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.

Remember our last Episcopalian president

Today was the first of two funerals for George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), the 41st president whose term of office ran from 1989-1993. He was the last surviving World War II veteran to serve as president or vice president.

The 26 page service booklet for the funeral was posted by the National Cathedral and is also available here. Their 3:26 video is on YouTube while C-SPAN has a 2:26 video as well. (When the casket is being carried into the cathedral, the US Coast Guard band plays “For all the saints” at 15 minutes into C-SPAN and 1:14 into the cathedral video.) The latter has some interesting preludes (by the head organist of a Dallas Episcopal church) but the military orchestra and chorus spent more than 40 minutes on pieces that (other than America the Beautiful at the very end) I didn’t recognize.

Funeral Hymns

The liturgy was “Burial II” from the 1979 prayer book. The psalm was omitted, while the Scripture readings (from the NRSV) were Isaiah 60:1-5,18-20 and Revelation 20:1-4,6-7,23-25 (read by granddaughters) and Matthew 5:14-16 (read by the cathedral dean). The homily was by Bush's rector, Rev. Russell Levenson, Jr., who officiated the April funeral service in Houston for Barbara Bush.

It’s difficult to characterize a three hour service, so let me list the hymns:

• "Praise my soul, the King of heaven,” 4 verses sung (in harmony) by the congregation, cathedral choir and Armed Forces Chorus
• After the first lesson, “The King of love my shepherd is,” 6 verses by cathedral choir
• Gospel hymn: “O god, our help in ages past,” 6 verses by military choir
• Lord’s Prayer: the two choirs and Irish tenor Ronan Tynan
• Before the commendation: “Eternal Father,” (the Navy version) 4 verses by the military choir for Mr. Bush (LTJG, USN, 1942-1945)
• After the dismissal: “For all the saints,” 8 verses (unison) by all

CCM pop star Michael W. Smith also did a solo (backed by both choirs) of one of his pieces (“Friends”).

The Bush family sat on one side and the former presidents on another. During “Praise my soul,” Pres. Clinton sang the most enthusiastically, Pres. Obama next, and Mrs. Clinton sang portions; the video suggested that neither of the Carters (ages 94, 91) and the Trumps attempted to sing, nor did Mrs. Obama. On the Bush side, almost all of the children and grandchildren seemed to be singing (and some of the in-laws).

Monday's Ceremony

As is normal for a former president, Bush’s casket lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda before the funeral. When watching the ceremony Monday afternoon for the arrival of the casket, I heard three hymns played by the military band:

• 4:28pm EST: The Navy hymn (while waiting for the casket to arrive)
• 4:50pm EST: after Hail to the chief, the band alternated between the hymns “Fairest, Lord Jesus” and “A mighty fortress is our God” as the casket was carried up the steps

Since the latter is Martin Luther’s most famous hymn, I tend to associate it with Lutherans but I keep running into other Protestants who admire its statement of the Christian doctrine.

Update (Friday Dec 7): Bush's Pastor Describes His Faith

There were two GetReligion stories on Thursday and Friday by (and a Issues Etc. interview with) former Episcopalian GR editor Terry Mattingly, who quoted two reports on the sermon by Rev. Levenson. The first story points to a report by the New York Times which said

“My hunch is heaven, as perfect as it must be, just got a bit kinder and gentler,” the Rev. Dr. Russell J. Levenson Jr., rector of St. Martin’s, said on Wednesday in his homily. Turning to the coffin, he said: “Mr. President, mission complete. Well done, good and faithful servant. Welcome to your eternal home, where ceiling and visibility are unlimited and life goes on forever.”

When the casket arrived at the Rotunda Monday, I heard Vice President Pence explain that “ceiling and visibility unlimited” was a favorite phrase of the former naval aviator.

The later story quotes a Religion News Service story that says about the late president what any Christian would hope could be said about them

The Rev. Russell Levenson Jr., rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, said the elder Bush made Levenson’s job as his pastor for almost a dozen years an easy one because of the late president’s concern more for others than for himself.

“Jesus Christ, for George Bush, was at the heart of his faith, but his was a deep faith, a generous faith, a simple faith in the best sense of the word,” said Levenson in his homily. “He knew and lived Jesus’ two greatest commandments: to love God and to love your neighbor.”

