Sunday Morning Prayer: encouragement from an Anglo-Catholic voice

Theologian Andrew Davison is one of the very interesting scholarly voices in contemporary Anglicanism. With Alison Milbank, he wrote For the Parish (2010), a key text for those reasserting the centrality of the parish in the face of the insubstantial alternatives proposed by 'fresh expressions' thinking. Why Sacraments? (2013) offered an engaging sacramental theology, rooted in Catholic thought but also open to Reformed insights. Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine: Exploring the Implications of Life in the Universe (2023) provides a serious Christian approach to the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (2020) provides one of the most significant contemporary explorations of a theme which has gained renewed attention in both Catholic and Protestant thought. 

Davison is, then, a weighty theological voice. He also stands firmly within the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Both of these factors give added significance to a recent Church Times column in which he urged "We need to take preparation for communion more seriously". Central to his call is a recognition that it is time to reconsider the consequences of the Parish Communion movement:

However enthusiastic one might be about giving first place to the eucharist, it is difficult to deny that one consequence has been less reverence in approaching the Lord’s table, and less by way of preparation. Contrast that with the Prayer Book’s exhortation that we must “consider the dignity of that holy mystery, and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof . . . search and examine your own consciences . . . that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.”

What might an answer to this? Davison points to those who have continued an earlier Anglican pattern, in which "matins had often been the main Sunday service most weeks":

As we seek to explore and revive greater dedication to preparation for communion, it may be that some of the churches where the eucharist is not celebrated so often have preserved some of the earlier Anglican seriousness around these matters, and, in that, can teach the rest of us.

This is a reminder - as laudable Practice has sought to emphasise - that the earlier pattern has not disappeared everywhere: it "is not a lost tradition". Davison's words are an encouragement to Anglicanism to consider what might be learnt from those places which continue this tradition, what strengths it may exhibit, and how a pattern of more regular Sunday Morning Prayer, with the Eucharist as a main service perhaps fortnightly or monthly, can be a means of preparation for the Sacrament.

He also echoes another significant Anglo-Catholic voice, that of Michael Ramsey in his famous essay 'The Parish Communion', in suggesting that the widespread disappearance of Sunday Morning Prayer has been a spiritual loss:

If slackening reverence has been one danger of shifts in liturgical practice, the other has been a loss of familiarity with other forms of Anglican worship. Even devout Anglicans may not now be familiar with the treasures that are morning and evening prayer, once so central to public and private devotion. It would be good to see them offered more often on Sunday, not necessarily instead of communion, and, indeed, during the week.

Davison here provides something of a 21st century restatement of Ramsey's call:

I believe ... that there is still much to be learnt from the Matins and Sermon whereby congregations were nurtured in the Scriptures.

Ramsey's essay emerged close to the beginning of the Parish Communion movement. It would be an exaggeration to say that Davison's call comes at the end of that movement - Parish Communion, after all, remains the normal Sunday service for most Anglicans in North Atlantic societies. But, over half a century on from the Parish Communion movement reshaping Sunday worship for many Anglicans, Davison wisely asks us to pause and consider what might be learnt from those who retained Sunday Morning Prayer as a main service. 

What I found particularly encouraging about Davison's article was the respect he shows to that older Anglican pattern of Sunday Morning Prayer:

This calls us to think together, letting the variety of our experience count as a strength, drawing on our shared heritage, not least in the Book of Common Prayer.

Contrasted with the casual dismissal of Sunday Morning Prayer by some, to have a weighty theological voice from within the Anglo-Catholic tradition urge a respectful consideration of the practice is important. What is more, the reference to the Book of Common Prayer is also significant, not least because Sunday Morning Prayer - whether it is 1662 (and variants) or a contemporary language version (e.g. Church of Ireland BCP 2004, Order Two) - almost always follows the Cranmerian structure of the office, as opposed to alternatives.

Hopefully Andrew Davison's call will result in some thought being given to the experience of those churches which have retained or reintroduced Sunday Morning Prayer, the value they see in this in terms of divine worship, teaching, and relationship to the Holy Communion, and how Morning Prayer can be a main Sunday liturgy in a range of different contexts.

As I have said previously, those of us who are advocates of Sunday Morning Prayer as a main service should be seeking reform, not revolution: not an overturning everywhere of the Parish Communion, but, rather, encouraging those who retain the practice of Sunday Morning Prayer, guiding those who think its reintroduction would be of benefit to congregations, and articulating the case for it as a vibrant, lively expression of contemporary Anglicanism. Andrew Davison, from within the Anglo-Catholic tradition, has offered important, thoughtful, and welcome encouragement. The best response to his article from advocates of Sunday Morning Prayer, and those churches which retain it, will be to consider how such a main Sunday liturgy can nurture and sustain Christians, aid in drawing others into Christian Faith, and prepare us to receive the holy Sacrament.