BCP Reflections

By Aaron James. This essay won the third prize in a competition organized by the PBSC Ottawa Branch in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Canadian BCP and the 350th anniversary of the 1662 English BCP.

Attending a service of BCP choral Evensong and seeing a young woman in a hijab sitting in a pew, Presbyterian professor Carl Trueman is led to reflect on the powerful Scriptural witness and the compelling devotion found in the Book of Common Prayer.

A sermon preached by the then Bishop of London, the Rt. Revd. Richard Chartres, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England, on the occasion of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, held on May 2, 2012.

In this piece, written in 2012, the Rt. Revd. Dr. Stephen Andrews, then Bishop of Algoma, reflects on his discovery of the Book of Common Prayer as a young theological student and his ongoing deep appreciation for it.

A sermon preached by the Revd. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto, in which he expounds upon the many profound ways in which the Prayer Book is spiritually challenging, nurturing and formative.

By Joel Reinhardt. This essay won the second prize in a competition organized by the PBSC Ottawa Branch in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Canadian BCP and the 350th anniversary of the 1662 English BCP.

The Revd. Gordon Maitland, PBSC National Chairman, wrote this article for the PBSC Newsletter in 2012, describing two moving services of BCP Evensong that he had attended within the space of one week, in widely differing time zones and settings.

By Elliot Rossiter. This essay won the first prize in a competition organized by the PBSC Ottawa Branch in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Canadian BCP and the 350th anniversary of the 1662 English BCP.

Desmond Scotchmer, a past National Chairman of the PBSC, offers a meditation upon the Prayer of Humble Access, explaining it as “a prayer of searching, uncompromising spiritual purity and power”.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury the Rt. Revd. Dr. Rowan Williams reflects upon the echoing sequences of words built up in the Prayer Book by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer so as to express again and again “our amazement at God’s free forgiveness”.