Legacies of the English State Church

This state funeral was unusual in that it was for an Episcopalian at the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. The National Cathedral also host state funerals for other Christians, as it did with the 2004 funeral for Ronald Reagan (a Presbyterian) — just as Westminster Abbey did a 2013 state funeral for Lady Thatcher (a Methodist).

Bush was the last living Episcopalian president, marking the end of a run of 11 Episcopalian presidents out of the first 41. Three were founding fathers, five were among the 13 presidents from 1841-1885, and Bush was the last of the three in 20th century (that included F.D. Roosevelt and Gerald Ford).

When will the next Episcopalian become president? One proxy is the U.S. senate.

As the DC saying goes, “every senator thinks they should be president” (although in the past century, only Harding, Kennedy and Obama were senators when elected president). In today’s senate, there are only four Episcopalians (all Democrats), outnumbered by Lutherans and Mormons (6), Jews (7), Methodists and Baptists (11), Presbyterians (16) and Catholics (24). According to Wikipedia (and we all know how true it is),  Catholics are 21% of the country and Baptists 15%. The senators most visibly preening for a presidential run in 2020 or 2024 seem to be Baptist or Catholic.

I don’t expect to see another Episcopalian president in the next 30 years, as their influence has fallen dramatically. Some of it is the dilution of the English influence on America with generations of immigration; some is the shift of the American aristocracy from inherited status and wealth to one based on education. Some of it reflects the declining membership of mainline Protestantism, and Christianity more generally.

After G.H.W. Bush, there don’t seem to be a lot of prominent Republican officials who are Episcopalian. His eldest son, George W. (aka “Bush 43”) was raised Episcopalian, fell away from the church and later became a Methodist; second son, former governor and 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism in 1995.

As for Anglicans, 2016 presidential candidate John Kasich (governor of Ohio from 2011-2019) was raised Catholic, previously Episcopalian, and most recently reported to be attending an ACNA church. However, he would have to be considered a longshot candidate for president unless (like Bush, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Truman, Coolidge) he was elected vice president first.

The ACNA's near-final liturgy

Today is the deadline for feedback on the ACNA’s new liturgy. It is bringing to an end a 10-year process that began in November 2008 in Fort Worth. The official Texts for Common Prayer are expected to be approved early in 2019 and made available next summer.

There is a detailed review of the revision, published in the September Living Church and Summer issue of Anglican Way (the newsletter of the Prayer Book Society). The commentary is by Drew Nathaniel Keane, until this year a member of The Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.

Keane praised the transparency of the ACNA effort, which seems well-deserved. In the internet era, the ACNA task force provides a model for how to share liturgy updates, rather than the annual photocopied (or printed) books used in the previous 50 years.

Overall, the new liturgy is similar to the 1979 prayer book that it is intended to replace. In some cases, this is unavoidable — since both reflect trends of postwar liturgical reform, there are some updates present in 1979 (such as midday and compline prayer) not present in 1662 or 1928.

To try to summarize the new liturgy, I’ll focus on the three areas of the liturgy that have the greatest day-to-day impact: the lectionary, the daily office and the Eucharist service.

Lectionary

Because it's such a pain to compare 52 weeks of subtly different choices, I am grateful to Keane for explaining the changes of the lectionary.

Unlike Cranmer’s one-year lectionary of his 1549 and 1552 prayer books (retained in the 1559,1662,1789 and both 1928 prayer books), the ANCA follows the 1979 and its 3-year cycle of the 1979 lectionary. Perhaps we can blame the Romans, since this is a post-Vatican II innovation that was also followed by most but not all Protestant liturgical churches (e.g. the LCMS allows a local option between these two). The 1979 prayer book introduced its own lectionary, but today TEC uses the Revised Common Lectionary.

As Keane notes, for the daily office the ACNA reverts to a one-year lectionary (as in 1549 through 1928) rather than the two-year of 1979. However, to my eye it’s more like Cranmer’s 1549 one year lectionary (retained through 1662 in England and 1892 in the US) which kept to the civil calendar. The 1928 U.S. lectionary marked a radical departure, in that it maps to the church year (“Tuesday after the second Sunday in Lent”) and also offers a less comprehensive coverage of Scripture (i.e. is less demanding).

Keane highlights another (healthy) correction to the 1928

Since 1928, the daily office lectionaries of the Episcopal Church have notoriously omitted sections of Scripture that that might not easily square with modern American sensibilities. This proposal abandons this approach; rather than tiptoeing around these passages, … it includes the Scriptures as they are

Keane debates whether the ACNA properly handles the lesser feasts and fasts; that topic is beyond the scope of this summary.

