays, paintings and sculptures, so did Canadians who could not read the Bible for themselves nevertheless pick up biblical stories and language Until recent decades, so to speak, the Bible filled the Canadian air.
Even a slight perusal of nineteenth and early twentieth century newspapers reveals that the way Canadians spoke, wrote, and described their world and aspirations was deeply shaped by the Bible. James Hogg Hunter of the lowly Peterborough Farm and Dairy, for instance, wrote in late 1918 of how he was not surprised that Germany and its allies had lost the Great War, for God himself had fought on England's side. "[T]hey that be with us are more than they that be with them," Hunter confidently wrote, echoing the words of the Old Testament prophet, Elisha.
Hunter was by no means unique in his application of biblical language and imagery to world events. Like the British, the French and most others involved in the war, the Germans no doubt quoted scriptures in defence of their own projects. Similarly, though in a much less serious vein, Canadians have waged political battles armed with biblical texts. One of the more humourous debates between Sir John A. Macdonald and his Liberal opponent Edward Blake was given to determining which of them better fit the description of the Book of Esther's conniving and murderous medo- Persian bureaucrat, Haman, and which more closely resembled the eminently wise, patient and loyal Hebrew public servant, Mordecai. Unfortunately, like so much in politics that important question was never resolved.
Meanwhile, as liberal French Canadian intellectuals in late-nineteenth century Quebec like Gonzalve Doutre of the Institut Canadien claimed, Moses-like, that civilized humankind was on the verge of crossing a new metaphorical Red Sea on the way to a promised land called human perfection, stem nationalists such as Monseigneur L.F.R. Lafleche drew parallels between the biblical story of Abraham's journey into Canaan and Jacques Cattier's voyage to what would become New France. "What Christian," Lafleche queried, "believing in the dogma of an all-wise Providence controlling every event on earth, could fail to be struck by the resemblance between Abraham's behaviour when he took possession of the land God promised his descendants, and that of Jacques Cartier as be took possession of this Canadian territory to which, through his king's mandate, the same Providence had guided his footsteps?" In Lafleche's view, the French Canadians had indeed been given a divine mission-- and this belief sustained a good number of French Canadians through many a trial through many a year.
Whatever the merits of Lafleche's theological surmisings, there is no doubt that at the European settling of what would eventually become Canada the Bible was there. When sick villagers at the future site of Montreal came to Cartier in search of physical cures, he read to them the opening verses of the Gospel of John and prayed that his God would breach the language barrier that separated him from the natives. Cartier's prayer was answered in ways that he might not have expected, for over the following centuries numerous Canadian missionaries and their native converts devoted themselves to translating the Bible or portions of it into languages spoken by Canada's natives.
In 1804 the Gospel of John was published in Mohawk, in 1810 into Labradorian Eskimo. The Western Plains Cree had the entire New Testament made available to them in 1859; in 1938 C.E. Whitaker, an Anglican, published his translation of the Gospel of Luke into Western Arctic Eskimo. Of course, the translators' first object was to convert natives to Christianity, but the publication of the scriptures into more than twenty native tongues also served to preserve in writing native languages that might eventually have vanished altogether As late as 1951 the British and Foreign Bible Society in Canada distributed 326 Bibles translated into Cree (Moose and Plains) and 27 in Ojibwa.
It was not only Canada's natives who benefited from the labours of those Canadians who sought to place the Bible in the hands of every one of their compatriots. When Scottish Highlanders were cleared off their land in the early-nineteenth century and the future of Scots Gaelic was consequently jeopardized, British North American believers made the scriptures in Gaelic translation available to Gaelic-speakers who settled to Nova Scotia and elsewhere in British North America. And so too did the Welsh, Serbians, Poles, Chinese, Arabs, Japanese, Finns and others of some twenty-eight linguistic groups receive copies of the Bible, with the text translated into their own language set aside English. So, just as the Bible was often the text of poor Canadian children who wanted to learn to read, so too was it the book through which numerous adult immigrants were first introduced to the English language.
