The Crisis in Common Prayer in the Anglican Church in Canada. Essays by various authors in response to the proposal of a composite Prayer Book (modern and traditional liturgies) for the Anglican Church in Canada.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....

From The Second Coming,
by William Butler Yeats,
First Published in 1922


"The spirit of reformation...is rooted in the conviction that in times of great insecurity and change the centre cannot be held by a blind preservation of the forms in which tradition had been received..."

Canadian Book of Alternative Services, 1985, p. 8.

We may be on the brink of undertaking yet another revision of the BCP. While this alarms some, we need to remember that this foundational book has always been in a process of revision. Sometimes the changes are minimal; sometimes, as with the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A.'s revision of 1979, quite sweeping. General Synod in 2001 will be making some choices about whether to revise the BCP, revise the BAS, maintain the two books, or do something quite startling by moving beyond books to electronic liturgy. The bishops of the Province of Canada have requested a revision that would give Canadian Anglicans one book again. It is deeply ingrained in our church culture to look to a book, even as we change it according to local custom, or put it on the shelf to watch over our leaflet liturgies.

Anglican Journal Story, June 1999

It is time for us to be one church with one book again: not the Book of Common Prayer nor the Book of Alternative Services; but a new book that will incorporate the main services of worship in both traditional and contemporary forms.

Anglican Journal Story, September 1999

INTRODUCTION

Will the production of a "composite" book combining the best (so-called) of the Book of Common Prayer (1962) and the Book of Alternative Services (1985) bring peace and unity to the Anglican Church of Canada, or make things much worse?

At the edge of a new century and a new millennium, the Church is suffering what many commentators feel is a crisis of identity; a loss of Christian memory; a deliberate revision and reshaping of the forms and content of her doctrine and worship in ways which are truly radical-- from the Latin radix or root-- a cutting of the roots, a loss of the principles of Common Prayer.

To many this is most welcome, exciting, embracing the new and placing the old in the past, once and for all. To others, such change is threatening and unsettling, a loss of principle and truth, to still others, it is completely irrelevant-- such in-house matters, while spending much Christian energy and goodwill and conflict, do not speak to the post-modern Western world.

But changes are taking place now which may have lasting and far-reaching consequences for the doctrine and worship of the Anglican Church, including Canada. More and more institutional Churches are ignoring or rejecting their classical formularies-- the foundational documents by which they are connected to the Reformation, and to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. These include, in the Canadian context, the 39 Articles of Religion, the Solemn Declaration, and the doctrinal reading and presentation of Scripture in the spiritual system called the Book of Common Prayer.

Some time in the next 10 years, some people hope that the Anglican Church of Canada will be led along the path of the American Church in producing a new worship-book entitled 'The Book of Common Prayer'. Since Anglicans are 'people of the book', one book appears to be a possible resolution of all our conflicts over modern versus traditional services, and can include many 'liturgical resources' to satisfy all possible tastes and preferences, and bring at least a superficial unity to the divisions and disagreements in our Church.

The Prayer Book Society of Canada has always supported the use and moderate revision of Alternative Services, and is not opposed to principled liturgical revision. However, the classical Prayer Book tradition, some times called 'the Anglican Way' which has been faithfully embodied in a variety of Prayer Books from 1549 to 1962, must remain. It is the standard of doctrine and worship, of scriptural teaching, a guide to the reformed yet catholic principles of the Church, a corrective against the passing fads and fancies of any age (and we today must be thankful many such odd moments of Church history were not imposed on all following generations).

Where are we without the authentic Prayer Book tradition? None other than the Anglican Secretary General, The Rev'd Canon John L. Peterson, said the following to the Episcopal Church Club of Philadelphia, on the 19th of January, 1999, on the topic of the Lambeth Conference and what it revealed of the state of Anglicanism:

There was a time when on every Sunday morning in every Anglican Church in every part of the world, one heard the words:

"Almighty God, unto all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy Holy Name through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Friends, you don't hear that any more. Some of you do but the point is the Common Prayer, which we once cherished, and I am not a traditionalist in this particular realm, the Common Prayer we once shared is no more. So what is it that binds us together? It certainly is not an understanding of the Eucharist, the divergence of feelings on that and the frequency of celebrations varies from Province to Province. Priesthood. Again some will accept the ordination of women to the priesthood. What does it all mean and how do we define it as Anglicans? What does a Lambeth Conference have to say to people of such diversity? How do we have diversity in unity that allows for any unity whatsoever?

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;" said the poet W.B. Yeats, "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...." Thus the bold new world of new worship and theological flux may not lead to greater diversity in unity, knowledge and freedom, but to less and less.

Equally, to place any set of prayers and liturgical resources between two covers does not make a true 'Book of Common Prayer' unless it stands in recognizable relation to the objective classical tradition of doctrine in devotion, the classical reading of Scripture, and the other essential elements of the Anglican Way. It would be a New Book of Prayers, or a Book of Alternative Common Prayer, even if it included fragments large or small of a former Prayer Book. The same is true of Hymn Books, although they do not stand in the same authoritative place as Anglican formularies, yet they may reflect true or false doctrine, and faithful or incomplete readings of the Biblical message.

Even if a new liturgical book were to be titled "Common Prayers: What we happen to believe and do for the time being, (subject to revision)" it should presuppose and must stand under the authority of the true tradition of doctrine in devotion-- which is what the authentic books of Common Prayer embody.

Without this, as Canon Peterson reminds us, there is no unity, no standard, no clarity, no way to accommodate the ever-shifting chaos of current advocacy, disagreements, scholarship, endless revision, fashion and fad, liturgical or biblical theory, all of these things between two covers, in any sense that the contents are 'Common', or express the truth about anything. A book that can say anything can also say nothing.

Thus we hear of the 'Prayer Book Unbound' project proposed in the United States for the upcoming revision, by which the next so-called Book of Common Prayer will become merely an 8000 page resource for creating locally shaped liturgies for various pastoral needs. This approach appears to abandon the full tradition of the Book of Common Prayer as the standard of doctrine for the church once and for all. Is this the shifting shape of our future?

In this collection of essays and reports by diverse and various authors, from Canadian, American, and international perspectives, we will look at what is true and central for Common Prayer; the classical reading of the Bible as part of doctrine in devotion, largely abandoned by modern lectionary patterns; the difficulty of meaningful revision in the current climate of opinion; the changing consensus in liturgical scholarship; and the eucharistic lectionary as the heart of the Prayer Book System.

If we do not take these questions seriously, whether we are Prayer Book traditionalist, or favour modern worship, or find ourselves in between, we will awake one day and find the anchor has been cast off, the storm of the world rising around us, and the right way lost and gone. To lose Common Prayer, as Canon Peterson's remarks indicate, is to risk losing our way, our moorings, our unity, our deepest Anglican identity.

So as Canadian Bishop Anthony Burton has put it:

We have as Anglicans an extraordinary treasury of wisdom on which to draw. For the Prayer Book tradition is, in Professor Robert’s Crouse’s memorable phrase, “the fullest expression of the consensus fidelium for Anglicans.” Now is a time for remembrance, a time to recall the Church to her origins, not for reaction, but for remembrance and renewal in the recovery of our identity. It is time to return to our roots.