Daily Office: Morning and Evening Prayer 

Daily Office depends both on the lectionary (see above) and the specific prayers. The elements I find most interesting:

• Like 1979, the ACNA removes “miserable offenders” from the General Confession; every time I say Rite I, this is still a jarring omission.
• Like 1979, it allows any canticle to be used in any order. Unlike 1979, cuts down (slightly) on the confusion by segregating the canticles into morning and evening canticles.
• Makes clear the entire Psalm 95 (rather than the Venite) can be used in Morning Prayer — something everyone but the Americans have done since 1549 — but provides the missing four verses only during penitential seasons.
• Restores “O God, make speed to save us” from the 1662, that was omitted from previous American prayer books.

Next to the (shortened) confession, I have found that most powerful part of saying the Daily Office for the past three years has been the “Conditions of Men” prayer:

O GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [*especially those for whom our prayers are desired*] that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to. their several necessities; giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

The prayer was introduced in the 1662 English prayer book — used globally for 300+ years — and part of the 1789, 1892 and 1928 US prayer books. It was dropped in the 1979 prayer book and remains missing in the 2019. To my ear, this (as with “miserable offenders”) substantially weakens the penitential nature of the service. A booklet (rather than Prayer Book) parish could restore it, since it is prayer #31 on the list of “Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings”.

Eucharist Service

While the Ordinal was the ACNA’s initial priority, from a practical standpoint, Holy Communion is the only service that the typical parishioner will see most of the year. The changes to Holy Communion are numerous and detailed.

While both 1979 and 2019 have two rites, there the similarity end. In the 1979, the Rite I uses traditional language (if not the sequence) of the 1549-1662-1928, while Rite II has major changes both to the liturgy and language. In 2019, there are two contemporary language liturgies: “Anglican Standard Text” is like a modern language version of Rite I, while “Renewed Ancient Text” is very similar to Rite II.

Keane takes a guess about the reason for the latter similarity.

Although the Renewed Ancient Text is clearly based on 1979 Rite II, the preface “Concerning the Service” seems less than forthcoming regarding the source: “The Renewed Ancient Text is drawn from liturgies of the Early Church [and] reflects the influence of twentieth century ecumenical consensus.” Yes, 1979’s Rite II did draw from some ancient liturgies and reflects the influence of the mid-20th century ecumenical Liturgical Movement, but the particular text — its selection of which ancient liturgies to follow, where, and to what extent — constitutes an original liturgy, a source that this preface obscures.

However, task force member Fr. Jonathan Kanary says the circumstantial similarity is misleading:

…the first version of the "Ancient Canon" wasn't based on 1979 at all, but was an entirely independent liturgy, although it was (like Rite 2 Prayer A) based loosely on Hippolytus. Because of feedback we received (including from some bishops), the revision drew in a fair bit of the familiar language from Prayer A, while retaining the things that had worked well from the first version of the Ancient Canon. The Living Church article seems to assume that the rite is simply an adaptation of the 1979 Prayer A, and I understand how someone glancing over it now might think so, but the history is much more complex.

For my recent liturgy class, I looked at the Prayer of Consecration from 1549 to 2019, including Cranmer’s prayer books, the 20th century American prayer books and the ACNA liturgy.

Although modernized in language, the “Anglican Standard” mainly differs in the order of the prayers:

1549 BCP	1928 BCP/1979 Rite I	2019 Anglican Standard
Words of Institution Invocation Oblation Concluding Doxology	Words of Institution Invocation Oblation Concluding Doxology	Invocation Words of Institution Oblation Concluding Doxology

Meanwhile, the “Renewed Ancient Text” follows closely Rite II, except for changes in the language of the Invocation:

1979 Rite II	2019 Renewed Ancient
Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.	Sanctify them by your Word and Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ. Sanctify us also, that we may worthily receive this holy sacrament, and be made one body with him, so that he may dwell in us and we in him. And bring us with all your saints into the fullness of your heavenly kingdom, where we shall see our Lord face to face.

Keane also notes three changes that move the liturgy in a (slightly) more Anglo-Catholic direction:

• The Benedictus qui venit is included in the Sanctus. This is not included in the historic prayer book tradition, but by the late 19th century was commonly inserted in High Church circles; it was provided as an optional addition in 1979’s Rite I.

