"All the whole Realm": BCP 1662, comprehension, and culture wars
What’s interesting is that the C of E’s Book of Common Prayer revival is overwhelmingly led by millennials.
We should not be surprised that some of those belonging to a generation abandoned to the vagaries of the Market, celebrities, social media, and a public realm usually devoid of serious moral reflection, will - thankfully - find meaning, comfort, and truth in the Book of Common Prayer. Indeed, this has been commented upon by others, not least in the context of the growing numbers attending Choral Evensong in Oxford and Cambridge college chapels. As another commentator has remarked:
It is perhaps not a coincidence that attendance at traditional choral services started to surge as modern life began to seem most removed from their world of candles, canons and communal reflection: Evensong offers an antidote to the modern age of instant digital gratification.
Similarly, the most recent edition of the Prayer Book Society's magazine, The Prayer Book Today, has an encouraging and thoughtful article by a CofE deacon who was given a BCP shortly after coming to faith at the age of 33, turning to it during the first Covid lockdown:
What I discovered within the pages of that diminutive book was unchanging timelessness amidst a turbulent transition; routine and stability during unprecedented chaos; and uplifting beauty at a time when all was flat and dull.
And, just to be clear, it is not only a matter of the Prayer Book providing comfort:
It does not seek to coddle me nor deny the shadow side of my earthly life, but instead offers me the stark truth: that if salvation is to mean anything at all, that I need to know that one of the things I need saving from is myself. I have repeatedly lost my life and found it again within those pages.
It seems, then, that these two articles - in The Spectator and in The Prayer Book Today - neatly cohere. Well, not quite. The Spectator article particularly identifies the Prayer Book revival with younger men influenced by Jordan Peterson:
Anecdotal evidence is that online Bible lectures from the hugely popular Canadian psychologist have reignited disaffected young men’s interest in traditional Christianity.
By contrast, The Prayer Book Today article is by a woman in holy orders who, I think, is probably fairly described as standing within the Broad Church tradition. When it comes to those attending Choral Evensong in Oxford and Cambridge college chapels, my guess is few are influenced by Peterson, but most would support equal marriage. Likewise, I think, with initiatives such as 'Evensong in the City' in St. Bartholomew the Great, London.
The Prayer Book revival, in other words, is much more broadly based than younger men influenced by Jordan Peterson. I freely admit that while I do not share the horror on the progressive Left regarding Peterson, this is primarily because I find him an entirely unconvincing, unpersuasive and - if I am honest - dull thinker. If, however, for some, he is a way that leads them to consider Christianity, the door must be open to them because, yes, the Gospel is also for social and cultural conservatives (which, we should note, are often not the same categories). And while it is rather ridiculous to mention the late Sir Roger Scruton - a philosopher and thinker of great substance - while discussing Peterson, one of the most interesting contemporary accounts of coming to faith is that provided in his Gentle Regrets (in the chapter entitled 'Regaining my Religion'), which, by the way, has a focus on the meaning of the Prayer Book canticle Jubilate.
This brings me to another point made by The Spectator article, regarding the Prayer Book:
It is a manual of spiritual disciple that is as far removed from modern, cringe-inducing ‘wellness’ gobbledygook as can be. Its uncompromising opening, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts’, is a brick through the window to many facets of modern living including narcissism, egotism and the crocodile tears of identity politics.
In addition to populism and anti-Woke politics being no less "facets of modern living" than that which they seek to oppose, I found the above to be a rather odd theological statement. "We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts" is not about others. It is not about those who disagree with me. It is about me. Me, the middle-aged male, with his allegiance to the Crown, old fashioned Toryism, and with a dislike for all sorts of radicalism. I follow too much the devices and desires of my own heart. My political, social, and cultural convictions are shot through with sin, demanding self-examination and repentance.
These words of the General Confession should not, cannot, be regarded as directed towards the agenda of others. It is not 'there is no health in them (the progressives, the radicals, the globalists)' - it is "there is no health in us". It is not 'have mercy upon them (the 'Woke'), miserable offenders' - it is "have mercy upon us, miserable offenders".
To state what should be obvious in light of the robustly Augustinian nature of the General Confession, the same also applies to those committed progressives praying these words: it is not about the Conservatives or the Republicans; it is not about social and cultural conservatives; it is not about devotees of the Free Market or Brexiteers. The corporate nature of the General Confession is an acknowledgement that all ideologies, all political agendas, all allegiances know the reality of sin and stand in need God's gracious mercy "declared unto all mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord".
"The Prayer Book is theology at its best", says The Spectator article. I heartily agree. But it is an irenic theology which has encouraged acceptance from a broad range of theological and political traditions. It embraced Davenant and Laud, John Tillotson (appointed Archbishop of Canterbury under William and Mary in 1691) and William Sancroft (deprived of the See of Canterbury for refusing to take the oath to William and Mary in 1691), Sacheverell and Burnet, conforming Calvinists and conforming Arminians, George Washington and the Loyalist parson Jonathan Boucher. It is an exercise in the 'condescension of posterity' to regard these past theological and political debates as somehow less significant than our current debates. They were, in fact, bitter, intense, and impassioned. Differing theological tendencies often, though not always, contributed to opposing political allegiances. They contributed to violent conflict in the Three Kingdoms in the 1640s, in 1688-90, in 1715 and 1745, and in America in the 1770s. And in each case, the Prayer Book embraced and was diligently used by those on different sides, those who regarded each other as opponents, if not enemies.
One of the abiding strengths and gifts of the Book of Common Prayer 1662 is that it sought to be accepted "by all sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons [and daughters] of the Church of England": not merely one theological party or political allegiance. This was evident at the Restoration. The bishop who led the defence of the Prayer Book at the Savoy Conference, Morley of Worcester, was an anti-Laudian moderate Calvinist. The bishop who wrote the famous words of the 1662 Preface, Sanderson of Lincoln, had ministered legally during the Interregnum because he had taken the 'Oath of Engagement', accepting the authority of the Commonwealth. Theological and political diversity is, in other words, integral to BCP 1662.
It might be tempting for some to use the Prayer Book as an 'anti-Woke' text for the dream of an 'anti-Woke' church. Leaving aside the fact that 'Woke' is now used to describe everything from the King's commitment to the environment to doubting the Government's immigration proposals, presenting the Prayer Book as a narrow ideological text is itself a rejection of the Prayer Book: of its irenicism, its moderation, its generous orthodoxy, its prayerfully unifying use over centuries. Recognition of this has been central to the success of the Prayer Book Society. As the former chair of the Prayer Book Society, Prudence Dailey, has said in explaining a key reason for the Society's success in encouraging support over recent years for the Prayer Book, particularly amongst younger clergy and laity:
the Prayer Book Society has recognised the need to present itself unambiguously as a single-issue organisation, avoiding involvement in ecclesiastical or theological controversies not directly related to the Book of Common Prayer, in order to build the widest possible constituency of support across the breadth of the Church.
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