The official directory of worship or service-book of the Church of England, widely honoured and followed in churches of the Anglican Communion. Largely composed by Archbishop Cranmer, it was first introduced in 1549, and revised in 1552, 1604, and finally 1662. Until 1975, revisions in England required the approval of Parliament. It is generally considered a landmark of English prose.
| Christianity Portal |
The Book of Common Prayer is the foundational prayer book of the Church of England which was one of the instruments of the Protestant Reformation in England, also adapted and revised for use in other churches in the Anglican Communion). It remains, in law, the primary liturgical prayer book of the Church of England though it has, in practice, been largely replaced by more modern prayer books, the latest of which is Common Worship. A modern liturgical text bearing the BCP name is widely used in the Episcopal Church of America as well as some Methodist churches.
History
The Prayer Books of Edward VI
The work of producing English language books for use in the liturgy was, at the outset, the work of Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, under the reign of Henry VIII. His first work, the earliest English-language service book of the Church of England, was the Exhortation and Litany.
It was included, one year later, in 1549, in a full prayer book, set out with a daily office, readings for Sundays and Holy Days, the Communion Service, Public Baptism, of Confirmation, of Matrimony, The Visitation of the Sick, At a Burial and the Ordinal (added in 1550). The Preface to this edition, which contained Cranmer's explanation as to why a new prayer book was necessary, began: "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted".
The 1549 introduction of the Book of Common Prayer was widely unpopular especially in places such as Cornwall where traditional religious processions and pilgrimages were banned and commissioners sent out to remove all symbols of Roman Catholicism. At the time the Cornish only spoke their native Cornish language and the forced introduction of the English Book of Common Prayer resulted in the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion. Proposals to translate the Prayer Book into Cornish were suppressed and in total some 4,000 people lost their lives in the rebellion.
The 1552 prayer book marked a considerable change. The part of the prayer which followed, the Prayer of Oblation, was transferred, much changed, to a position after the congregation had received communion. The words at the administration of communion which, in the prayer book of 1549 described the eucharistic species as 'The body of our Lorde Jesus Christe...', 'The blood of our Lorde Jesus Christe...' were replaced with the words 'Take, eat, in remembrance that Christ died for thee..' etc. This new Order for the Burial of the Dead was a drastically stripped-down memorial service designed to definitively undermine the whole complex of traditional beliefs about Purgatory and intercessory prayer.
Before the book was in general use, however, Edward VI died. Nevertheless, the 1552 book was to survive. After Mary's death in 1558,it became the primary source for the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, with subtle if significant changes only, and Cranmer's work was to survive until the 1920s as the only authorised book in the Church of England.
The 1559 prayer book
Thus, under Elizabeth, a more permanent enforcement of the Reformed religion was undertaken, and the 1552 book was republished in 1559, along with laws requiring conformity to the new standards. In its Elizabethan form, scarcely altered, it was used for nearly 100 years, thus being the official prayer book under the Stuarts as well as being the first Anglican service in America. This was the prayer book of Queen Elizabeth I, John Donne, and Richard Hooker.
The alterations of the 1559 Prayer Book from its 1552 precursor, though minor, were to cast a long shadow. were combined with the words of Edward's second book, 'Take eat in remembrance..' etc.
Still, the 1559 Prayer Book offered enough to both traditionalists and radical reformers to establish it at the heart of the first relatively stable Protestant state in Europe -- the "Elizabethan settlement." However, on her death in 1603, this book, substantially the book of 1552, having been regarded as offensive by the likes of Bishop Stephen Gardiner in the sixteenth century as being a break with the tradition of the Western church, as it was, by the seventeenth century had come to be regarded as unduly Catholic. Government-inspired petitions for the removal of the prayer book and episcopacy 'root and branch' resulted in local disquiet in many places and eventually the production of locally organised counter petitions. The 1559 book was finally outlawed by Parliament in 1645 to be replaced by the Directory of Public Worship which was more a set of instructions than a prayer book. The Prayer Book certainly was used clandestinely in some places, not least because the Directory made no provision at all for burial services.
The 1662 prayer book
The 1662 prayer book was printed only two years after the restoration of the monarchy, following the Savoy Conference convened by Royal Warrant to review the book of 1559. Attempts by Presbyterians led by Richard Baxter to gain approval for an alternative service book were in vain. In reply to the Presbyterian Exceptions to the book only fifteen trivial changes were made to the book of 1559. This was achieved by the insertion of the words 'and oblations' into the prayer for the Church and the revision of the rubric so as to require the monetary offerings to be brought to the Table (instead of being put in the poor box) and the bread and wine placed upon the Table. Unable to accept the new book 2,000 Presbyterians were deprived of their livings. In practice, most services in the Church of England are from Common Worship, approved by General Synod in 2000, following nearly forty years of experiment. This book was the one which had existed as the official Book of Common Prayer during the most monumental periods of growth of the British empire, and, as a result, has been a great influence on the prayer books of Anglican churches worldwide, liturgies of other denominations in English, and of the English language as a whole.
Further developments
After the 1662 prayer book, development ceased in England until the twentieth century; This work, however, did go on to influence the prayer books of many British colonies.
By the 19th century other pressures upon the book of 1662 had arisen. Adherents of the Oxford Movement, begun in 1833, raised questions about the relationship of the Church of England to the apostolic church and thus about its forms of worship. Known as Tractarians after their production of 'Tracts for the Times' on theological issues, they advanced the case for the Church of England being essentially a part of the 'Western Church', of which the Roman Catholic Church was the chief representative. Following a Royal Commission report in 1906, work began on a new prayer book, work that was to take twenty years.
