Lee Gatiss: The 350th Anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

http://leegatiss.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/the-book-of-common-prayer/

The Book of Common Prayer

This month sees the 350th anniversary of the official adoption of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.

 

 

 

Last year we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. This year the history buffs and antiquarians are in joyful mood because it is the 350th anniversary of that famously Anglican date — 1662.

 

In these days of spiritual ignorance in the country and doctrinal laxity in the church, many Anglicans look back to former times with a certain degree of wistfulness.

 

Declining electoral rolls speak of a nation less focused on the things of God than seems to have been the case in centuries gone by when our ancient and airy church buildings must, we imagine, have pulsated with activity and vibrancy.

 

In a period of liturgical diversity and confusion, other Anglicans feel the disappearance of a uniform standard of worship across the denomination to be an incalculable injury, particularly as it permits both a lack of gravity in church services and the propagation (often) of dubious theology.

 

In an era of polarisation in ecclesiastical politics, with pressure groups and ‘turbulent priests’ disturbing the peace of the Church, the search for authoritative leadership to impose order on a fractious, wayward communion is an understandable desire.

 

One date lingers in the collective Anglican memory as suggestive of a golden era: 1662. Weren’t churches full in the seventeenth century? Didn’t the Prayer Book, hallowed by over a century of sacred use, ensure unity and uniformity in the public meetings of every English parish, with a reverent dignity and stylistic polish often wanting in modern expressions of church?

1662 is an emblem of the liturgical good old days.

 

Reformers

 

The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) was not actually invented in 1662. The first such book in English was edited by Archbishop Cranmer in 1549, under good king Edward VI.

 

It was quickly revised again and re-issued in an even more Protestant and Reformed version in 1552. So this year is the 460th anniversary of that second Edwardian prayer book too.

 

Playing a key role in the composition of that book was the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli. As Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Vermigli had a huge influence over Cranmer and Ridley and other English reformers, and was a great link between the English and Continental Reformations.

 

Vermigli, incidentally, died in 1562. So this year is also the 450th anniversary of this great man going to glory.

 

What Cranmer and Vermigli did with the Prayer Book was concentrate Reformed Protestant theology into a useable liturgical form. So that, from then on, every day in every parish, and every Sunday morning and evening, the English people (and soon the peoples of their far flung empire) began to pray in a new way.

 

The new Prayer Book was in English, ‘understanded of the people’, as the 39 Articles put it, not the Latin of the medieval Mass. It took the best of Augustinian medieval piety, translated it, and fed it into the spiritual diet of the English people, strengthened by the renewed emphases of the Reformers on salvation by grace alone, through faith alone.

 

Not only that, but the Prayer Book prescribed a healthy and robust diet of Bible reading and preaching for every church. If one follows all the set readings laid down in the BCP, one gets through the Bible once a year and the Psalms every month.

 

True worship

 

This exceeded the expectations of every other Church, whether in Rome, Wittenberg, or Geneva. So the Anglican Church had, from this moment, an emphasis on Bible reading and preaching par excellence.

 

This in turn shows us what the authentic Anglican understanding of church is. It is not, as so many would like to make it, merely a religious social club where we gather each week to celebrate ‘community’ — though community is important, and the corporate nature of the church in prayers and responses trumps our more modern individualism and performance mentality.

 

Church is not all about ‘me and my felt needs’ being met by a distant God, who comes down to give me a particular experience. Vermigli once complained of church services that ‘everything is so noisy with chanting and piping that there is no time left for preaching. So it happens that people depart from church full of music and harmony, yet they are fasting and starving for heavenly doctrine’.

 

So in the classic Anglican understanding of church as seen in the BCP, church is not to be centred on any earthly mediator, whether that is a celebrity pastor, a mediating priest or a worship band leader.

 

In 1662, church was about gathering to hear God speak through his Word, confessing our sins and our faith, and responding to the Spirit, in prayer for each other and for the world.

 

Lord’s Supper

 

The Reformers Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer all died as martyrs because they refused to submit to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass.

 

So-called transubstantiation — the changing of the substance of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper into the body and blood of Christ himself — was the great dividing issue of that era. Our Reformers refused to believe this, to teach this, or to countenance the superstitious practices that had grown up around it.

 

Why? Because they did not find such a doctrine in the Scriptures that they were now reading afresh. And in every case, it was this very thing which led to these martyrs’ execution. They literally went to the stake and were burned for their view of the Lord’s Supper.

 

But what did they put in the place of the Mass? What was it that they taught Anglicans to pray and to remember as they gather around the Lord’s Table?

 

They taught that the Supper is a divine instrument of assurance. There we confess ‘our manifold sins and wickedness’ to God. Then we are assured by the words of Scripture itself, that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ and that ‘he is the propitiation for our sins’.

 

Grace

 

We come to the table (not, notice, an altar), ‘not trusting in our own righteousness, but in God’s manifold and great mercies’. We come with nothing in our hands to receive God’s mercy. It’s all about God doing something, not us.