• The Agnus Dei follows the Prayer of Humble Access rather than the other way round as in 1979. This order was common in American Anglo-Catholic parishes that inserted the Agnus Dei into the 1928 prayer book service.

• Along with the Invitation from 1979, “The gifts of God for the People of God,” a second option is provided in both rites: “Behold the Lamb of God.” Taken from John 1:29 and Revelation 19:9, Anglo-Catholic parishes commonly inserted these scriptural sentences into the old text as an Invitation to Communion, and a version of this invitation is part of the Church of England’s Common Worship.

Conclusions

The liturgy is different enough that faithful (clergy or laity) moving between the ACNA and Rite II or Rite I (let alone earlier prayer books) will have to carefully read every sentence for several months until it becomes familiar. I feel bad for supply priests who are in a diocese with more than one liturgy. However, at least any confusion caused by trial use of interim liturgies will soon be over.

In the 21st century, one of the great resources for learning the liturgy is the Internet — whether via web pages or a cellphone app. Flipping through tables and paper books to find lessons works for printing a Sunday bulletin, but is a bit daunting for laity doing the Daily Office twice daily.

The ACNA is fortunate to have a website, www.legereme.com, that helps solve this problem. It provides

• A complete order of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, with lessons
• The lessons for the Sunday Eucharist service

An entrepreneurial church planter is currently taking a collection fund iPhone and Android versions of a stand-alone app for the Legerme texts.

How many ways can we say Gloria Patri?

This semester, I've been doing sung morning and evening prayer on campus. One of the interesting challenges is that sometimes we sing from different hymnals or liturgies in a single service, and thus we sing two (or even three) different Gloria Patri. (Similar changes have been made in the Gloria in Excelsis, but that’s a topic for another time).

The Latin version is nearly 15 centuries old:

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto:
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

New Advent says it was universal throughout christendom by the 17th century. For example, Shepherd (1950: 9) says about the Gloria Patri after the psalms:

Gloria Patri (see commentary, p. 8). The use of this doxology has been traditional in the Church from the earliest times, and is intended to give to the Psalms a Christian reference and intention. 

Blunt (1889: 186) dates it even earlier

Clement of Alexandria, who wrote before the end of the second century, refers to the use of this hymn under this form, …“giving glory to the one Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” and a hymn of about the same date is printed by Dr. Bouth, in which there is an evident trace of the same custom :… “Praise we the Father and Son, and Holy Spirit of God." It is also referred to even earlier by Justin Martyr. 

The 14th and 15th century manuscripts of the Sarum Missal (Legg, 1916: 23) list this text as

chorus. Gloria patri et filio et spiritui sancto.
clerici. Et laus et honor potestas et imperium.
chorus. Sicut erat in principio et nuncet semper et in secula seculorum amen.

400 years of the Book of Common Prayer

In the Daily Office, Cranmer’s original 1549 Booke of Common Praier uses this translation:

Glory be to the father, and to the sonne, and to the holye ghost. As it was in the begynning, is now, and ever shal be, world without ende. Amen.

Except for spelling, we see that in the CoE prayer books through 1662, as well as the (unapproved) 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s also in the American prayer books from 1789 to 1928 as

Minister. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

And then came Vatican II.

Vatican II/ICET/ICEL

After Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church began a systematic translation of the liturgy into English (and other local languages). As Hatchett (1988: 132) notes in his summary of Anglican liturgy revisions since the 1950s

Various provinces have participated in ecumenical groups developing common translations of texts (International Consultation on English Texts, or its equivalent for other languages) and have adopted common lectionaries, based on either the post­ Vatican II Roman lectionary or that developed by the Joint Liturgical Group.

In the 1972 and 1975 proposed texts from the International Consultation on English Texts (published in Prayers We Have in Common), the Gloria Patri was rendered as

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as in the beginning, so now, and for ever. Amen.

However, this did not reflect what had already been used in the 1971 Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours:

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

This is, of course, also what ended up in the 1979 American prayer book.

Over the years, I was probably not the only one who was confused that both the Rite I (traditional) and Rite II (modern) liturgies have used the same GP. On the one hand, it made sense for simplifying the task of a priest celebrating both Rite I and Rite II in the same parish (a common issue in the 1980s and 1990s). However, it also meant that this part of Rite I is consistently different from the previous 400 years of English language liturgy — even though most of the rest of Rite I is intended to be similar to the historic liturgy.