In 1927, this proposed prayer book was finished. With these open guidelines the book was granted approval by the Church of England Convocations and Church Assembly. Since the Church of England is a state church, a further step—sending the proposed revision to Parliament—was required, and the book was rejected in December of that year when the MP William Joynson-Hicks argued strongly against it on the grounds that the proposed book was "papistical" and insufficiently Protestant. The next year was spent revising the book to make it more suitable for Parliament, but it was rejected yet again in 1928. However Convocation declared a state of emergency and authorised bishops to use the revised Book throughout that emergency.
The effect of the failure of the 1928 book was salutary: no further attempts were made to change the book, other than those required for the changes to the monarchy. Instead a different process, that of producing an alternative book, led eventually to the publication of the 1980 Alternative Service Book and subsequently to the 2000 Common Worship series of books. Both owe much to the Book of Common Prayer and the latter includes in the Order Two form of the Holy Communion a very slight revision of the prayer book service altering only one or two words and allowing the insertion of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) before Communion. It is a compromise of material drawn from the proposed 1928 book, the 1979 ECUSA book, and the Roman Missal.
Prayer books in other Anglican churches
A number of other nations have developed Anglican churches and their own revisions of the Book of Common Prayer. Several are listed here:
USA
The Episcopal Church in the United States of America has produced numerous prayer books since the inception of the church in 1789. Work on the first book began in 1786 and was subsequently finished and published in 1789. The preface thereto mentions that "this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship...further than local circumstances require," and the text was almost identical to that of the 1662 English book with but minor variations. Further revisions to the prayer book in the United States occurred in 1892, 1928, and 1979. the version of 1979 reflected a radical departure from the historic Book of Common Prayer, and led to substantial controversy and the breaking away of a number of parishes from the ECUSA. The typeface used for the book is Sabon.
Australia
The Anglican Church of Australia has successively issued several local versions of the Book of Common Prayer. The current edition is A Prayer Book For Australia (1995). The extreme theological divergence between Australia's largest and most prosperous diocese, the deeply conservatively evangelical Diocese of Sydney, and the rest of the Australian church has not proved as problematic for prayer book revisers as one might have supposed, as Sydney frowns on prayer books, as it does other conventionally Anglican appurtenances such as communion tables, robed clergy, and chanted and sung liturgies.
Canada
The Anglican Church of Canada developed its first Book of Common Prayer separate from the English version in 1918. This edition, is considered the last Anglican Prayer Book (in the classic sense, though some churches, such as the USA and Ireland, have named their contemporary liturgies "Prayer Books"). Some supplements have been developed over the past several years to the prayer book, but the compendious Book of Alternative Services, published in 1985, which inter alia contains rites couched in Prayer Book phraseology, has largely supplanted it.
Scotland
The Scottish Episcopal Church has had a number of revisions to the Book of Common Prayer since it was first adapted for Scottish use in 1637. These revisions were developed simultaneously with the English book till the mid-17th century when the Scottish book departed from the English revisions.
Papua New Guinea
The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, separated from the ecclesiastical province of Brisbane in 1977 after Papua New Guinea's independence from Australia, contends with the unusual problem that its adherents are largely concentrated in one province, Northern, whose inhabitants are largely Orokaiva speakers, little acquainted with the country's largest lingua franca, New Guinea Pidgin (see Tok Pisin). The Anglican Province has settled on a simple-English prayer book along the lines of the Good News Bible, including simple illustrations.
Religious influence
The Book of Common Prayer has had a great influence on a number of other denominations. While theologically different, the language and flow of the service of many other churches owes a great debt to the prayer book.
John Wesley, an Anglican priest whose teachings constitute the foundations of Methodism said, "I believe there is no Liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety than the Common Prayer of the Church of England." Presently, most Methodist churches have a very similar service and theology to those of the Anglican church. The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992, ISBN 0-687-03572-4) uses the Book of Common Prayer as its primary model.
In the 1960s, when Roman Catholicism adopted a vernacular revised mass, many translations of the English prayers followed the form of Cranmer's translation.
Secular influence
On Sunday 23 July 1637 efforts by King Charles I to impose Anglican services on the Church of Scotland led to the Book of Common Prayer revised for Scottish use being introduced in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. Rioting in opposition began when Dean John Hanna began to read from the new Book of Prayer, legendarily initiated by the market-woman or street-seller Jenny Geddes throwing her stool at his head.
Together with the King James Version of the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer has been one of the three fundamental underpinnings of modern English. Many authors have used quotes from the prayer book as titles for their books.
Copyright status
In most of the world the Book of Common Prayer can be freely reproduced as it is long out of copyright.
In the United Kingdom, the rights to the Book of Common Prayer are held by the British Crown. Publishers are licensed to reproduce the Book of Common Prayer under letters patent. Other letters patent of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Book of Common Prayer independently of the Queen's Printer.
The terms of the letters patent prohibit those other than the holders, or those authorised by the holders from printing, publishing or importing the Book of Common Prayer into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Book of Common Prayer, and also the Authorised Version, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom.
It is common misconception that the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office holds letters patent for being Queen's Printer.
As mentioned above, the American book is always released into the public domain. Trial use and supplemental liturgies are however copyrighted by Church Publishing, the official publishing arm of the church.
User Comments Add a comment…