 

The movement of the action in the BCP liturgy is from God to us — God in his grace reaching down to us in our sinfulness. We simply take and eat, in remembrance of what Jesus has done. Read theologically, the 1662 service shows us that, although we are more wicked than we ever thought, we are also more loved by a merciful God than we ever dreamed.

 

The result is that, pastorally speaking, our consciences are assured of God’s love towards us in Christ, even when we’ve been most searingly honest about our shortcomings and failures.

 

We praise God that, ‘by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his Passion’.

 

1662 makes it very clear that what is going on at the Lord’s Table is not a sacrifice on an altar made by a mediating priest on behalf of the people, which has to be repeated again and again each week to be effective.

 

Finished work

 

That was the wrong message you got from the Mass. In the Mass something is offered to God. What the BCP says, however, is that Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice on the cross for us was utterly, completely and totally sufficient to pay for our sins. No additional sacrifices are necessary:

 

‘Almighty God, our heavenly Father, which of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption, who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world…’

 

All the language of us making a sacrifice is kept until after we’ve eaten. Only then do we pray that God would accept from us (to use the language of Hebrews 13) a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

So after we’ve fed on Christ in our hearts by faith, we offer and present to God not the bread and wine but ourselves (to use the language of Romans 12), as a holy and lively (or living) sacrifice.

 

There is of course more we could say about the BCP as it was definitively ordered in 1662. It was almost the same as Cranmer’s book, with surprisingly few alterations considering all that happened in the interim.

 

One thing that was specifically added in 1662 was a service for the baptism of adults or ‘those of riper years’, who may not have been baptised as infants during the confusions of the tumultuous Civil War period.

 

But, generally speaking, the book and liturgy remained unchanged: the same elegant expression of the profoundly liberating gospel. That is something to give thanks for in this 350th anniversary year.

 

This is an article I wrote for the Evangelical Times, Britain’s leading non-denominational evangelical Christian newspaper (published earlier this month). It is reprinted here with their permission.

Lee Gatiss: The Great Ejection of the Puritans

http://leegatiss.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/the-great-ejection-of-the-puritans/

The Great Ejection of the Puritans

Today is the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection of the Puritans from the Church of England.

 

1662 may have been a significant year for the Book of Common Prayer. It was not, however, a good year for those to whom the gospel and a good conscience were more precious than the institutional church.

We can rejoice, as we think about the triumph of the Prayer Book and its glorious exposition of the Reformed faith in polished liturgical form. But we also need to remember that 1662 was the year that ‘evangelical’ Puritans were excluded from, and then persecuted by, the established Church of England because they could not accept certain aspects of the new religious settlement.

The main problem in 1662 was not with the Prayer Book as such, but with the terms of subscription to it. That is, the issue was what to do with those who in conscience could not agree to everything contained in that book.

Consensus

For a century or more, the Puritans, as they were called, had been calling for further godly reformation of the Church of England.

They were delighted with the Reformation, but they thought the English church ‘but halfly reformed’ compared to many Reformed churches on the Continent. The Elizabethan Settlement had not gone far enough for them in eliminating superstition and Catholicism from the church.

They wanted to push on with further reform, in response to God’s Word in the Bible. Such people were usually able to remain within the Church of England. How? Because there was a theological consensus between the official stance of the national church and these Puritans.

In general terms, they were all agreed on what the Coronation Oath calls ‘the true profession of the gospel … the Protestant Reformed religion’. Historians speak of a ‘Calvinist consensus’ in England, until at least the 1630s. With that general agreement on primary issues of faith and salvation in place, other issues were usually kept in perspective.

Those who did not conform in every detail of clerical vesture or ceremonial and had issues with phrases here and there in the Prayer Book, continued to play an active and prominent role within the Church of England, some of them at the highest levels.

Yet these people had been in charge of the national church during the Commonwealth and Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. They hadn’t all been in favour of chopping Charles I’s head off — many had vigorously protested against it — but they had helped to banish the high church royalist bishops and their prayer book.

Revenge

So when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he brought with him an Anglican episcopal hierarchy thirsting for revenge. They quickly established themselves in the royal court and grabbed hold of the levers of power.

The king wanted peace and toleration, but the bishops were in no mood for compromise. For much of 1661 they pretended to make concessions to the Puritans, but only until they were comfortable enough in their palaces and in Parliament to deal the Puritans a fatal blow.

The tide turned quite quickly. The bishops and their allies now had such strength that there was no longer any question of Puritans attaining a favourable compromise. The issue for the latter had become whether anything could be salvaged from the wreck of their hopes.

Some of our greatest and most internationally famous theologians were from the more evangelical, puritan sections of the church, but the consensus on primary issues was breaking down. And there was less appetite for tolerance on the part of those holding the reins of power.

Without uniformity and theological consensus on what the gospel is, the bishops looked to enforce outward conformity as their way to bring order to chaos. With a more liberal turn in theology at the Restoration, came a more ceremonial, Catholicising style of church.

It was the imposition of this which had helped cause the Civil War in the first place. Most famously, Archbishop Laud, the most prominent and disliked advocate of this anti-Calvinist movement, had been executed on Tower Hill in 1645 to popular applause.

