Why Do We Use The Old Prayer Book?
Occasionally visitors express surprise in finding a parish which still worships with the “old” Prayer Book, the Book of Common Prayer in its 1928 edition. Frequently they respond with delight; but more and more newcomers indicate bewilderment in confronting an old-fashioned book they have never seen or experienced before. When our parish was founded in 1980, we knew exactly why we used this Prayer Book. In fact, this Book was a major factor in our very existence. But after twenty-five years, we sometimes need to explain our attachment, or rather our commitment, to the historic liturgy of our heritage.
It’s not just that we like to be old-fashioned for its own sake. And we know that our Prayer Book is not perfect. That is why we make a few adaptations, such as singing the Gloria in excelsis early in the Service instead of at the end. We use the Prayer Book; it does not use us. It is a resource for worship, not an end in itself.
But we insist on this old book because we are convinced that its proposed replacement, the Prayer Book of 1979 (actually implemented in 1976 and earlier, before it was legally adopted) is seriously defective in many respects and actually subversive to the faith and morals of the Church. To analyze the 1979 edition in detail would require a very long book involving a multitude of tedious and esoteric arguments. This is exactly why so many people, who knew in the pit of their stomachs that something was wrong with it, simply rolled over and accepted it without much protest. People do not like controversy, especially controversy over picky and obscure points.
The late Rev. William H. Ralston, Rector of St John’s Church, Savannah, Georgia, once wrote that the Prayer Book is like a beautiful tapestry. One might snip a thread here and there without significant damage to the whole picture, but when the revisers of the Prayer Book snipped enough threads, the whole thing fell into shreds. The subsequent history of the Episcopal Church proves the depth of his insight. First the Book, then the Church itself, simply fell into shreds.
Now exactly what is so seriously wrong with the 1979 book, that we have made so many sacrifices in continuing to worship with the old Prayer Book? This is only a brief essay, not the very long book necessary to deal with every last faux pas and serious error in the 1979 book. In just a few pages we can make just a few points.
First of all, the 1979 book does not live up to its title, “The Book of Common Prayer.” Common Prayer means the corporate worship of the whole Church. The historic Prayer Book enables all the people, from the priest at the altar to those sitting in the last pew, to pray the same prayers and experience on a deep level what it means to be God’s people together in God’s presence. Whatever its defects, the old Prayer Book simply works. Whether it is a congregation of several thousand in a vast cathedral or a handful of people in a remote rural mission, the old Prayer Book gives us services of Morning Prayer, Litany, Holy Communion, and Evening Prayer which all present can easily follow and share together. These have been and continue to be Services of Divine Worship which have nourished hungry souls for nearly half a millenium.
This is all within a fairly small book of just 610 pages. The new book, however, is a bulky thing of 1001 pages. It cannot honestly be called “common prayer,” because it no longer is “the work of the people.” (That, after all, is what the term liturgy means.) Instead of simple straight-forward services, the new book gives us option after option after option for the Priest to pick from. This makes it his performance which the people must submit to. Two different forms of Morning Prayer, Holy Eucharist, and Evening Prayer. Instead of one “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church,” six different forms of “Intercession.” Two different Prayers of Consecration. Two different General Confessions, or none at all. Two different translations of the Nicene Creed. Two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of corporate worship, a terribly complicated multiple-choice exercise.
This left the hapless laity at the mercy of the priest. Naturally, most people simply gave up following the service from the Prayer Books. The clergy, mostly unskilled in liturgical worship to begin with, also gave up. Worship quickly degenerated, losing its dignity, reverence, and spirituality. Whereas Anglican worship had traditionally been focused on God, honoring His “Divine Majesty,” the liturgy has been widely supplanted by Protestant-style “praise and worship” exercises, designed for human entertainment and enjoyment. This is symbolized by the movement of the Holy Table. No longer is the priest standing on the same side of the Altar as the people, as one of them, their pastor, leader, and shepherd. Instead he assumes a confrontational position, staring into their faces as they struggle to pray. What had been a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” offered by priest and people together now resembles a magic show or a cooking demonstration.
Perhaps the most serious change in the 1979 book was the revolutionary concept of “Rite I” and “Rite II.” There were undoubtedly some political reasons for this innovation. The revisionists were very keen in their preference for “Rite II,” with “Rite I” being utterly prohibited in many dioceses. But even if Rite I had a fair chance for survival, there was something fundamentally wrong with the concept of two different “Rites”. The liturgy of the Church should reflect, express and proclaim the Church’s faith. When that liturgy has broken down into two very different “Rites,” we found ourselves in a Church which does not know her own mind, a Church which no longer had a common faith. Very quickly it became obvious that there are two different religions in the Episcopal Church. Just as Rite I was and is nearly suppressed, so it is that Christianity has been crowded out of the Episcopal Church. Just as there is “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of us all,” One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, is it not reasonable to expect One form of common worship for the People of God?
Many faithful traditional Churchmen felt they were safe as long as they could find a service using Rite I. But even Rite I is tainted. It begins with a questionable formula, “Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Dr Peter Toon has demonstrated that this is a far cry from the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity of three distinct Persons, but rather something more like the Sabellian heresy, which maintained that “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is only a difference in names for the one God. The Nicene Creed is said only on Sundays and Holy Days, being omitted on week-days. The General Confession and Prayer of Humble Access may be omitted at any time; they are never required. Instead of “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church,” we find “the whole state of Christ’s Church and the world.” The last change blurs an important distinction between the Church and the world. The first two changes reflect an indifference to the historic faith and a carefree disregard of sin and the need for atonement.
