“O Lord, we beseech thee to keep thy Church and household continually in thy true religion; that they who do lean only upon the hope of thy heavenly grace may evermore be defended by thy mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” –Collect for the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, 1928 Book of Common Prayer
But with its antiquated style, the Book of Common Prayer did need to be updated. It should have been done lovingly, with a regard for the beauty of the language and the separate, valuable tradition of the Anglican church. Instead the old language was simply junked in favor of a word-for-word imitation of the changes that have swept other denominations in the last tumultuous decades.
The de facto new church that resulted from Henry’s actions was at first totally Catholic but had, in effect, a Tudor pope. Henry didn’t even want English Bibles placed in the churches. His son, the short-lived boy king Edward VI, was a rabid Protestant; his elder daughter, Mary I, a vindictive Catholic.
The Anglican Book of Common Prayer, in its historic form, contains one version of each service–Holy Communion, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and so forth–with rules, called “rubrics,” that explain which prayers and actions are mandatory and which are optional. One nostalgic Episcopalian of my acquaintance, who confesses to still reciting the old words under her breath, says wistfully, “No matter where you went in the English-speaking world, you knew what the service would be, and you could always follow it.” No more. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the current standard, has three forms of Communion alone, and since the many options within each version mean that the worshiper is constantly hopping about within the tome, the result is rather like a do-it-yourself novel. The name “Common Prayer,” signifying forms of worship held in common, is clearly just a holdover: this book has more to do with the Tower of Babel than with unity.
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His objections to the new book prefigured those of all the other traditional Episcopalians to whom I spoke: they center around language and theology. “I think the language is garbage, but if that was the only thing, I’d have a hard time objecting to it,” he says. “It’s heretical. It has departed from Anglicanism and from traditional Christianity; it’s really a new religion.” He cites provisions for consecration of women to the order of bishops, something to which there is great opposition in the church; the disappearance of the laying on of hands from the text of the ordination service; the social-justice- oriented baptismal rite; and a Protestant–as opposed to Anglican–statement of belief in the catechism. “The catechism was not in the study copies of the new book; it appeared two weeks before [the General Convention of the church at which the new book was adopted], and was never discussed.”
General Convention, meeting every four years (most recently last summer), is composed of the House of Bishops–rather like the Senate–and the House of Deputies, made up of priests and laity. So far, General Convention permits the use of the 1928 BCP, but under circumscribed conditions decided by each diocesan bishop. Most Episcopalians–traditional or otherwise–to whom I spoke do not expect this grudging tolerance to last.
Evening Prayer is generally a short service, about 20 minutes; this one runs an hour and a quarter, because they’ve chosen to use every possible option. Afterward, the dehydrated faithful snarf up a couple of bowls of punch and settle down in the steaming, smoke-filled parish hall to watch Firing Line on videotape: William F. Buckley Jr. and a set of traditionalist clergy are demolishing the leftist bishop of Newark on the subject of the ordination of women. I am not entirely at my ease here; I am no longer passionately wrapped up in the questions that absorb these people. I favor the old prayer book, but I have no problem with women as priests.