The Puritans could never accept Laudianism. And hitherto had never been forced to, always finding that the Anglican formularies acted as a sufficient guard against the worst excesses of ceremonialism, superstition and persecution.

But now, things were different; the state decided to enforce uniformity across the board.

Act of Uniformity

The Act of Uniformity in 1662 required all ministers not merely to use the set forms of prayer — which may have allowed them some leeway in practice — but to swear an oath they could not in good conscience swear. They had to give ‘unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed’ in the new Book of Common Prayer.

This, lamented Richard Baxter, was ‘a weight more grievous than a thousand ceremonies, added to the old conformity, with grievous penalty’.

Furthermore, all ministers, lecturers, and even schoolteachers, had to declare themselves entirely in favour of this new political correctness; they had to swear an oath never to attempt to change anything in church or state!

They had to declare ‘that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king … that I will conform to the liturgy of the church of England as it is now by law established’ and renounce the oaths of the Solemn League and Covenant, swearing not ‘to endeavour any change or alteration of government either in church or state’.

What’s more, those who had taken the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ oath — that they would work hard to reform the church according to the Bible — had to renounce that oath and declare now that it was an illegal thing to promise in the first place.

All this, they felt they could not do. Why? Because it was saying in effect that the Prayer Book and Church of England were inerrant, whereas they only ever said such things about the unerring Word of God itself.

They did not want to perjure themselves, having made oaths to reform the church in Cromwell’s day; and they could not swear on oath that they agreed with every single word of the liturgy.

Great Ejection

Those with the levers of power in their hands sought to impose a new conformity to the Church of England, to which there could be no legally recognised exceptions whatsoever.

All this was to be enacted on St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662. A significant day, because it was the day that tithes and rents were due, in arrears, to the clergy. So if any clergy did not conform, they did not get paid and were unceremoniously thrown out of their vicarages, often into poverty.
Attempts were made in Parliament and Convocation to water things down — to provide for ejected ministers, perhaps give them more time and soften the terms of conformity. But these votes were all lost by small margins.

The King and the Lord Chancellor claimed to want a more lenient solution. But they were ignored by those voting.

In total, over 1800 ministers — about 20 per cent of the whole clergy — were forced to leave the Church of England in 1662. They were silenced from preaching or teaching by law. They were barred from positions in church or state and forbidden from meeting, even in small groups in their homes.
The penal code against these dissenters was often enforced with unnecessary brutality and malice. They were spied on, taken to court, fined, and sent to plantations in Virginia for hard labour.

Anglican persecutors could now appeal to a formidable legal arsenal which, potentially, made possible a puritan holocaust. Although the worst possibilities were never realised, 1662 began a persecution of Protestants by Protestants without parallel in seventeenth-century Europe. That was the tragedy of 1662.

Remembering 1662 today

There was a ‘Service of Reconciliation’ at Westminster Abbey in February to mark this anniversary, with CofE and URC ministers joining together in an attempt to ‘heal the memories’. But the established church still needs to face some big questions about whether this sort of thing could be repeated.

Will the Church of England again force its own members’ consciences to accept things they see as clearly unbiblical (such as women bishops or homosexuality)? Will it make no exceptions and tolerate no diversity from the current political correctness?

Will the Church of England again become an agent of persecution against Reformed and evangelical Christians? Those who dissent from the prevailing scepticism of the powerful few at the heart of church and government may yet find themselves in an unenviable position, similar to that of Restoration-era Puritans.

The ghosts of 1662 may yet return to haunt the Church of England. Please pray for those attempting to push the denomination back into the great central currents of Christian faith, and away from the dangerous rocks of current fads and baptised worldliness.

This is an article I wrote for the Evangelical Times, Britain’s leading non-denominational evangelical Christian newspaper (published earlier this month). It is reprinted here with their permission, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Great Ejection today.

See also my little book The Tragedy of 1662: The Ejection and Persecution of the Puritans.

Evangelistic Strategy of the Book of Common Prayer

http://www.meetthepuritans.com/2012/07/24/the-evangelistic-strategy-of-the-book-of-common-prayer/

The Evangelistic Strategy of the Book of Common Prayer

Posted on 24 Jul 2012 by Lee Gatiss in Links, Misc.

It’s not entirely a Puritan thing. But it is very much a seventeenth century thing. Last week I gave a talk to a bunch of Anglicans at a clergy conference all about the evangelistic strategy of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

If you’d like to listen in, you can do so here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13690817/The%20Evangelistic%20Strategy%20of%20the%20BCP%20%28Lee%20Gatiss%29.mp3.

I even included a little aside about Vermigli, which began life as a post or two on this blog. Hope you enjoy it!

24 Aug, St. Bartholomew's Day: Global Day of Anglican Prayer

http://commonprayerday.com/

A Global Day of Anglican Prayer

The 24th of August is Common Prayer Day, a day for Anglicans all across the world to come together in celebration of their common heritage of prayer and worship.

This 2012 Christians of the Anglican tradition will renew their commitment to the tradition of Common Prayer as they celebrate a read or sung service of Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, the historic liturgy that has bound Anglicans together the world over since its institution on the 24th of August 1662.

