Review: 'The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition'

These great and merciful benefits of God (if they be well considered) do neither minister unto us occasion to be idle, and to live without doing any good works, neither yet stirs us up by any means to do evil things: but contrariwise, if we be not desperate persons, and our hearts harder then stones, they move us to render our selves unto God wholly with all our will, hearts, might, and power, to serve him in all good deeds, obeying his commandments during our lives, to seek in all things his glory and honour - from The Homily of Justification.

If one aspect of The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition, edited by Samuel L. Bray and Drew N. Keane, captures the character of the project, it is the inclusion of The Homily on Justification in the Appendices.  Now, this is not to make a conventional, straightforward point about Cranmer, the Prayer Book and the Reformation's sola fide.  Rather, I am suggesting a slightly different emphasis.  

The Homily points to two central characteristics of the Book of Common Prayer which define its sober rationality.  The first is the Augustinian realism which underpins its anthropology.  I am writing this review during Holy Week.  The Passion narratives read for the 1662 Gospel readings for this week before Easter expose how "We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep".  We read of the betrayal of Judas, the denials of Peter, and the response of the other disciples: "And they all forsook him, and fled".  This is who we are.  Or, in the words of The Homily:

our own imperfection is so great, through the corruption of original sin, that all is imperfect that is within us, faith, charity, hope, dread, thoughts, words, and works, and therefore not apt to merit and discern any part of our justification for us.

The Prayer Book states this, however, in a manner which is not designed to provoke a response of moral panic or to encourage an irrational asceticism.  It draws us to a self-recognition that is solidly realistic.  We screw up.  Regularly. Routinely.  Confidence in our moral capacity is delusional, a failure to recognise the obvious consequences of Original Sin, all too evident in personal and communal experiences. But so too is moral panic or an irrational asceticism (what the High Churchman Thomas Le Mesurier condemned in his 1807 Bampton Lectures as "unnecessary mortifications"), for both are shot through with the same truth: "no there is no health in us".  

Which is why the Prayer Book is thoroughly, robustly theocentric and Christocentric.  As The Homily declares:

Justification is not the office of man, but of God. For man cannot justify himself by his own works - neither in part, nor in the whole - for that were the greatest arrogance and presumption of man.

Again and again, the Prayer Book sets before us the assurance of this 'office' of God, from cradle to grave:

Almighty everliving God, whose most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of our sins, did shed out of his most precious side both water and blood ... He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel ... Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption ... Almighty and everliving God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by Water and the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins ... O Merciful God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life; in whom whosoever believeth shall live, though he die.

Here is, to use a phrase from Richard Mant, "sober delight and rational exaltation". Or, as John Wesley put it, "a solid, scriptural, rational piety".  We might also use words of Cranmer himself:

plain, certain, without wrinkles, without any inconvenience or absurdity, so cheerful and comfortable to all Christian people.

This allows us to recognise the value of The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition when, as Alan Jacobs noted in his review, we "don’t expect this book to be widely used for public worship in churches".  Alongside being the authorised text for public worship for most Anglicans over centuries, BCP 1662 was also, in the words of Andrew Braddock, "a treasure of Christian devotion" in the personal and domestic spheres. It is here that the International Edition could be particularly significant, both for those Anglicans outside England (where 1662 remains authorised) desiring the enrichment of the classical Anglican liturgy and for those in other Christian traditions seeking a substantive form to shape their personal prayer, rooted in Reformed Catholic doctrine and orthodox Trinitarian and Christological confession.

Perhaps above all, the International Edition provides 1662's form Morning and Evening Prayer for use outside of the United Kingdom, a form which sustains a cycle of confession and praise, praying the Psalter monthly, and drinking deeply each day from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.  As Richard Peers has put it, "The Prayer Book Office is the most successful 'people's office' in Christian history". 

Reading and praying through The Communion is an excellent preparation for receiving the Sacrament: Collect for Purity, Commandments, Exhortations, Prayer of Consecration.  The Lord's Prayer, the two post-Communion prayers, and the Gloria similarly provide a wonderful form of thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion. Such a private use of material from The Communion can address some of the evident weaknesses in contemporary Anglican eucharistic liturgies.

Anniversaries of Christening, Confirmation, Marriage and of Ordination can all be marked by a prayerful reading of the respective rite in the International Edition, while occasional reading of the Burial Office is a useful memento mori exercise, preparing us for the hour of death.  The table of 'Days of Fasting and Abstinence' is a means of introducing us to a regular pattern of abstinence, the Calendar and Collects ground the passage of the year in the mysteries of our salvation, while the Catechism and Articles of Religion provide accounts of a robust but generous Reformed Catholicism, a much needed alternative to both doctrine-lite experiences and unreasonable doctrinal demands.  (There might be a hint of the generosity of this Reformed Catholicism in the International Edition receiving endorsements from both Latitudinarian Whig Diarmaid MacCulloch and Anglo-Catholic Socialist Catherine Pickstock!)