One of the sources of confusion is that Rite I services can use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Daily Office canticles (and psalms), as in Hymnal 1940 (and now the Book of Common Praise 2017) — as well as any earlier American, English (or other) resources. So in singing the Daily Office, it matters whether we copy a canticle from H40, BCP17, or the Rite I part of H82.

21st Century Corrections

The Roman Catholic church accounts for more than one third of American Christians. After its 2008 English language correction to its liturgy of the mass  — the Roman Missal (3rd ed.) implemented in 2011 — around 2010 the American Catholic bishops started a related update of its Liturgy of the Hours. However, this new liturgy has not been officially approved, and I was unable to identify its plans for the Gloria Patri.

However, more directly relevant for American Anglicans, the ACNA has released drafts of Texts for Common Prayer, the liturgy its is scheduled to approve in June 2019. In the liturgy of the Daily Office — Morning and Evening Prayer — the new Gloria Patri is rendered as

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

In other words, we are almost full circle. The Gloria Patri of 1549-1928 is back, with one change: consistent with late 20th century contemporary language, “Ghost” has been banished and replaced everywhere with “Spirit.” Under the circumstances, it seems like the most compatible revision of the historic liturgy.

With only about 100,000 members, the ACNA might seem lonely make its change on its own. However, it’s merely emulating the (gently modernized) language used by the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, with its two most recent liturgy books: Lutheran Worship (1982) and Lutheran Service Book (2006). While the LCMS is smaller than the more liberal ECLA, it is still larger than the Episcopal Church and ACNA combined.

Is this liturgical change by the ACNA the first step toward ecumenical cooperation with the most liturgically conservative of the largest Protestant denominations?

References

• Blunt, John Henry, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, rev. ed., London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1889.
• Hatchett, Marion J., “Prayer Books,” in Stephen Sykes and John Booty, The Study of Anglicanism (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1988), 121-133.
• Legg, J. Wickham, ed. The Sarum Missal. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916.
• Prayers We Have in Common: Agreed Liturgical Texts Prepared by the International Consultation on English Texts, enlarged and revised ed., Philadelphia, Fortress, 1972.
• Prayers We Have in Common: Agreed Liturgical Texts Prepared by the International Consultation on English Texts, 2nd rev. ed., Philadelphia, Fortress, 1975.
• Shepherd, Massey Hamilton, Jr., The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950

Luke, John and Zechariah

June 24 is the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, in the Anglican, Lutheran and Roman Catholic calendars of saints’ days. Because the Annunciation takes place when Elizabeth’s pregnancy is six months along, the Western church traditionally dates John’s birth six months before Jesus.

This week, Issues Etc. reran an hour-long show on this feast day — a 2016 interview with Pastor David Peterson, an LCMS pastor from Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Although the Anglican and Lutheran liturgies are different, most of the points are applicable to Anglican liturgy as well.

There are many elements of the life of John — and Jesus — that are only told in the first two chapters of Luke. This includes three key canticles of the traditional liturgy: the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), Benedictus (1:68-79) and Nunc Dimittis (2:29-32) — respectively the songs of Mary, Zechariah and Simeon.

The Benedictus, of course, is what Zechariah says at the ceremony that names (and circumcises) John. While the 1549 BCP is derived from the Coverdale (and Tyndale) translations, the same similarities can be seen in more modern spelling in the 1662 and KJV

Benedictus (BCP 1662)

Luke 1:68-79 (KJV)

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people; And he hath raised up a mighty salvation for us: in the house of his servant David; As he spoke by the mouth of his holy Prophets: which have been since the world began; That we should be saved from our enemies: and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fore-fathers: and to remember his holy covenant; To perform the oath which he sware to our forefather Abraham: that he would give us; That we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies: might serve him without fear; In holiness and righteousness before him: all the days of our life. And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people: for the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God: whereby the Day-spring from on high hath visited us; To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to guide our feet into the way of peace. Glory be to the Father and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now: and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

As the the New Advent encyclopedia states

The whole canticle naturally falls into two parts. The first (verses 68-75) is a song of thanksgiving for the realization of the Messianic hopes of the Jewish nation; but to such realization is given a characteristically Christian tone. As of old, in the family of David, there was power to defend the nation against their enemies, now again that of which they had been so long deprived, and for which they had been yearning, was to be restored to them, but in a higher and spiritual sense. …

The second part of the canticle is an address by Zachary to his own son, who was to take so important a part in the scheme of the Redemption; for he was to be a prophet, and to preach the remission of sins before the coming or the Orient, or Dawn, from on high.