Please join with us in Christian unity this St. Bartholomew's day by being one of the faithful who will raise their voices Heavenward in common praise and supplication.

WE humbly beseech thee, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities; and, for the glory of thy Name,
turn from us all those evils that we most righteously have deserved; and grant, that in all our troubles we
may put our whole trust and confidence in thy mercy, and evermore serve thee in holiness and pureness of living,
to thy honour and glory; through our only Mediator and Advocate, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Another Celebration of the 1662 BCP's 350th Anniversary

"That old and godly Book," the 1662 Book of Common Prayer
Don't look to Americans for appreciation here!
Professors, seminarians, and denominational leaders do no know "that old Book."

Another Celebration of the BCP’s 350th

          A new blog appeared on the horizon, entitled “The Briefing.”  Is this an Anglican blog?  Source?  Academic background on poster?  What?  "Keep a sharp lookout, boys!" (Gen. Buford, U.S. Army, first day of Gettysburg battle, 1863).  Yes, we must maintain a sharp lookout.

          What are we to think with the proliferation of books, blogs, social media and more?  Caveat emptor!

          Initial instincts?  Good or bad?  Scholarly or unscholarly?  We continue to review and vet blogs, books and public elites, not just in the media, but in the religious arena.  We have earned some rights to do that…that is, vet theological exclaimers and proclaimers.

          We have no views re: this blog, to date.  Preliminarily, it looks good.  It was recommended by the Australian Anglicans.   It was posted by the Anglican Church League at:  http://acl.asn.au/bcps-350th/.  We appreciate the general thrust of the post:  the celebration and use of the Book of Common Prayer, 1662!  Time and reading will tell.

          As to the 1662 BCP, what do the American Anglicans know of this “old Prayer Book?”  Never mind the Baptists, Baptacostals, Pentecostals that dominate the map.  Nor, never mind the mainline Protestants either.  How about the bishops in the ACNA or AMiA, allegedly conservative Anglicans?  Naturally, we exclude American Episcopalians—mainliners—from the question, e.g. what do TEC Churchmen know of the 1662 BCP?  Quick answers for international readers?  As a summary, they know nothing of “this good old Prayer Book.” 

          Here’s the blog post.  See:  http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2012/05/bcps-350th/ .

BCP’s 350th!

Sandy Grant | 19 May, 2012

I love my historical anniversaries. (Regular readers will know this, as do members of my church!) Anyway, 350 years ago today, on 19 May 1662, The Act of Uniformity received the royal assent in England. This enforced use of the Book of Common Prayer. There is a sad side to compelling the consciences of some Christian ministers, who preferred different ways of ordering their public church assemblies, but I will return to that another occasion.

Today I want to share a little about the famous 1662 BCP, as it’s often called for short. For a start, it has almost been as influential on the English language as the King James Bible! Think of such resonant phrases like “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” (Burial of the Dead), or “till death us do part” and “for better for worse” (both in the Solemnization of Matrimony). These come from the BCP, not the Bible! Of course, on the other hand, the concepts and phrases found in such prayer book services reflect deep immersion in the biblical worldview.

The Book of Common Prayer emphasised the centrality of the Bible as God’s word to mankind. It urged its systematic reading at some length, in the language of the people. So it was a book to learn of God, and by which to worship God with others or alone. But it was also a book to live, love and die to! Millions of English-speaking people—both believing and forgiven or indifferent and wicked—have been baptised, married, or buried to its words.

It has travelled the world wherever there were English colonists, traders or missionaries: Canada to Brazil, Nigeria to Sri Lanka. It has also been translated into Gaelic, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Maasai, Hausa, French, Dutch, Italian, Cantonese, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Burmese, Fijian, Vietnamese and Inuit! Sometimes it has been a nation’s first printed book.

Now it is mostly ignored, a mere cultural memory, copies piled up in church cupboards or gathering dust on dining room bookcases. People today think of its old-fashioned language as being lofty and stately. But I understand that in its day, the BCP’s prose had a certain direct urgency and energy in its exhortations to do business with God, or rather to let him do business with you. And of course, for those who believe its wording is sacrosanct and should never be altered, the BCP’s own preface recognised that language changes over time, and its expression must be updated and adjusted to local circumstances. But its doctrine and patterns remains a legal standard for Anglicans, and its shape influences modern efforts today.

Of course the BCP had a history prior to 1662. The English Protestant Reformer, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer published a first version in 1549. It moved right away from mediaeval Catholicism but was only halfway reformed. It was soon followed in 1552 with a version that gave full expression to Cranmer’s Reformed evangelical doctrine, made politically possible under the keen young Protestant but short-lived King, Edward VI. It was banned under Queen Mary’s bloody counter-Reformation. It was restored under the moderate Protestant Queen Elizabeth I in 1559, but retreated a little from Cranmer’s clarity over the Lord’s Supper. And this pattern continued after the brief English Republic, when the Monarchy returned and as part of that BCP was restored in the standard form that we have today.