Bray and Keane note in 'The Editors to the Reader':

Our anchor was a desire to preserve the prayer book's linguistic character ... The language of the prayer book is from a time when spoken and written English were in closer connection, with the ear having priority over the eye.  Its distinctive liturgical register aids memorization and allows for continuity in worship across time and space.  For many people today - both young and old - its language is a positive aid to worship and catechesis.

This confident, unembarrassed affirmation of the language of BCP 1662 reflects the insights of Cally Hammond in her excellent The Sound of the Liturgy:

Repetition is of the essence of Christian worship ... Repetition works so effectively in rhetorical terms because it sidesteps the privileged but parvenu category of rational, informative speech and the conveying of factual content ... the most sublime power of the words lies in the act of performing them.  This way of learning ... enables movement between the worlds of the conscious and rational on the one hand, and the emotional and the spiritual on the other ... so that words can resonate as they are meant to do.

She goes on to say:

The BCP 1662 Collects provide a case-study of how rhythm and punctuation are tied together when speech-acts are consigned to writing.  The Collects have long been recognized as being of the highest literary quality; and long accepted as easy to memorize and, conversely, difficult to forget.

In this context we might also point to what Bray has previously stated:

the evidence, at least in Anglophone contexts, does not show that the affection for traditional religious language is associated with “elites.” Among all Christians in the United States, it is black Christians who are most likely to use the King James Version. I am told that in Canada the older liturgical texts are most pervasively used by the indigenous peoples. If the point can be extended to gender, a study of the reception of contemporary Anglican liturgies found women more receptive than men to traditional language.

The are, in other words, very significant reasons beyond the aesthetic for retention of the language of 1662, as the Editors note.  The "modest" changes to the 1662 text are akin to those seen in, for example, Ireland 1926 and PECUSA 1928: wise, cautious, and organic.  Indeed, those who have worshipped and prayed using either of those two expressions of the classical Prayer Book tradition will not notice most of these changes.  My only slight hesitation concerns the Lord's Prayer: on balance, I would have preferred the 1662 version to have been retained.  It is the version used in settings of Choral Evensong; it is to be found in Ireland 1926 and the Proposed Book of 1928; and I do think 'in earth' speaks with greater depth than 'on earth'. 

The additional material found in the Appendices, while not to be found in 1662, stands in continuity with Prayer Book usage over centuries: to again quote Braddock on the domestic experience of Georgian Anglicanism, "the Prayer Book remained a living and evolving tradition". The 'Additional Prayers and Thanksgivings' are a rich resource for the occasional prayers at Mattins and Evensong.  The 'Additional Rubrics' offer wise guidance on, for example, the use of the Benedicite at Morning Prayer.

Of particular significance is the International Edition's approach to the state prayers.  The state prayers are an integral part of the Prayer Book liturgy, giving expression to a theological understanding of the common good and of civic life.  Contemporary Anglican liturgies usually offer a rather dismal, thin gruel approach to prayer for civic life (while we wonder why the common life of our polities is often disordered, rejecting the common good).  The International Edition offers very fine state prayers, standing firmly within the Prayer Book tradition, encouraging an understanding of the polity and civic life as a gift bestowed for our common flourishing.  It might be hoped that these prayers will rekindle the tradition of the state prayers and the theological vision which underpins that tradition.

In 1662, the Latitudinarian divine Simon Patrick described the liturgy of the Church of England using two metaphors.  The first was "an honourable and virtuous Matron".  We might, of course, be rather uncomfortable with the use of such an antiquated, gendered description from an age when an older married woman would have had little autonomy.  That said, I do think there is something to cherish in this description: of the Prayer Book as a spouse, a domestic partner with whom we share the passage of the years, who comforts us and challenges us, who knows us often better than we know ourselves, with whom we share words and routines whose meanings deepen as the years pass.

Patrick's second illustration was that of a "well ordered vineyard", neither "full of superfluous branches, and overrun with wild grapes", nor the vineyard of the careless neighbour "who instead of moderate pruning and dressing his vines ... cut them up by the Roots".  The "well ordered vineyard", with its wise economies, can bring us delight in celebration, sustain us in sadness, and - as in Psalm 128 - be part of the ordinary cycles and routines of domestic life.

The Editors are to be thanked for producing a version of the BCP 1662 which will, it is to be hoped, bring many more to experience the Prayer Book as akin to the domestic partner who shares the years with us, enriching our lives with meaning; like the well-ordered vineyard which sustains us year by year, in joy, in sadness, and in our ordinary routines.