Celebrating 450 Years of the BCP by The Reverend C W McPherson

This originally appeared in the Episcopal New Yorker and is used here with their kind permission

There are two kinds of family heirlooms. The first is the rare and fragile kind, kept under lock and key or deep in a bureau drawer, brought out for family view on very special occasions, rich in memories. It is often of great material value; to the family, naturally, it is irreplaceable. The second is the useful kind: a custom, a recipe, a favourite set of utensils or box of tools, a family album everyone likes to thumb through whenever the mood strikes. This may have little or no material value, but to a family, it is as irreplaceable as the other kind.

Our parish family, like many in the centuries-old Diocese of New York, has several heirlooms of the first type; old vessels, old record books and so on, which we keep locked away and use, or even just look at, only on very special occasions. They are part of who we are, part of our local historical heritage. But we also have heirlooms of the second kind; things we have inherited and which we treasure, but which we constantly use, constantly handle. Even more than the first type of heirloom, these remind us of who we are, reinforce our sense of family, confirm our identity. And chief among these is an heirloom we share not only with everyone else in the diocese but with sister parishes around the world: the Book of Common Prayer.

June 9 marks the Prayer Book's 450th anniversary

June 9 marks the 450th anniversary of the Prayer Book. It's a good round number. Very often, on anniversaries and birthdays, we naturally think back, trying to understand the significance and the value of the event or the person celebrated on the occasion. This is an especially good idea for an heirloom such as the Book of Common Prayer because it is an heirloom of the second type, one we use very often, one with which we feel very familiar, one we are used to, we begin to take it for granted, and assume we know all about it.

It is all the more important now and then to treat it with the kind of patient respect we give to the rare and delicate treasure, for though it is neither rare nor delicate, it is beyond value, and its history is intimately involved with our identity as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, and as Christian men and women. It is a very significant part of who we are.

What inspired it into being? What, then, was its original background? What was going on, what was the religious context, in the early sixteenth century? What inspired or provoked it into being? The answer of course is a chapter in the history of the Western reformation. The Medieval church had accomplished great things - massive superstructures in stone (Gothic cathedrals) or word (the theological works of the scholastic theologians), magnificent liturgies, lovely works of art, and deep and abiding contributions to the world of spirituality.

But, as the poet Yeats says, "things fall apart"; by the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the foundation could no longer hold. The theological world was fragmented, bewildering, chaotic. The Dutch historian Jan Huizinga summed it up in his classic work on the period, The Waning of the Middle Ages: "the Church [was] being overloaded."

Worship, for example, was certainly overloaded. The experience of corporate prayer - which common sense tells us should be a unifying experience - was divisive, confusing, and obscure. A multiplicity of service books made things confusing. An hierarchical vision, centred in the priesthood, made it divisive. And the now-unfamiliar Latin language made it obscure (so obscure that a Bavarian priest pronounced a blessing in the name of the "Father, Daughter, and Holy Spirits" - not, unfortunately, because of some early prophetic feminism, just sheer ignorance).

A large part of the rationale for the Book of Common Prayer was to correct these problems. The English reformers, led by the brilliant bishop Thomas Cranmer, determined to produce a service book which would integrate worship, unify the people of God, restore the simplicity of the prayer of the early church, and emphasise the dignity of the priesthood of all the baptised rather than that of the few ordained. In other words, they determined to get it all together.

They published in one volume the entire worship & cultic life of the Church And get it together they did. The 1549 Book of Common Prayer almost miraculously accomplished this entire agenda. First, it published in one volume practically the entire worship and cultic life of the church: the Eucharist (with its various names all printed, so as to include everyone), the Daily Office, all pastoral services (weddings, funerals, ministry to the sick), all episcopal services (ordinations, confirmation). It made the daily round of prayer, which had become almost the exclusive property of monastics and clergy, available to absolutely everybody (this is what the word Common in the title means). It published a rational, simple, seasonally-arranged scheme for reading the entire Bible. It opened with a clear and simple calendar to make the church year understandable throughout the church. And it placed one Biblical book, the Psalms, right in the centre, as the original prayer book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Every word was in English, the language of the people. Second, every word was in the vernacular - in English, the language of the people. The passage of time has dulled the effect of this somewhat. For us, Elizabethan English has become 'prayer book language', sounding somehow more religious or lofty than ordinary speech. In 1549, the effect was quite the opposite.