Apart from its biblical phrasings, the part I love best is that it ensures all our public praying and exhorting of one another is based solely on the worthiness of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death for our sins. The Anglican monk Dom Gregory Dix, (with very Catholic leanings) said the BCP was “the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of justification by faith alone”. Long may its influence continue!

1662 and all that: How the Prayer Book Changed the Church of England, and how the Church of England Changed the Prayer Book

Rev. John Richardson offers the following comments in remembrance of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.  For readers, we commend the regular use of the "old book."  Also, we remember 2012 as the 350th anniversary of that august book.  See:  http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/1662-and-all-that-how-prayer-book.html 

Friday, 18 May 2012

 

1662 and all that: How the Prayer Book changed the Church of England, and how the Church of England Changed the Prayer Book 

An address given in our Benefice to mark the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Introduction

On March 21^st 1556, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake in Broad Street, Oxford. A metal X still marks the spot where you can, if you’re very careful, briefly pause in the middle of the traffic.

The charges against him of treason and heresy both merited the death penalty. One of the key accusations, however, was the denial of the bodily presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine at communion — a denial which contradicted Roman Catholic teaching then and now and which brought with it numerous other consequences.

For example, if Christ’s body and blood were not present, how could the Mass be a sacrifice for sins? And if the Mass were not a sacrifice, then what was it?

Cranmer had been under arrest for almost three years during which time he had been degraded from the rank of Archbishop, and he had made several recantations of his earlier views hoping for a reprieve, but to no avail.

Even in mid-March, he was still apparently willing to recant, and on the day of his execution he was allowed to give a public address in St Mary’s church, the expectation being that he would further upset the Protestant cause by a confession of his sins.

His final address, however, did not go according to his enemies plans. After some introductory remarks, he continued as follows:

"And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life: and that is, the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth. Which here now I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life, if it might be: and that is, all such bills, which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation: wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished: for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine"  http://englishhistory.net/tudor/pcranmer.html, retrieved 13 May 2012.

Not surprisingly, the speech was cut short and Cranmer was rushed to the stake where, true to his word, he held his right hand out in the flames until it was burned first.

For more, see:  http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/1662-and-all-that-how-prayer-book.html 

Keeping Faith with 350-year old Book of Common Prayer

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Keeping-faith-350-year-old-Book-Common-Prayer/story-16105154-detail/story.html

Keeping faith with 350-year-old Book of Common Prayer

Thursday, May 17, 2012

IT IS perhaps, the defining artistic work of the Church of England – more than any number of Victorian hymns, more than all the nation's stained glass windows and bell-ringers, even more than the King James Bible itself – but, despite the best efforts of generations of ecclesiastical modernisers, as it reaches its 350th anniversary, the Book of Common Prayer remains at the heart of Anglican worship.

Indeed with its familiar baptism, marriage and funeral prayers, the immortal words of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, are still as much a defining part of English life as Shakespeare and Dickens, even in an increasingly secular society.

          ​

            Above right, the Rev Richard Hoyal with a Book of Common Prayer at Christ Church in Broad Street, Bristol, above Picture: Michael Lloyden in an increasingly secular society.

Every time we use phrases like "'til death us do part"; "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest", "peace in our time" and "ashes to ashes", we are quoting directly from the book.

Bristol's Christ Church in Broad Street – one of the city's oldest religious sites, which before being rebuilt by the Georgians would have been familiar to Cranmer himself (he once visited Bristol in order to worship here) – is one of the few churches in the country that prides itself on still relying entirely on the 16th century book for its daily liturgy.

"We've just never brought in a modern version here," says the Rev Richard Hoyal, vicar of Christ Church, who is also a trustee of the Prayer Book Society.

"If you stand still for long enough, things come back round to you," he says, as he prepares the church for its daily lunchtime service.

"The people who come here to worship do so because they enjoy hearing this traditional form of service – there is a continuity and beauty to it that the more modern versions of Anglican service just don't have.

"Most churches now use a combination of modern and Prayer Book liturgy, but here we continue to stick to the words of Cranmer, because that's simply how we like it.

"The language is beautiful. It is lyrical and poetic in form, and despite being the language of 16th century England, it remains remarkably accessible, and for churchgoers in particular, reassuringly familiar. It is the message of the Church of England."

Born out of the Reformation, the book was first penned by Cranmer, an enthusiastic protestant, in 1549, but it never came into use during his lifetime, because on the death of Edward VI his half-sister Mary I restored Catholicism as the national religion.

It wasn't until the Restoration – in a national atmosphere of delicate reconciliation after the devastation of the English Civil War – that King Charles II granted the publication of a less overtly protestant version of the book as the official liturgy of the Anglican church.

"Here was a book that appealed to all members of the Church of England – the high church, the low church and all the mishmash of worshippers in the middle," says Mr Hoyal.

"Perhaps that is part of the secret to its enduring appeal."

He walks over to the pulpit, and returns with a grand copy the Book of Common Prayer, which he flicks through as we talk.

"I've worked in churches around the country that have used modern forms, and I can understand why many people feel modern forms of worship are important.

"But when I came here to Christ Church in 2004, I actually found it rejuvenating to reconnect with the worship forms I was nurtured in.