According to the New Advent encyclopedia, it was Benedict who added this canticle to the morning office (lauds) in the 6th century. In Cranmer’s original 1549 BCP, the Benedictus was the only canticle available after the second lesson of Matins. The 1552 BCP — Cranmer’s final prayer book before his execution— gives a choice of the Benedictus or the Jubilate Deo (from Psalm 100); this pattern continues into the 1559 and 1662 BCP, as well as the US prayer books from 1789 to 1928. (The 1979 prayer book, as is its wont, gives a choice of 21 canticles after either reading).

As a choirboy (prior to H82 and the 1979 prayer book), we sang morning prayer every other Sunday, and the words of the Jubilate Deo are etched in my brain; for the Jubilate Tune 645, the F-major chant by William Russell (1777-1813) seems the most familiar. It’s rare nowadays that I see a sung morning prayer, but if I were to pick a sung Benedictus, it would be #634, the G major chant by James Turle (1802-1882).

The podcast made one additional point. Zechariah (like his wife) is from the priestly line of Aaron. When Zechariah meets Gabriel in the temple, he lost his ability to speak for doubting the angel. According to Pastor Peterson, this means that he cannot finish the service, which would have concluded with the Benediction of Aaron (which is also called the Priestly Blessing) from Numbers 6:24-27:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.

As Pr. Peterson reminded me — from my Missouri Synod days — this benediction is the closing prayer of the LCMS Holy Communion service. A quick check of my bookcase shows this benediction closes the Divine Service both in the 1941 and 2006 LCMS hymnals, as well as the 1978 LCA hymnal. In American Anglican liturgy, this benediction can be found in the Rite I Evening Prayer in the 1979 prayer book — but it is dropped in the ACNA draft liturgy (which most often follows Rite II in form and wording).

Exemplary Passion anthem

Hymns for Palm Sunday and the Passion narrative tend to focus on Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem. However, in choir we are rehearsing “Ihr Töchter Zions”:

Ihr Töchter Zions, weint über euch selbst und über eure Kinder.
Denn siehe, es wird die Zeit kommen,
da werdet ihr sagen zu den Bergen: fallt über uns!
Und zu den Hügeln: deckt uns!

It is from Felix Mendelssohn’s sacred oratorio, Christus, Op. 97. The anthem is in triple meter and it feels like one of Mendelssohn’s dances or songs, with the lyric passages plaintive in Christ’s warning to the citizens of Jerusalem.

On Thursday, we are singing it in English translation:

Daughters of Zion, weep for yourselves and your children,
For surely the days are coming,
when they shall exclaim to the mountains: “Fall down on us!”
and to the hills: “hide us!”

The text is adapted from Luke 23:26-28 (KJV):

26. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.
27. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.
28. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

This is the passage (only in Luke) of the passion, after Jesus has been condemned by Pilate but before he arrives at Calvary.

The phrase “Daughters of Zion” does not appear in Luke, but does appear earlier in the passion narrative upon Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem — in Matthew (21:5) and John (12:15) — both quoting Zechariah 9:9 and Isaiah 62:11.

The reading shows up in the lectionary differently among Anglican prayer books. In the 1928 BCP, it’s the gospel for the Maundy Thursday mass, as it was in the 1662 BCP.

From 1979 onward, ECUSA (and the ACNA) have read Luke 23 the same way in their parallel three year lectionaries: the 1979 prayer book, RCL, and ACNA trial use. In all three, Luke 23 appears in the Sunday lectionary on Palm Sunday Year C (2016 and 2019).

Whenever this gospel is read, this Mendelssohn piece seems like a great anthem to support that reading.

Planning a funeral

My father-in-law died suddenly a month ago, and last weekend was his memorial service. I ended up planning the service — as I had for my father back in 1995 — and learned a little more about funeral liturgy and service planning. In particular, 22 years ago I was one of the two decision makers while this time I was a consultant to my mother-in-law and her five adult children.

Both men had their services conducted by the longtime rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Parish in San Diego. While my dad’s service was held at the same site they’d had since 1921, the rector and 95% of his congregation walked away from the site ten years after losing their court case with ECUSA. Our service was held in the LCMS church they have called home since then.

