Reprinting the Prayer Book
(By the Rev. Canon Dr. Gordon Maitland, National Chairman of the PBSC)
One of the most common questions that arrives in the Society’s email inbox is the question of when the Book of Common Prayer will be updated and reprinted. It has been four years since her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth passed away, and the fact that Prayer Book has not been updated has been a frustration for many. I may mention that the online BCP app maintained by the PBSC was updated within a month of the Queen’s repose, and also that the Church of England had an updated BCP in print before the end of 2022.
One of the main problems confronting our Church has been the fact that to date, the national office has relied on a PDF scan of the existing Prayer Book for printing purposes; that is, until now, Gilmore Printing (the selected printing house of the Anglican Church of Canada) has simply used that PDF scan to produce reprints of the church’s worship books. Now that there is a need to change the texts in the BCP, a whole new digital master copy has had to be produced. While it is possible to modify an existing PDF, this typically results in formatting problems and other technical glitches, so that it is much more straightforward to produce a new document rather than modify the old one. Another challenge relates to the formatting of the Table of Lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer (pp. xvi – xlvii). When one looks at these tables, one can see that the pages mirror each other across the spine of the book. While this arrangement was easily done using the old method of mechanical typesetting, it becomes much more difficult to do with digital printing. Thus, the Table of Lessons had to be completely reformatted so as to have each page stand on its own.
Although all of these difficulties could be overcome, there was apparently no urgency on the part of the national office to undertake the work. Other priorities took precedence until an intervention by our Episcopal Visitor, the Rt. Revd William Cliff of the Diocese of Ontario. He raised the issue in the House of Bishops, and all agreed that everyone was waiting for an updated BCP and that no one wanted to purchase the existing outdated BCPs in stock at Gilmore Printing. With the backing of the Primate, the Most Revd. Shane Parker, the Director of Communications was asked to speed up the work of updating the Prayer Book.
We are happy to report that the Prayer Book Society of Canada has been a part of the revision process from the beginning. The Director of Communications, Alicia Brown, asked for our help in redesigning the Table of Lessons, and the Revd. Chris Dow and I suggested several different designs based on already existing BCPs from various sources. A draft electronic version of the revised BCP was produced, and a copy of this draft book was sent to the PBSC for proofreading. A number of volunteers (both from the Society and beyond) have been doing the slow and tedious work of going through the text, line by line, to check for errors and typos. Not surprisingly, the newly typeset Table of Lessons had numerous mistakes that needed to be corrected, and these initial corrections have been sent to the national office. While the work of proofreading the draft BCP continues to be slow and onerous, we are thankful for the opportunity as a Society to ensure that the new draft is as error-free as possible. We hope it can be finished around the end of this year so that the revised BCP can be published sometime in 2027.
The key changes to the revised BCP will be, firstly, that it will contain the name of our current Sovereign, King Charles, in the various State Prayers and in the preces and responses at Morning and Evening Prayer. Secondly, the recently composed collect, For Reconciliation with the Jewish People, given final approval at General Synod in 2023, will replace the previous collect, For the Conversion of the Jews, in the section entitled “Prayers and Thanksgivings Upon Several Occasions”. The Table of Moveable Feasts will be extended out to 2065. The national office will apparently be looking for a new publisher for the book, and the plan is that it will be printed in various sizes and with different bindings: for example, there will be the usual pew edition, as well as large-print and gift editions.
Of course, some people will ask, “When will the Book of Alternative Services be updated and published?” Speaking personally, I doubt very much that the BAS could be reprinted with only the changes to the Sovereign’s name. There are supplementary Eucharistic Prayers and Seasonal Collects which have been approved by General Synod that would need to be added. The Office Book, Pray Without Ceasing, effectively replaces all of the material for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer that appears in the BAS. The psalter that appears in Pray Without Ceasing replaces the BAS psalter that was borrowed from the Episcopal Church in the USA. In short, the BAS would have to be so completely and thoroughly revised as to constitute a new book altogether. And at the present time the national office of the Anglican Church of Canada has neither the money nor the staff to effect such a drastic revision. Thus, it is ironic that the Book of Common Prayer will soon be the most up-to-date worship book that the Canadian Church has in its possession.