"I am grateful for this reconnection with the forms that were standard until my twenties."

Richard is keen to ensure today's generation of young Anglicans also have the opportunity to enjoy the lyrical nature of the Book of Common Prayer.

To mark the 350th anniversary, he is organising a city-wide competition to encourage children to engage with the book.

The competition, Celebrating Prayer in England, which is being organised by Bristol's Diocesan Board of Education, will be open to all children aged between five and 16 in local authority and independent schools in Bristol. The deadline for entries is June 7.

Key Stage One children, aged between five and seven, will be invited to create paintings on the theme "Lighten our darkness", the opening words of the Third Collect spoken during the service of Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer.

Key Stage Two pupils, aged between seven and 11, will produce posters and written work explaining the meaning of sin, while secondary school pupils aged between 11 and 16, including those studying for GCSE, will be required to write an essay on the topic "War and Peace" – another oft-quoted phrase from the liturgy.

"I hope that, by selecting themes like these, many more of Bristol's young people will begin to discover for themselves the wonderful language of the Book of Common Prayer and that teachers will introduce the idea of Cranmer in the classroom to help them explore it further," Mr Hoyal says.

A prize-giving ceremony will be held at Christ Church on June 20, with the prizes being presented by Fawlty Towers actress Prunella Scales, an enthusiastic member of The Prayer Book Society.

"The winning pupils will each be awarded a bound and inscribed copy of the Book of Common Prayer and their schools will each be presented with a prize of £500," explains Mr Hoyal. "Then the winning entries will go on public display at Christ Church. For me there can be no better way to celebrate the 350th anniversary of this wonderful book, than by ensuring that it is passed on to yet another generation, who will doubtless find joy and comfort from the language, as countless generations before them have done."

 For more details on the competition, visit www.bcp350.org.uk.

Dr. Chartres, Bp. of London: 350th Anniversary of 1662 Book of Common Prayer

http://sedangli.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/fit-for-sacred-themes-and-devotion/

May 8, 2012

tags: 1662, BCP, bishop, cathedral, London, Prayer Book, St Paul's

by AAK

Dr. Chartres, Bishop of London.

An address by the Bishop of London at the 350th anniversary of the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer
St Paul’s Cathedral – May 2, 2012

Archbishop Cranmer commandeered Old St Paul’s on Whitsunday 1549 to demonstrate the new English liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer. The Lord Mayor and the worthies of the City of London were present but the Bishop of London boycotted the occasion which was further marred by the failure of the Select Preacher to turn up.

Today the presence of their Royal Highnesses, the Lord Mayor locum tenens, the Archbishop of Canterbury [this time in harmony with the Bishop of London] and a host of witnesses from all over the world, together testify to the historic and enduring significance of the Prayer Book tradition as we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the 1662 edition.

The Prayer Book in English was the centrepiece of an audacious cultural revolution. Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, was one of those critical of the scheme to introduce an English liturgy. He dismissed the argument that it was desirable for the language to be “understanded of the people” and the mode of conducting the services such as to render them audible. The bishop protested that “it was never meant that the people should indeed hear the matins or hear the mass but be present there and pray themselves in silence.” The barriers of language and audibility were actually conducive to genuine devotion.

This protest from one of the most intelligent conservatives of the day illuminates the radicalism of what was published as the First Book of Common Prayer. It was an audacious attempt to re-shape the culture of England by collapsing the distinction between private personal devotion and public liturgical worship in order to create a godly community in which all and not just the clergy had access to the “pure milk of the gospel”. The result would be a sense of English nationhood crystallising around the biblical narrative of God’s dealings with the children of Israel.

And what English! Tyndale’s translation of a large part of the Bible and Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer made of English a language fit for sacred themes and devotion. Cranmer’s was a very distinct achievement. Whereas Tyndale was the heir to previous experiments in turning the Scriptures into English going back to Wycliffe’s version, there had never been a liturgy in English.

But one of the functions of a liturgy is to preserve words and the possibility of an approach to God which is hard or impossible to express in the language of the street.

Cranmer distilled his liturgy from his studies of the Christian past and especially of the patristic period – the first five centuries; the springtime of the Church.

In the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer, of 1549, he appeals to the authority of the “auncient fathers” as a guide in liturgical matters. Queen Elizabeth I, in her letter to the Roman Catholic Princes of Europe, amplified the point “that there was no new faith propagated in England, no new religion set up but that which was commanded by Our Saviour, practised by the Primitive Church and approved by the Fathers of the best antiquity”.

But the liturgical inheritance was drastically pruned and simplified. The accent was on hearing and understanding not on seeing as in the theatre of late mediaeval religion.

There was, however, growing opposition to any set form of liturgy. The Puritans valued spontaneity and the unpremeditated devotional voice and privileged original sermons and prayers over readings from liturgical texts. They also resented the traditional sources from which the Prayer Book was composed.

The survival of symbols like the ring in marriage and the signing of the cross in baptism was attacked as was even the simplified version of traditional clerical vesture. Milton excoriated traditional vestments as “guegaws fetched from Aaron’s old wardrobe”.

