The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey

The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey.Edited by Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck. New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Anglicans believe that worship according to the Book of Common Prayer is what gives them their unique identity. Other churches have bishops in historic succession, confessional documents, and liturgical worship. Only Anglicans have their "incomparable" Prayer Book—except the Anglican Rite has been disseminated into a whole family of Books of Common Books used throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion. The books in this library share a common heritage, the same basic content, and a similar approach to texts, but have developed occasions and texts that are unique to each province of the Anglican Communion. Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck have provided a service to the entire Communion by editing this worldwide survey of the Book of Common Prayer. A foreword by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, testifies to the value of this volume for the
Anglican Communion.

The editors have assembled a roster of authors that is a veritable who's
who among Anglican liturgical scholars, as well as scholars in other traditions.
For all of the diversity of authors (I counted fifty-eight), the editors have
managed to produce a stylistic consistency that makes reading this book more
like reading a long and complex story than like a set of encyclopedia articles.
Bibliographies are appended to the essays. In addition to the essays, which
range in length from about four to twelve pages, the book is studded with
sample texts in boxes, illustrations, and maps. Appendices include a historical
chronology, a glossary, a select but extensive bibliography, notes on the editors
and contributors, and a thorough index. A world map inside the front and
back covers pinpoints the locations of Anglican provinces, united churches,
extra-provincial churches, and dioceses and jurisdictions of The Episcopal
Church outside the U.S.A.

The book is divided into seven parts that deal, respectively, with (1) the
birth and history of the Book of Common Prayer in sixteenth and seventeenth
century England; (2) the social and cultural life of the Prayer Book; (3)
the Prayer Book outside of England; (4) Prayer Books in the twentieth century
("From Uniformity to Family Resemblance"); (5) the Prayer Books used
today on five continents ("Family Portraits"); (6) worship in the Prayer Book
family with attention to prospects for future revision of particular orders
(Daily Prayer, Eucharist, Calendar, Initiation, Catechisms, Marriage, Funeral
Rites, Ordinals); and (7) the future of the Book of Common Prayer
(technology, cyberspace, theology). Here I offer a few all-too-bdef comments
that reflect my engagement with this excellent resource.
Kenneth Stevenson's chapter on worship in medieval England provides
a needed background to the Reformation Prayer Book by discussing the role
of worship in everyday life as well as the kind of books needed to do liturgy.
A thousand years is a lot to cover in twelve pages, but I think Stevenson might
have taken this story aU the way back to Augustine of Canterbury and the
kind of Roman books brought to England and used before the invention of
the missal and breviary. This would have shown the consolidation of Uturgical
material into one book on a historical continuum. I was glad to see Cordon
Jeaness references to Archbishop Thomas Cranmers communication with
leading reformers on the continent in the process of drafting the Edwardian
Prayer Books. A brief supplementary essay to Bryan Spinks's chapter "Erom
Elizabeth I to Charles IF' on the controversy over altars versus communion
tables would have been helpful. I especially appreciated extensive material
on the social history of the Prayer Book. The picture of participation in
Prayer Book worship in Anglican parishes from the sixteenth through the
nineteenth centuries provided by Judith Maltby and Jeremy Cregory, which
is comparable to Eamon Duffy's revisionist portrait of the participation of
medieval Christians in their liturgical rites as well the portrait of the use of
the Prayer Book in the British colonies (for example. South Africa, Virginia)
by William L. Sachs, is nearly worth the price of the book. To the essays on
architecture (by the late James F. White) and printing (Martin W. Hutner)
might have been added an essay on Anglican chant—a serious lacuna in this
otherwise comprehensive volume. Discussion of tensions caused by liturgical
change, especially in the twentieth century (Colin Buchanan, Bryan Spinks),
inject a note of reality to be kept in mind as churches in the Anghcan Communion
undertake revision of their Prayer Books in the twenty-first century.
Descriptions of the Prayer Books in churches around the world offer case
studies in the processes of inculturation—in the Americas and Europe no
less than in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. I wonder if sufficient space was given
to challenges confronting worship practices in the last section of the book,
such as global evangelization and regional evangelism. I appreciated the fact
that the authors of the last section (Donald Kraus, Clayton L. Morris, PierreW. whalon) attended to the theological questions posed by revisions in
praxis, especially those brought about by the technological revolution. I wonder
if the diversity of Prayer Books with divergent uses (for example, Christian
initiation, eucharistic prayers) does not offer a theological challenge for
the Anglican Communion. If there is not one common book, there is not one
liturgical and sacramental theology. What then of lex orandi lex credendi?
But that may be an issue that can be addressed more easily with reference to
the data in this admirable volume.

FRANK C. SENN

Immanuel Lutheran Church
Evanston, Illinois