Know the Decedent

I had asked my father-in-law for his hymn list in 2007, and reconfirmed in the summer of 2015. So we had four hymns that he wanted — Battle Hymn of the Republic, Faith of our Fathers, O God Our Help in Ages Past and Eternal Father.. To this, his widow added Amazing Grace. Both Faith of our Fathers and Amazing Grace were part of his sister’s 2006 memorial mass. I asked the rector to find a place in the service to sing all five hymns.

As at my father’s funeral, the multi-service version of the Navy Hymn (H40: 513) was a non-brainer for an Army vet. (WW II for my dad, Korea for my father-in-law). The only downside is that (to distinguish the two hymns), the hymnal begins “Almighty Father” rather than the more familiar “Eternal Father.”

My father-in-law had grown up in the most high church Episcopal parish in San Diego — now the cathedral — and was married at that church with an organ his parents helped fund. His boys had been in their chorister program (one overlapping with me), so we had an organist and I recruited a four-voice choir from among my friends. (It didn’t hurt that the bass is a member of the church choir, and all of the choir were Anglicans who’d worshipped at Holy Trinity).

Finally, I was told quite firmly that the service would begin on time. I guess this should not have been a surprise: my father-in-law was quite punctual, a source of tension during that phase when my wife and I were constantly late coming to family gatherings.

Know the Family

As at their aunt’s service, the children wanted a bagpiper. As at that service, we did it with Amazing Grace: in this case, the bagpiper played a stanza, and then we modulated into new key for five verses of organ, choir and congregation. (The bagpiper explained apologetically that he doesn’t get much choice of key on his instrument).

However, in preparing the order of service, I recommended that we end the service with Amazing Grace rather than begin it. If we started with the bagpipe, I feared there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house — or at least in the family pews. It turns out those fears were misplaced. The loved ones are going to cry during the service, but that’s a normal and healthy thing, and it’s something to be encouraged (as long as they don’t happen to be doing a reading at the podium).

Know the Audience

Who will be in the congregation is more predictable if the departed is an active member of the congregation. But that was not the case.

Still, we more than 150 packed into the service, which my own pastor says is unusual for someone in his 80s. He was active in 3 clubs, and had about 20 members of his boating safety association present. From various parts of the liturgy — the creed, the responsive sentences — it was clear that many in the audience (his generation, not mine) were current or former active church members.

It appeared that not all the congregation were regular singers, and some hymns clearly were more popular than others. Both are a topic for another time.

Planning the Service

The first choice that had to be made was the liturgical rite. Holy Trinity is a longtime Anglo-Catholic parish that is switching from Rite I to the ACNA liturgy. However, all their funerals have been Rite I, so we used that. (My father in law worshipped the greatest portion of his life using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, but Rite I from the 1979 prayer book is what he'd used most recently).

I did some comparisons of the texts later on. The 1928 and the 1979 Rite I are very different liturgies, even though the wording of some prayers are the same. Meanwhile, portions of the February 2017 ACNA liturgy are identical to Rite II, including the Apostle’s Creed and many of the prayers. (Rite I and II seem to have the same structure but different language).

We then had to decide whether to include the Mass; in the end we did not. We weren’t sure how many would take Communion: however, we had a big crowd and I think we would have had more participants than at my aunt’s service — probably a majority. Without including Communion, 3 of the 5 hymns were before/between/after the Gospel and homily.

As with most American funeral or memorial services, we used the Authorized Version of Psalm 23 (said responsively this month; sung at my father’s service). To include all five hymns, the second psalm of the 1979 prayer book was replaced with a sequence hymn. The final reading was from John 14, which begins with the “many mansions” passage and concludes with the great statement of faith: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

The family discussed who would do the three readings: OT, psalm, Epistle. As in a Sunday Rite I service, we elected to have a fourth lay reader (rather than the priest) read the intercessory prayers. Some of the likely nominees (e.g. people who did readings at our wedding) declined out of concern that they might break into tears.

For a service that primarily serves Anglican churchgoers, a simple leaflet (with pointers to the prayer book and hymnal) would have sufficed. We elected to go with a service booklet — full prayers, readings and hymn text — with nine 8.5" x 5.5" pages printed on letter paper (plus a cover and other material). Three of the hymns were in the hymnal, but I don’t know if any hymnals were opened by anyone other than the choir or me.