The agitation against the Prayer Book led to its suppression during the Commonwealth but the sufferings of Prayer Book loyalists during that period gave the book a powerful aura which contributed to its restoration with the monarchy. Our Book of Common Prayer was annexed to the Act of Uniformity which received Royal Assent in May 1662 and so became a part of the law of England. It remains a doctrinal standard for the Church and an indispensable part of our identity.

In a book published in 1662, Simon Patrick comments on the rites and ceremonies of divine worship and approves “that virtuous mediocrity which our church observes between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.” Of course we would be too polite to say such things now but the Prayer Book offers a simple and moderate system for a whole life from baptism to last rites and seeks in its rubrics and ceremonies to embrace the whole person and not merely the cerebellum.

In more recent times both the Bible and the Prayer Book have been more and more edited out of public discourse and increasingly also expelled from school. Cultural amnesia is supposed to be a gateway to a kinder and more tolerant world while there has also been a cult of the new-fangled.

There was a fascinating example of the lingering antipathy to our cultural and religious inheritance in the reaction to the Royal Wedding in Westminster Abbey last year. In the acres of commentary in the secular press there was no criticism of the couple’s decision to use the traditional language form of the service. Then a week later the Church Times published letters from clergy expressing exasperation “that the language of the liturgy remained buried in the past” and “that once again the opportunity to present the church in a more up to date way was missed”.

A week after that, however, another clergyman wrote to point out that the three who had decried the “stuffy service” were born respectively in 1960; 1951 and 1937. The royal couple [born 1982] had chosen the service and the author of the letter observed that “it would appear that nothing dates so rapidly as yesterday’s modernity”.

Thanks to the labours of the Liturgical Commission the influence of the Prayer Book in the new Book of Common Worship is more prominent and we still have direct access to the original.

There is a challenge in every generation to distinguish between tradition, the living stream of spirit-filled wisdom, and traditionalism, which is the obstinate attachment to the mores of the day before yesterday.

We live at a time when there is an urgent need to articulate a fresh narrative about the English nation now enriched as it is in this great cosmopolitan city with people who bring their own distinctive narratives. After the financial crisis what we seem to be offered so frequently is the prospect of a return to “normality” defined in exclusively economic terms. Is it not already clear that we must prepare for a new normal, a narrative about Our Island Story which is realistic about our changed place in the world but which contains the seeds of hope?

The Book of Common Prayer which immerses us in the whole symphony of scripture; which takes us through the Psalms every month; which makes available in a digestible but noble way the treasury of ancient Christian devotion has a beauty which is ancient but also fresh. If our civilisation is to have a future the roots must be irrigated and the texts which we choose to pass on to our children have the power to create a community which does not merely dwell in the flatlands of getting and spending but which sees visions with prophets, pursues wisdom with Solomon and lives with the generosity of the God who so loved the world that he was generous and gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Dr. Robert Godfrey's "Modest Effort" to Address Worship

Hint, hint, wink, wink...try that
"old Book of Common Prayer"

          The Rev. Dr. Robert Godfrey, the President of Westminster Seminary, Escondido, makes an effort to distinquish “Evangelical” from “Reformed” worship.  One might hope for more, but the hope would be frustrated.  This comes nowhere near to expectations that Confessional Anglicans have.   Dr. Godfrey is a wonderful Reformed brother, a distinguished teacher, a competent historian of the Reformation, and a leader of a wonderful group of scholars seeking a “Recovery of the Reformed Confessions” (e.g. Dr. R. Scott Clark’s book).  However, as a liturgist and musicologist, we find little here of merit. It's a tepid piece.

http://theaquilareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7281%3Aworship-evangelical-or-reformed&catid=79%3Acommentary&Itemid=137

Worship: Evangelical or Reformed?

