Anglicans of the Booklet or the Book of Common Prayer

With the advent of low cost printing and word processors, Anglicans have become “booklet people,” at least in the USA. Overlooked is the dramatic change that has occurred in Anglicanism these past decades; Anglicans have gone from being Book of Common Prayer people to Booklet people. While economics and convenience have paved the way, and the addition of color and textured paper has made it a super-highway, our Anglican heritage as a prayer book people has reduced us to “Booklet” Christians. This process continues as every parish, diocese, and liturgical commission releases yet another liturgical booklet.

Booklets do have an important role in our missionary and evangelism efforts. For newcomers, a Book of Common Prayer can be overwhelming. When we add that to the continuous movement of sitting, standing, and kneeling, it may bring confusion or at least frustration. For newcomers, a booklet with a straight, sequential, seamless flow of liturgy is a great tool for introducing the concept of liturgy, especially among those who have never worshipped in a liturgical church, or perhaps in any church.

Our bishops and clergy need to ask, "How many of our people carry their own Book of Common Prayer when we gather for worship?" In my youth, the Book of Common Prayer was presented as a gift at Confirmation or given to some at First Communion. It was not unusual to find our name stamped in gold on the leather cover. There was a sense of ownership, not so much of the bound pages, but of the prayers themselves. Almost everyone in our congregations carried their prayer books with them to church.

We need to ask this question, not because of mere nostalgia since most of us know that our local vicar always had his own way of doing the service, thus making the Book of Common Prayer text just a little out of step. The reason the Book of Common Prayer was carried, not just to Sunday service, but to the hospital, to church camp, and even on vacation for some, was because we were bringing along a devotional book. The prayers were those we learned and prayed. It was kept on night stands and end tables because they were used by their owners. Most Anglicans read, mark, learned and inwardly digested their favorite prayers, sometimes more than their Bibles. Ribbon markers were moved Proper by Proper through the Liturgical Year. If by chance we forgot to bring our Book of Common Prayer to services, we were forced to use a pew copy, an unmarked and an unfamiliar book. Sadly, this familiarity with the Book of Common Prayer has been lost for at least one generation of Anglicans, and in most of the USA, lost to two generations or more.

Many of the recent prayer books introduced around Anglicanism during the past forty years have increased in volume and have multiplied the number of liturgical options. The page count has increased from 350 pages in 1549 to nearly 1,000 now less than five centuries later. Some recent books are more like liturgical manuals than devotional books for Anglicans in their life of prayer.

Some helpful innovations, such as the recapturing of ancient prayers of the Anglican tradition, and even some reform may be found in these recent books. However, the only attempt at returning to a devotional Book of Common Prayer was the admirable work of Peter Toon (An Anglican Prayer Book, 2008). Dr. Toon not only modernized the language of the BCP1662, but  also designed it to be prayed by Anglicans at home as well as on Sunday morning. This prayer book was not a true Book of Common Prayer as it omitted omitted much of the historic content; instead, I believe that Dr. Toon wanted his volume to be devotional in nature and usage for Anglicans at the advent of revival in North America.

In the past decade or more, the need for a truly modern language Book of Common Prayer had been recognized by many Anglicans in the United States and Canada. Our mission outreach and even our history leads us to have a liturgy in the “language of the people.” We have been "Book of Common Prayer people." Quietly, committee work had been done to update existing liturgies, releasing a liturgy or two at a time as booklets. Even among my own Reformed Episcopal Church, the latest revised liturgies, approved in the summer of 2011, are booklets. Likewise, the Anglican Church in North America brought to the College of Bishops the liturgies of ordination in the form of the Ordinal booklet. More and more congregations are having booklets printed with their Sunday liturgies. Yes, I have Booklet for my congregation, my appropriate two-by-four for this Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Luke 6.36-42 in the historic Sunday Propers).

In the Anglican Church in North America, the Anglican Mission, and many other mainline Anglicans in North America, there is no agreed-upon Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer 1662 and all those earlier are the theological norm of the ACNA Constitution, but very few would readily use the 1662, 1559, 1552, 1549, or Sarum Missal for their Sunday liturgies. Booklets with various adaptations abound. Honestly, very few of those booklets make it into our homes to become devotional prayer material for Anglicans. Booklets are seen as temporary, the content not permanent enough to warrant a bound edition.

The Book of Common Prayer 2011 (bcp2011.info) was intentionally released as a complete prayer book, crafted to be, once again, a devotional Book of Common Prayer. The BCP2011 was written for use not just in liturgical settings but in the homes of Anglicans. The Family Prayers were crafted to be devotional while retaining their historic roots. In keeping with Anglican practice, the service of Holy Communion is written in more formal language than the more devotional prayers of healing. While the BCP2011 needs to be measured to the standard of Anglican faith and worship, its true measure is its use as a devotional prayer book. Does the BCP2011 help the people of Anglicanism return from being "Booklet people" to the people of the Book of Common Prayer?