Is the Psalter the most lasting impact of Book of Common Prayer 2019?

As expected, earlier this month the ACNA College of Bishops approved the final version of its 2019 liturgy. The printed copies of what used to be called “Texts for Common Prayer” will be distributed in June at the ACNA’s biennial synod, this year at Christ Church Plano.

Its new name will be Book of Common Prayer 2019, marking 30 years since ECUSA’s Book of Common Prayer 1979 that so influenced the language and form of the ACNA’s efforts.

The New Prayer Book

As noted earlier, the new liturgy

• Keeps almost all the language of the 1979 Rite II liturgies for Holy Communion, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer services, while dropping Rite I.
• For Sunday, uses a lightly modified version of the three-year lectionary instituted after Vatican II and used in the 1979 prayer book, rather than the historic 1-year lectionary of 1549-1928
• For Daily Office, reinstitutes a 1-year lectionary that more closely follows that of 1549-1892 than the American 1928
• Is most dramatically changed from 1979 in its ordinal

The committee had more ambitious goals, but kept the Rite II language at the request of many ACNA pastors who had worshipped (and led worship) with Rite II before and since leaving TEC. 

It also shared many of the assumptions of the 1979, including wide latitude for selecting canticles in Daily Office, and two Holy Communion liturgies. However, unlike the Daily Office variants, each HC has only one form of prayers of the people — rather than multiple POP variants in 1979 BCP or the 2000 Common Worship from the Church of England. It’s not clear whether the (prolific liturgist) late Peter Toon would call this a Book of Common Prayer or term it an “Alternative Service Book”. The English do not call their updated liturgy a BCP, but it’s about practical legislative reasons (rather than theological ones) after to the fiasco of its failed 1928 BCP revision. 

I personally lament the decision of the 2019 liturgy to follow the 1979 in two aspects of Morning and Evening Prayer: omitting “miserable offenders” from the General Confession, and dropping the 1662 “Conditions of Men” prayer that structures petitions for those in need using a theologically humble approach. Both seemed important aspects of the penitence of the 1928 and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

The Psalter

While the ACNA liturgy might influence other GAFCON provinces, it’s not clear how much influence it will have on other Anglicans left (i.e. TEC) and right (i.e. Continuing Anglicans) in the U.S., let alone other denominations.

However, of broader relevance is the updated Coverdale Psalter. It didn’t get a lot of visibility (or meaningful feedback) because it wasn’t complete until the very end. However, from my limited use, it seems to largely succeed on its goals of retaining the poetry and cadence of the Coverdale while (mostly gently) sanding off the rough edges of archaic vocabulary. When Nashotah House eventually makes its chanted version, presumably it can leverage the pointing from the 1549-1928 Coverdale sung psalters.

I have the full 258 page PDF on my laptop and iPad and try to use it for Daily Office at least a couple of times a week. I am curious to see how much use it gets outside the ACNA.

Official Announcement

Here is the complete text of the official announcement

The Book of Common Prayer 2019
After six years of the use of draft liturgies, submission of extensive comments from across the Church, and significant revisions and refinements, we have approved the Book of Common Prayer (2019)! The last wave of liturgies in their final form was approved this week for our new Prayer Book, which will be available at Provincial Assembly this June in Plano, Texas. One of the documents approved was the Preface, which includes this helpful introduction to worship in the prayer book tradition: 

At the beginning of the 21st century, global reassessment of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 as “the standard for doctrine, discipline and worship” shapes the present volume, now presented on the bedrock of its predecessors. Among the timeless treasures offered in this Prayer Book is the Coverdale Psalter of 1535 (employed with every Prayer Book from the mid-16th to the mid-20th centuries), renewed for contemporary use through efforts that included the labors of 20th century Anglicans T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, and brought to final form here. The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is indisputably true to Cranmer’s originating vision of a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people, and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice. 

Rites that were finalized at this meeting include: 

  * The Ordinal
  * Consecration and Dedication of a Place of Worship
  * Institution of a Rector
  * Occasional Prayers
  * The Psalter
  * Calendar of the Christian Year
  * Sunday, Holy Day, and Commemoration Lectionary
  * Propers for Various Occasions
  * Calendar of Holy Days and Commemorations
  * Daily Office Lectionary

The BCP texts as now finally approved will be put online at AnglicanChurch.net by mid-February under a new Book of Common Prayer tab.

At the conclusion of the liturgical approval process, we stood in unison to praise God and to thank Archbishop Duncan and the Liturgy Task Force for their sacrificial work on this historic resource.