But why the Bible? When in 1867 the Fathers of Confederation wanted to find an appropriate name for the new nation they had formed, why did they turn to Psalm 72:8 ("and be shall have dominion from sea to sea") and not to some other literary source? When abolitionists, prohibitionists, and suffragettes made their cases, why did they so often rely on scripture? Why not give precedence to some other great body of literature like, for instance Shakespeare's? No one would deny that Shakespeare's influence on the English language, like the Bible's, has been great. Sure, we encourage one another to "turn the other cheek" (Jesus), but so do we "give the devil his due" (Shakespeare). Yes, we "fight the good fight" (St Paul), tell underperforming employees that their "days are numbered" (Daniel), and call our friends the "salt of the earth" (Jesus), but so do we bid noisy neighbours "good riddance" and "send them packing" (Shakespeare).
Yet for all his brilliance and cultural influence, Shakespeare would be the first to acknowledge his own indebtedness to the Bible. The impress of the Bible on Shakespeare's mind makes itself apparent in every play he wrote, noted the late- Northrop Frye, and in his Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (1992), David Lyle Jeffrey of the University of Ottawa lists some thirty-seven different scholarly works given to the exploration of Shakespeare's use of the Bible.
So one obvious answer as to why Canadians would persist in reading the Bible and in teaching it to their children and to immigrants well into the twentieth century is that it has been, far and away, the most influential book ever written, at least as lar as western civilization is concerned. Folks might have thought that one should read or at least be familiar with the Bible for the simple reason that being familiar with it was something most people had seemingly always done. Even Catholics who did not often read the Bible for themselves still had the Bible read to them week after week at mass. And both Catholics and Bible-reading Protestants incorporated the Bible's language into their own lives and daily language, and many of the stock phrases we use today -- e.g., "fight the good fight," "render unto Caesar...," "pride goeth before a fall" - are evidence of that.
Yet the question, Why the Bible?, is still is not really answered. For if at this point in history Canadians have decided that it isn't important to know from whence Milton got his notion of a "Paradise Lost" or a "Paradise Regained" or that it isn't important to be able to place where Sir Wilfrid Laurier's, Mackenzie King's, Pierre Trudeau's, or even our own unwitting biblical allusions in their original contexts, then the ignorance of the Bible that seems to prevail at present should be of no concern to us.
But an important thing to know is what the Bible has to say about itself while those who want to preserve biblical literacy primarily for cultural reasons have their good points, it is at least noteworthy that the Bible, which has a good deal to say about itself, never claims to be great literature. what the Bible claims to be, and what it claims to purvey is Life. "The words of the Lord are pure words:" says the Hebrew psalmist, "as silver tried in the furnace of earth, purified seven tunes" And these words, the scriptures say of themselves again and again, are everlasting and satisfying.
But they are also hard words. The writer of the Book of Hebrews says that "the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Which is to say that the Bible claims to be an antidote to our humbug; and in an age as devoted to "humbuggery" as this one is, powerful words that aim to cut us to the existential quick make us nervous.
Contrition
Which brings me to the second reason why I think the Prayer Book Society is important. Namely, through its stand for the Prayer Book, this Society stands for the belief that repentance and godly sorrow are good and necessary things. I'm not a student of the differences between the BCP and the BAS, but it didn't take long for me to notice that the BAS isn't very occupied with contrition, penitence, and remorse over sin. As far as I can tell there is no set confession in its services of morning and evening prayer. And while the confession in its service of Holy Eucharist is, one might say, adequate, it reads more like a rather dull list of dry facts. "we have sinned against you... we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent." Well, ok.
But compare that to these lines from the BCP's Communion service: "We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness Which we from time to time most grievously have committed... We do earnestly repent, And we are heartily sorry for these our misdoings." And this from the confession in the BCP's service of Evening Prayer: "We have erred and strayed.. We have followed too much the devices.. of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws....And there is no health in us." In this same prayer we ask God to spare us, to restore us, to have mercy upon us.