The words thou and thy, for example, which sound 'prayerful' to many of us now, were in 1549 shockingly familiar words to use in speaking to God. You addressed higher-ups such as the Queen as "you"; only your friends, family, or pets did you call "thou". Yet it was at the time a perfect translation for the childlike prayer which Jesus taught, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done". Most importantly, the words of worship now were the same words people used in everyday speech, so prayer, instead of magic formula, became, as George Herbert says, "something understood".

Emphasising the royal priesthood of all believers

Third, it truly did emphasise the sense of the dignity of the royal priesthood of all believers. The vertical, hierarchical vision of the church which had gradually developed over many centuries was countered by a horizontal, corporate vision which began to understand Baptism, rather than ordination, as the decisive and defining Christian sacrament. The corollary was, everyone in the Church had his or her work to do; every single member had a ministry. Nobody was more important than anybody else; no person stood higher on some invisible Jacob's ladder. If anything, persons in orders were beneath the rest, as servants are supposed to be; bishops, as our own bishop Richard Grein has put it, are beneath it all - for that is where one must stand in order to support others.

This was a radical shift from the Medieval model - more radical than the matter of language. But it was also one aspect of a return to the vision of the early Church - the vision expressed in the earliest Christian writers such as Justin, Ignatius, and Irenaeus, and above all in the New Testament. In this sense, the English Prayer Book was very much in the spirit of the thought of the continental reformers, especially Martin Luther: a return to the integral vision of the undivided Church of the first centuries, a return to scriptural integrity, a return to the basics of the faith.

The great difference was that in other things, the English reformers remained the most conservative. They retained the threefold system of orders, for example - deacon, priest, and bishop - which they saw in embryo in the New Testament and fully developed very early in the history of the Church; they retained the sacramental life, the round of the daily offices, the calendar. Such elements the other reforming churches determined to scrap. In the Book of Common Prayer, they enjoyed, on the contrary, a place of honour.

The BCP was not only fully reformed but completely comprehensive

The result was a Prayer Book which was not only fully reformed, but also completely comprehensive. This is important from the broad perspective of anthropology; it is one of the things that makes the Book of Common Prayer so powerful. Students of human culture such as Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade have emphasised the need for comprehensiveness in religious life. Humans need a sense of the 'sacred', as Eliade puts it, not only once a week, but also 1) on a continual basis, and; 2) at crisis moments in life.

Because it brings together in a rational, handy package so many aspects of our faith life, the Book of Common Prayer accomplishes this like nothing else the Christian world has ever invented. The forms for weekly worship, of course, are there, but so are all the major crisis occasions: birth, sickness, marriage, death. So is the daily service, in the form of the Daily Office - a form of worship designed for everyone, which any baptised person can pray, anywhere. It is 'all' there: The BCP, plus a Bible and a little music The comprehensive aspect does not stop with this, however. The Ordinal (three ordination rites) is there, to perpetuate the life of the Church itself. The calendar is there, to give theological shape to the secular year. The catechism is there, to expand the Creed as a statement of our common belief. The lectionary is there, to guide us through a collective, rational, manageable, and regular reading of our sourcebook, the Bible. The Litany is there, to focus our intercessions during seasons of crisis. Even the rubrics are there as an unobtrusive, but invaluable set of instructions. In a very real sense, it is 'all' there; the Book of Common Prayer - plus a Bible and some music - are all we need to be a Church, and to be individual Christians.

I have deliberately shifted to the present tense in the last two paragraphs. Everything we have said about the comprehensiveness, the reformed quality, the rationality, even the beauty, of the Prayer Book was true in 1549; it is equally true in 1999, and for the third millennium. Though it has not been said nearly often enough, our current Book of Common Prayer has very much achieved for our era what the first Book did for King Edward's.

