Why we need a liturgy from the 16th and 17th centuries

Two statements made in recent days regarding the relevance of Prayer Book tradition are worth considering.  The first is a pastoral letter by the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Springfield, Daniel Martins:

The petition in the Great Litany for deliverance from “plague, pestilence, and famine” has always struck me as a quaint holdover from an earlier era—a time before knowledge about microbes, a time before the discovery of antibiotics, a time before structured financial markets that keep prosperity on track.

I have changed my estimation of this petition. It now feels very contemporary, very relevant. The COVID19 pandemic qualifies as plague and pestilence by any measure. All of our lives are disrupted, and some of our lives will be ended. And it qualifies as famine, I think, not because there are any actual food shortages looming on the horizon (the appearance of some grocery store shelves to the contrary), but because of the incalculable disruption to the national and world economy due to the anti-epidemic practices that have needed to be adopted. People’s livelihoods have evaporated overnight, and unexpected poverty will ensue. 

A 16th century petition "now feels very contemporary, very relevant" because we are recognising that 16th century experiences - plague, significant threats to communal economic stability - are more common to human society than the peace and prosperity assumed by late 20th century Western liberal societies.  We previously have had warning of this.  The post-9/11 world reminded us of the relevance of the experience of religious strife, of "battle and murder", of "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion" in the 16th and 17th centuries.  The Great Crash of 2008 exposed the profound economic disorders and injustices in our society, reminding us that petitions for "all that are desolate and oppressed" are not an archaic pre-welfare state concern.  The increasing recognition of the threats posed to biodiversity and the impact of climate change made the petition "to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth" relevant in way obscured by the hubris of industrialised agriculture and a globalised economy.

In other words, precisely because Cranmer's Litany is rooted in the experiences of the 16th century it has more relevance than liturgies shaped by the assumptions of late 20th century Western liberal societies, assumptions increasingly exposed as deluded by the experience of the early 21st century.

Secondly, from Angela Tilby's Church Times column:

Our theology of divine providence is pretty weak these days. We assume that a loving God could want only the best for us, with “best” often being rather lazily defined as whatever is safe, profitable, or fulfilling. 

But look at the Prayer Book and you will find a very different perspective. The prayer in time of plague or sickness is anything but reassuring. The order for the visitation of the sick urges those who are ill to recognise God’s visitation not necessarily as a warning or punishment, but always as an opportunity for spiritual growth. We are meant to see the hand of God even in those things that threaten our well-being. 

It is a summary of the chief characteristics of late 20th century Western liberalism: "whatever is safe, profitable, or fulfilling".  The banality of such values, and their inability to articulate meaning for communal life, is exposed by crisis.  Crisis, personal or communal, becomes a call to identify and embody more authentic meaning and purpose.  Good liturgy - another way of saying serious liturgy - brings us to recognise this through its theology of divine providence.  As Tilby implies, contemporary liturgies too often miserably fail precisely because they replaced a robust theology of providence embracing crisis with the assumptions of late 20th century Western liberalism: that God's purposes for us are merely "whatever is safe, profitable, or fulfilling".  Such liturgies, then, fail to resonate in times of crisis, when what is safe, profitable, or fulfilling melts away, exposed as insubstantial.

Tilby ends her column with lines that echo the Prayer Book's Order for the Visitation of the Sick:

In times of sickness, we should, of course, preach God’s love for all his creatures, especially the afflicted. But we should also remember that what we most need is healing from selfishness: pride, greed, envy. Panic-buying and neglect of hygiene are sinful. 

In the words of one of the prayers in the Visitation of the Sick:

Sanctify, we beseech thee, this thy fatherly correction to him; that the sense of his weakness may add strength to his faith, and seriousness to his repentance: that, if it shall be thy good pleasure to restore him to his former health, he may lead the residue of his life in thy fear, and to thy glory.

Liturgy grounded in the assumptions of late 20th century Western societies is incapable of meaningfully addressing key historic norms: conflict, injustice, pandemic.  Because such liturgies are shaped by "whatever is safe, profitable, or fulfilling", they cannot gather up in prayer our experiences of crisis in the way that can be done by a liturgy rooted in a historic era characterised by a recognition of the normative nature of such experiences. 

The fears and anxieties, sickness and mortality, greed and panic of these Covid-19 days shows us that we need a liturgy rooted in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time more like our own than the comfortable illusions of late 20th century Western societies.