Moreover, the beloved “Comfortable Words” became optional, which could only mean that lazy priests will habitually disuse them, along with the optional General Confession and Prayer of Humble Access. Even more serious was the change from the Biblical term “propitiation” to “perfect offering.” Propitiation is a concept difficult for arrogant sinners to accept, yet easy to explain. It refers to our Lord’s death as a sacrifice to satisfy the Divine justice and to appease God’s holy wrath against sin. Like it or not, we know what propitiation means. But what is a “perfect offering”? This expression is hopelessly ambiguous. In this change, a difficult but clear Biblical expression was traded in for a meaningless rhetorical flourish.
The Psalter of the 1979 edition contains special problems. The traditional Coverdale Psalter, actually older than the King James Version of 1611, found in every edition of the Prayer Book from 1549 right through 1928, was replaced by a modern paraphrase in ugly journalistic English. But worse than the bad literary quality are the glaring mis-translations. In the very first verse of the Psalter (Psalm 1:1) where we are used to “Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly,” we find in the 1979 book, “Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked.” This might be called “dumbing down” to the level of a post-literate society, a world which is formed mostly by television and the internet. But it is worse than that. There are two serious doctrinal mistakes. There is a confusion of blessedness and happiness. Happinessis a shallow word, indicating only how one feels at the moment. Blessedness, however, indicates one’s spiritual condition, one’s relationship with God. This is a translation for those more preoccupied with how they feel at the moment than with their eternal state.
But far more serious is substitution of the generic “they” for the noun “man.” This was undoubtedly motivated by the “politically correct” repudiation of the supposedly sexists term “man,” which the revisers imagine make the ladies uncomfortable. This is indeed a ghastly mistake. The term “man” here and elsewhere in the Psalter is not the generic term meaning any human being, male or female. The Hebrew noun ish used in the original meant a special Man, a certain male personage. It did not mean just anybody, but rather, an extraordinary Man. The Fathers of the early Church perceived that this verse was a prophecy of the Messiah. In paraphrase, the psalm is saying, “Blessed is the Man who is God Incarnate, because He is the sinless One.” The habit of the Church has been to read all the psalms as prophecies of Christ, or as the prayers of Christ. The New Testament itself established this method of interpretation. But that rich and thrilling way of praying the Psalter is utterly swept away in the 1979 book.
The 1979 book may be fairly described as a secular humanist document. The historic Prayer Book made it amply clear that man’s fundamental problem, our dilemma and predicament, the condition which renders us helpless and hopeless, is the reality of Sin. At every turn, on almost every page, the 1979 book minimizes and “mellows out” a fatal tragic condition, like the stammering intern in the emergency room who was moved to say, “At present the patient is deceased.” On page 848, the 1979 edition attempts a definition of sin:
“Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” That sounds about as serious as eating your salad with the wrong fork. Compare what St Paul had to say: “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned...the wages of sin is death...”
The trivialization of sin in the 1979 book has already been noted in the down-play of the General Confession, Comfortable Words, and Prayer of Humble Access. This becomes far more glaring in the 1979 Baptismal Service. Sin, yes, is mentioned in passing, here and there, but it doesn’t seem to be a serious problem, certainly not a fatal one. Gone are the stern and robust words of the historic Baptismal rite: “Almighty and immortal God, the aid of all who need, the helper of all who flee to thee for succour, the life of those who believe, and the resurrection of the dead; we call upon thee for this child, that he, coming to thy holy Baptism, may receive remission of sin by spiritual regeneration...”
Sin is also edited out of the beloved Marriage Service. Whereas the historic rite orders the Minister to address the couple in solemn language, “I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed…..” the 1979 edition eliminates the allusion of the dreadful day of judgment with the mild and inoffensive phrase “in the presence of God.”
The revisers stated frequently that they wanted to create a liturgy which was “less penitential and more joyful.” They failed to understand that the Christian joy is nothing other than the joy of the forgiven sinner. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Joy without repentance is a shallow thing indeed.
Anyone who compares carefully the contents, arrangement, verbiage of the two books, 1928 and 1979 will be forced to conclude that 1979 is not a revision of 1928, but a radically new production. It was largely sold to the Episcopal Church a generation ago with the false claim that all of the old book was contained in the new. The real motivation for the 1979 book was stated openly and candidly by one of its editors, Professor Urban Holmes, who admitted that the purpose of the 1979 book was to change the Church’s Faith. It worked.
The Rev. Robert Leonard Miller, in a sermon preached here at St Michael’s nearly twenty years ago, told the story of a certain diamond which had been handed down for several centuries through various royal families of Europe. Finally it was purchased by a nouveux riche American family. Initially they were delighted with their treasure, until one of them noticed that the cut of the diamond was slightly asymmetrical. Numerous jewelers advised them that they had better leave well enough alone; the asymmetrical shape was part of the diamond’s history, which they ought not destroy. But nothing would do, the diamond must be re-cut. After re-cutting, it was obvious that the uneven side of the diamond had simply shifted. So it was re-cut again and again. Soon the diamond was so small that no-one could tell whether the diamond was symmetrical or not.
So it is with the attempt to perform deep surgery on a historic book. We speak of our Prayer Book as the 1928 edition. But it stands as the latest link in a chain of editions beginning in 1549, continuing through 1552, 1559, 1637, 1662, 1789, and 1892. In all of those editions we had virtually the same book. It is our ancient heritage, our spiritual patrimony, which no human power will wrest away from us. The earliest of these editions, that of 1549, was no new production, but drew on sources reaching right back into Biblical times, and into every period of the Church’s history. The 1979 book, however, is a new creation. It is what happened when a precious and historic jewel, slightly asymmetrical, fell into the ungrateful and insensitive ownership. May God preserve and deliver us from such hands.