It's pretty obvious why most folks are happy to ditch this sort of prayer. "I'm ok, you're ok." But the Gospel says that we're not ok. I might call my tendency to recklessly badmouth my neighbour a personal foible. God calls it sin. I might say that leaving something out of my tax returns is no big deal (and some of you might be tempted to agree). But God calls it sin.
Given the state of our popular cultism, and even our university arid many of our ecclesiastical cultures, probably the last thing we need in church is to have our egos stroked. And I think the same is true of Canadian society in general. Think of the cottage industry, built over the years, devoted to plumbing the depths of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's arrogance. Think of the simple fact that in spite of the inordinate amount of self-esteem talk and such that floods Canada's public life the present generation of young people are in spiritual crisis.
There is of course nothing unique in the fact that contemporary Canadians are in riced of repentance. If there's one thing that my reading in history has driven home to me it is that all have sinned and that human beings and this world are in need of redemption. The Prayer Book reminds us of that. The point of the prayers in the BCP isn't to heave unnecessary guilt trips on us; the point is that we recognize the truth about ours hearts. And when we recognize the great depth of our need for God his grace appears all the more great.
On the subject of contrition Robert C. Roberts, a philosopher of psychology at Wheaton College, has this to say:
Contrition is that state of mind in which we perceive with the eyes of the heart, and thus in a truly spiritual way, the issues of selfhood. We see that the self of our sin is riot our real self arid that we belong, through divine forgiveness, to God and God's kingdom. Contrition is that state of mind in which we appreciate with our spiritual viscera [our spiritual eyes] what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and in which we are "moved" to depart from our sin and consolidate ourselves in Christ. It is that state of proper pain, that experience of fitting misery, without which our joy is not joy in our Redeemer. (My emphasis.)
Conclusion
To recapitulate: I think the Prayer. Book Society is important because through its stand for the Prayer Book it stands for Bible; and in standing for the Bible it is standing for the single most important book in Canada's history. Canadians have not been as boisterous with their Bibles as have their American cousins, but the Bible does in fact pervades Canadian history. Second, I think the Society is important because the Prayer Book it defends reminds Canadians, in unequivocal terms, that they stand in need of God's forgiveness and that they are welcome to enjoy his mercy.
Certainly the Prayer Book Society of Canada is important for other reasons. For example, through its stand for the Prayer Book it stands for the beautiful language employed in it. I personally am not impressed with arguments that our language of worship should be, to use an infelicitous phrase, dumbed down. Why not hold a high linguistic standard and pull people up? Why should we think it a negative thing that folks should learn the definition of a few archaic words? Surely most people would be better for that. Given the high flying sublimity of the 23rd and 51st Psalms and the 40th and 55th chapters of Isaiah, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that worship is better when conducted in the jargon of the day.
Another obvious reason the Prayer Book Society is important is that it stands for theological orthodoxy. I frankly doubt that many Anglicans would die for the Celtic or Sumerian goddesses that have been dug up in recent years. But thousands of Christians all around the world are suffering for their faith. And that faith, the orthodox one, the good old-fashioned one, the one for which people are dying in, for example, the Sudan, is the one for which the PBSC stands.
When the PBSC was started in 1985 its supporters were called "contentious" and "reactionary". Well, there's nothing wrong with contending for the faith. In fact, when it comes to that St Jude commands us to be contentious. Reactionary? Well, if one's doctor said that he was sick unto death he would be wise to react vigourously to that news. if the thing against which one is reacting is dangerous, what's wrong with being a reactionary? We must love, but it is a take sort of love that puts away the truth for the sake of getting along.
And, at any rate, standing for God's Word and calling all Canadians to submit themselves to it is a noble thing to do.
Mr. Preston Jones was a Fullbright Scholar doing a Ph.D in history at the University of Ottawa. This address was delivered to the Ottawa Branch of the Society, on the occasion of their April 15th, 1997 Annual General Meeting.