For one thing, it has, like its ancestor, incorporated much recent research into the life of the New Testament community and the early Church: three of our four Eucharistic Prayers, for example, now date in various ways from the early centuries (the single Eucharistic Prayer in the 1928 USA Prayer Book was of much later origin).

The need for language revision has been met for the first time since the 1549 Book. After all, a language, being a living and dynamic thing, changes decisively over 500 years. And the current Prayer Book is the most comprehensive yet. There are now such things as alternative forms for the Eucharist; full forms for reconciliation of a penitent; a revised and expanded catechism (which reflects modern theology on the one hand and the thought of the Church Fathers and Mothers on the other); and extra daily offices for those who feel their need. In all these matters, our current Book is a faithful descendant of the original. One handy source of history: Anglican and Judeo-Christian There is one more aspect to its greatness, one which we should never take lightly. It has a global, a universal aspect. Our Prayer Book is no quaint relic, or religious artefact, or cultural curio. It represents, it offers in one handy source, the best prayer and thought not only of Episcopal and Anglican history, but of Judeo-Christian tradition. An easy way to appreciate this is simply to consider the Collects (BCP 211-261).

There we have fifty pages of prayers; we use them at the beginning of worship each Sunday, so we use most of them in the course of every year. Perhaps we take them for granted or hardly notice them. But within those fifty pages are prayers from every century of Christian experience, from the earliest days to the twentieth century.

Every race is represented and many nations

There are prayers from every type of Christian vocation: laypersons, deacons, bishops, priests. Every race is represented, and many nations. Most important of all, every thought and feeling which express our relationship to God is there: gratitude, sorrow, anger, penitence, fear, wonder, love, and praise.

All this is true not only for the Collects, but for the Book of Common Prayer as a whole. It is, on the one hand, eminently handy, affordable, and easy to use. Martin Thornton, a superb modern authority in Anglican spirituality, expresses this very well: "[it is] not a shiny volume to be borrowed from a shelf on entering the church and carefully replaced on leaving [but] a beloved and battered personal possession, a lifelong companion and guide, to be carried from church to kitchen, to living room, to bedside table."

On the other hand, it is almost incomparably charged with power and meaning. It is indeed an heirloom, but a living one: one which we can profit from weekly, daily. Its richness lies in its spirituality: it is more than a sourcebook for liturgy and a collection of prayers: it is a catalyst for our individual prayer life. It works; it lives. Celebrate this treasure. Thank God for it. McPherson, Rector of Trinity/St Paul's New Rochelle, is also an author whose latest book, "The Discipline of the Daily Office", (Morehouse Publishing) will be available in the fall.

For further reading:

Besides the Prayer Book itself, three very different good sources are:

Charles Price and Louis Weil, Liturgy for Living, one of the best volumes in the 1970s teaching series;

Marion Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, a gold mine of information;

and the occasional publications of our own Liturgical Commission, which are extremely thoughtful, informed, and congruent with Prayer Book vision.

The first English Prayer Book of 1549 is readily available, and extremely informative, especially when compared with the current BCP.

Try C G Cuming's History of Anglican Liturgy that traces the changes through the centuries.

D Jasper and G Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformedwill help establish the pre-Reformation perspective.

On the theory and theology of worship, Hatchett's Sanctifying Time, Life, and Space is short but excellent.

Jones, Wainwright, and Yarnold, The Study of Liturgy lives up to its title as a thoroughgoing textbook; the companion volume, The Study of Spirituality, is also relevant here.

Eliade can be approached through his Sacred and Profane.

Finally, a good old modern study, revised by Paul Marshall, is Gregory Dix's Shape of the Liturgy.

On the context of the first Book of Common Prayer, I have already mentioned Huizinga's seminal study, The Waning of the Middle Ages.

Owen Chadwick's standard Pelican history, The Reformation, is readily available and sympathetic to the Anglican tradition.