laudable Practice

And albeit this author would not have them bare tokens, yet and they be only tokens ... One can almost hear the contempt with which Gardiner, in the above quote, used the word "tokens" with reference to Cranmer's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Noting Cranmer's denial that the Bread and Wine are "bare tokens", Gardiner suggests that this denial misses the point - the Bread and Wine are still then "only tokens". Cranmer, however, does not run from the term in his Answer to Gardiner (1551). In fact, he confidently embraces it, affirming that the Bread and Wine in the Supper are indeed "tokens": Is therefore the whole use of the bread in the whole action and ministration of the Lord's holy Supper but a naked or nude and bare token? Is not one loaf being broken and distributed among faithful people in the Lord's Supper, taken and eaten of them, a token that the body of Christ was broken and crucified for them? and is to them spiri...

Over the years, laudable Practice has regularly critiqued many aspects of late 20th and early 21st century liturgical revision.  Frequently, the Church of Ireland's Book of Common Prayer 2004 and The Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer 1979 have been the targets of such criticism. This post seeks to provide some balance to those criticisms.  As previously stated, counter-revolution is not conservative , and that includes liturgical counter-revolution .  1979 and 2004 are now settled parts of the Episcopal/Anglican experience in the United States and Ireland: a counter-revolutionary rejection of 1979 and 2004 would not be authentically conservative or traditional.   What is more, in the same way that my personal experience of officiating and participating according to 2004 has shaped my critiques of it, so too that experience has also provided a basis for valuing aspects of 2004.  Likewise, those times when I have worshipped in TEC have been accordin...