Opinion and Commentary

Written by W. Robert Godfrey

Tuesday, 15 May 2012 00:00

One great difficulty that we Reformed folk have in thinking about worship is that our worship in many places has unwittingly been accommodated to evangelical ways. If we are to appreciate our Reformed heritage in worship and, equally importantly, if we are to communicate its importance, character, and power to others, we must understand the distinctive character of our worship. One of the challenges of being Reformed in America is to figure out the relationship between what is evangelical and what is Reformed. Protestantism in America is dominated by the mainline Protestants, the evangelicals, and the charismatics. After these dominant groups, other major players would include the confessional Lutherans. But where do the Reformed fit in, particularly in relation to the evangelicals, with whom historically we have been most closely linked? Some observers argue that the confessional Reformed are a subgroup in the broader evangelical movement. Certainly over the centuries in America, the Reformed have often allied themselves with the evangelicals, have shared much in common with the evangelicals, and have often tried to refrain from criticizing the evangelical movement. But are we Reformed really evangelical? One area in which the differences between evangelical and Reformed can be examined is the matter of worship. At first glance, we may see more similarities than differences. The orders of worship in Reformed and evangelical churches can be almost identical. Certainly, both kinds of churches sing songs, read Scripture, pray, preach, and administer baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But do these similarities reflect only formal agreement, or do they represent a common understanding of the meaning and function of these liturgical acts in worship? If we look closely, I believe that we will see the substantive differences between evangelicals and Reformed on worship. That difference is clear on two central issues: first, the understanding of the presence of God in the service; and second, the understanding of the ministerial office in worship. The Presence of God in Worship The presence of God in worship may seem a strange issue to raise. Do we not both believe that God is present with his people in worship? Indeed we do! But how is God present, and how is he active in our worship? It seems to me that for evangelicalism, God is present in worship basically to listen. He is not far away; rather, he is intimately and lovingly present to observe and hear the worship of his people. He listens to their praise and their prayers. He sees their obedient observance of the sacraments. He hears their testimonies and sharing. He attends to the teaching of his Word, listening to be sure that the teaching is faithful and accurate. The effect of this sense of evangelical worship is that the stress is on the horizontal dimension of worship. The sense of warm, personal fellowship, and participation among believers at worship is crucial. Anything that increases a sense of involvement, especially on the level of emotions, is likely to be approved. The service must be inspiring and reviving, and then God will observe and be pleased. The Reformed faith has a fundamentally different understanding of the presence of God. God is indeed present to hear. He listens to the praise and prayers of his people. But he is also present to speak. God is not only present as an observer; he is an active participant. He speaks in the Word and in the sacraments. As Reformed Christians, we do not believe that he speaks directly and immediately to us in the church. God uses means to speak. But he speaks truly and really to us through the means that he has appointed for his church. In the ministry of the Word—as it is properly preached and ministered in salutation and benediction—it is truly God who speaks. As the Second Helvetic Confession rightly says, “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” God is also actively present and speaking in the sacraments, according to the Reformed understanding. The sacraments are much more about him than about us. He speaks through them the reality of the presence of Jesus to bless his people as he confirms his gospel truth and promises through them. The effect of this understanding of Reformed worship is that the stress is on the vertical dimension of worship. The horizontal dimension is not absent, but the focus is not on warm feelings and sharing. Rather, it is on the community as a unit meeting their God. Our primary fellowship with one another is in the unified activities of speaking to God in song and prayer and of listening together as God speaks to us. The vertical orientation of our worship service insures that God is the focus of our worship. The first importance of any act of worship is not its value for the inspiration of the people, but its faithfulness to God’s revelation of his will for worship. We must meet with God only in ways that please him. The awe and joy that is ours in coming into the presence of the living God to hear him speak is what shapes and energizes our worship service. The Ministerial Office in Worship The difference between the Reformed faith and evangelicalism on the presence of God in worship is closely tied to their differences on the ministerial office in worship. For evangelicalism, the ministers seem to be seen as talented and educated members of the congregation, called by God to leadership in planning and teaching. The ministers use their talents to facilitate the worship of the congregation and instruct the people. The ministers are not seen as speaking distinctively for God or having a special authority from God. Rather, their authority resides only in the reliability of their teaching, which would be true for any member of the congregation. The effect of this evangelical view of office is to create a very democratic character to worship, in which the participation of many members of the congregation in leading the service is a good thing. The more who can share, the better. The many gifts that God has given to members of the congregation should be used for mutual edification. Again, the horizontal dimension of worship has prevailed. The Reformed view of ministerial office is quite different. The minister is called by God through the congregation to lead worship by the authority of his office. He is examined and set apart to represent the congregation before God and to represent God before the congregation. In the great dialogue of worship, he speaks the Word of God to the people and he speaks the words of the people to God, except in those instances when the congregation as a whole raises its voice in unison to God. We who are Reformed do not embrace this arrangement because we are antidemocratic or because we believe that the minister is the only gifted member of the congregation. We follow this pattern because we believe that it is biblical and the divinely appointed pattern of worship. The effect of this view of office is to reinforce the sense of meeting with God in a reverent and official way. It also insures that those who lead public worship have been called and authorized for that work by God. The Reformed are rightly suspicious of untrained and unauthorized members of the congregation giving longer or shorter messages to the congregation. In worship we gather to hear God, not the opinions of members. The vertical dimension of worship remains central. Conclusion The contrast that I have drawn between evangelical and Reformed worship no doubt ought to be nuanced in many ways. I have certainly tried to make my points by painting with a very broad brush. Yet the basic analysis, I believe, is correct. One great difficulty that we Reformed folk have in thinking about worship is that our worship in many places has unwittingly been accommodated to evangelical ways. If we are to appreciate our Reformed heritage in worship and, equally importantly, if we are to communicate its importance, character, and power to others, we must understand the distinctive character of our worship. Our purpose in making this contrast so pointed is not to demean evangelicals. They are indeed our brethren and our friends. But we do have real differences with them. If Reformed worship is not to become as extinct as the dinosaurs, we as Reformed people must come to a clear understanding of it and an eager commitment to it. In order to do that, we must see not just formal similarities, but more importantly the profound theological differences that distinguish evangelical worship from Reformed worship. Dr. Robert Godfrey is president of Westminster Theological Seminary in California and a minister in the United Reformed Churches. This article is reprinted, with permission, from New Horizons, April 2002