The State Prayers and the Great Republic's convulsions

We need our President, and all who hold office, to be moral leaders who help us to be a people and nation living these values. For the sake of George Floyd, for all who have wrongly suffered, and for the sake of us all, we need leaders to help us to be "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all" - Presiding Bishop Curry.

I also was deeply disappointed that he didn't come to church to pray, he didn't come to church to offer condolences to those who were grieving, he didn't come to commit to healing our nation - all the things that we would expect and long for from the highest leader in the land ... It did not serve the spiritual aspirations or the needed moral leadership that we need - Bishop Budde, Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

The responses of Bishops Curry and Budde to President Trump's recent action outside St John's, Lafayette Square are a reminder of the importance of the state prayers in Anglican liturgy.  Indeed, the convulsions the United States is now experiencing following what former President George W. Bush termed "the brutal suffocation of George Floyd", the result of "systemic racism", is evidence of the urgent need for state prayers.

To be clear at the outset, this is not to suggest that the state prayers are in any way a sufficient response to the profound challenges facing the American Republic.  Peaceful protest, political action, reform of policing, challenging racist ideologies, all of these are required if a just order is to take root.  Alongside this, can we really suggest that the state prayers, routinely viewed as antiquated within contemporary Anglicanism, have significance?

Bishops Curry and Budde both stressed the need for "moral" leadership in the polity.  What is striking about this call is that it follows on from a generation in which the classical Anglican expression of the desire for and definition of moral leadership in the polity - the state prayers - have been sidelined and widely abandoned.  The contrast between the place of the state prayers in BCP 1928 and 1979 is instructive.  In 1928, the Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer include, respectively, 'A Prayer for The President of the United States and all in Civil Authority':

Most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour to behold and bless thy servant THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way.

It is a petition for "moral leadership", for the President and all in civil authority to be oriented to "thy will ... thy way" in their shaping of the common life of the Republic.  Similarly, the 1928 Holy Communion petitions that those in political authority may act "to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue".  Injustice and racism are wicked, to be punished by the magistrate.  As for "thy true religion", it is maintained in the polity when the Church's social teaching is reflected in the just ordering of society, shaping a virtuous community.

These state prayers were routine aspects of the 1928 liturgy.  By contrast, no state prayers are present in the Rite I or II versions of Morning and Evening Prayer in 1979.  In the Rite II Eucharist, prayer for the President is to be found in only one of the six suggested forms, alongside the general and empty "We pray for all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world".  In Rite I, the theologically rich and significant traditional petition is again replaced with something vague, banal and less demanding in its vision of the polity:

We beseech thee also so to rule the hearts of those who bear the authority of government in this and every land [especially             ], that they may be led to wise decisions and right actions for the welfare and peace of the world.

All, however, is not be lost.  In 1979's 'Prayers and Thanksgivings', "for use after the Collects of Morning or Evening Prayer or separately", there are some fine prayers after the classical Anglican manner: for For our Country, For the President of the United States and all in Civil Authority, For Congress or a State Legislature, and For Courts of Justice.  The regular use of such prayers would be a step towards restoring the state prayers.

Part of the historic Anglican vocation - which The Episcopal Church traditionally embraced - has been prayer for the magistrate, a recognition that if the common life of the polity is to be ordered in justice and righteousness, prayer must be consistently offered for those who exercise authority in the polity.  Over the past generation Anglicans have forgotten or abandoned this vocation.  An anti-Christendom theology and a desire to be 'prophetic' have undermined theological confidence in this vocation.  Anti-Christendom theology has resulted in a sectarianism which - by the cultural marginalisation is actively encourages - colludes with godless technocracy and creates space for an equally godless populism.  As for a prophetic stance, we are seeing that it is the state prayers which are authentically prophetic, calling the State towards a just and righteous order (rather more significant than a General Convention passing numerous, meaningless motions).

Since the founding of the Republic, of course, the state prayers were prayed in the contexts of slavery and segregation, by slave-owners, segregationists, and racists, by those who tolerated slavery, segregation, and racism.  Does this undermine the case for their use?  No, for these prayers for a just and righteous ordering of the Republic's common life were heard by the God.  The Slave Power fell.  Segregation was undone.  Civil rights were recognised.  Much remains to be done, as recent events have painfully demonstrated, but the state prayers are a means of ordering the polity to, in Lincoln's words, "the great ends He ordains".

Caught up with the state prayers are other expressions within TEC of the classical Anglican vocation to sanctify the common life of the Republic: the national flag in churches, a national cathedral ministering to the nation, commemoration of Independence Day, and - yes - 'the Church of the Presidents'.  All these are means of fostering and nurturing the moral leadership called for by Bishops Curry and Budde, of ordering the life of the Republic towards justice and righteousness.  To reject them - as some within TEC have urged in recent days - would not only be a rejection of the Anglican tradition.  It would also be to embrace a sectarianism incapable of offering a meaningful vision of human flourishing in the common life of the Great Republic.

As John Milbank and Adrian Pabst have urged in The Politics of Virtue, "refusing cultural and political marginality" is essential for the Church's public witness, if a "substantive vision of true human flourishing" is to shape contemporary polities.  Restoring and renewing the state prayers is a means to this end, pointing to the hope of a polity sanctified and redeemed, in which injustice and the intrinsic evil of racism give way to a just and righteous order.