I found one gotcha on booklet preparation. If I had to do over again, I would have typed the hymn text straight from the hymnal (and proofread it three times) rather than copy and paste from Hymnary.org or Oremus.org. Those sites have the text from one particular hymnal, and that text is unlikely to exactly match that of H40 (or whatever the preferred hymnal is). If I were in the habit of running church services, I would make a database of the exact text of all the hymns from my hymnal, no matter how many hours that would take.

Final Thoughts

In my current lay ministry class, one of my classmates is a part-time volunteer wedding planner at our church. After this, my family joked I had a future as a funeral planner.

Planning a funeral — like a wedding or a baptism — is not something that we do often in our lives. Absent written instructions from the grave, it is also made more complex by having one (or more) family members trying to discern the decedent’s wishes so that they can be honored, while at the same time sensitive to those of the survivors.

To allow for out-of-town travel, we had four weeks to plan this memorial service, while another recent funeral (elsewhere in the family) was scheduled in nine days. From the standpoint of logistics (not bereavement), two weeks is a reasonable interval. Anything less than that requires an immediate meeting with all the relevant family members to understand their wishes (rather than waiting for the next weekend as we did). It might also require someone taking a day off of work to pull together a complete service in a day or two, rather than over a week or two. (I don’t know how much work it was to plan the reception because I merely showed up).

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I value tradition, order and doing things properly — as did my father-in-law. Even without that, it really helped to have a prayer book and rector who (with clear pastoral sensibilities) set clear limits on what was and was not acceptable. With all the planning and other activities of that day, it was tempting at times to forget the real purpose of the service, as captured by the penultimate prayer of the service:

Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant B. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Hymns for the Great Banquet

At our (28 BCP) parish today, the gospel lesson was Luke 14:16-24, the Parable of the Great Banquet. This passage is for Trinity 2 in the 28 BCP, and also called out for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Catholic lectionary (“in the Octave of Corpus Christi”).

We heard the KJV, but here is the ESV (the RSV is almost the same):

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go oJesus, Breut quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

This seems such a powerful passage regarding the nature of faith: all are invited but few (today ever fewer) will come. It also anticipates Revelation 19:9: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In his commentary Luke for Everyone, NT Wright notes that beyond the two obvious levels of the parable is a third less obvious implication for the faith:

The party to which the original guests were invited was Jesus’ kingdom-movement, his remarkable welcome to all and sundry. If people wanted to be included in Jesus’ movement, this is the sort of thing they were joining.

Strangely, it is nowhere to be found in the Revised Common Lectionary (according to the Vanderbilt RCL site). Looking through tables of the 1979 prayer book, the passage is also skipped in the Sunday readings for Year C and only found in the daily lectionary. The ACNA trial use lectionary also omits this passage, as does the 1998/2002 Roman Catholic lectionary for the US. (I thought the point of the 3-year lectionary was to cover more Scripture, not less.)

Hymnal 1940, 1982

I was expecting to have a hymn today touch on this theme. Our communion hymn came the closest: “Deck thyself, my soul with gladness” (H40: 210; H82: 339), a 1649 German Lutheran hymn with a tune (Schmuecke Dich) by Johann Cruger and a text by Johann Franck.  Verse 3 of the translation by the great Catherine Winkworth says

Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
Let me gladly here obey thee;
Never to my hurt invited,
Be thy love with love requited;
From this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
Through the gifts thou here dost give me,
As thy guest in heav’n receive me.

In fact, when I pulled out A Scriptural Index to the Hymnal 1982, this was the only entry in the book for this gospel passage (which confirms that the 1979 prayer book schedules the text only for the Daily Office).

But I also heard echoes of verse 1 from  familiar hymn that turned out to be an Easter season favorite (H40: 89, H82: 174), with the Jakob Hintze melody harmonized by J.S. Bach:

At the Lamb’s high feast we sing,
Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide
Flowing from his piercèd side;
Praise we Him, whose love divine
Gives His sacred blood for wine,
Gives His body for the feast,
Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.

Hymns Ancient & Modern

In my folder of PDFs of old hymnals, I used a PDF search to look for mention of “banquet” (which appears only 5 times in the NT — 4 times here and once for Herod’s banquet that brought the execution of John the Baptist). This offered a third hymn from Hymns Ancient & Modern, described in the 1914 companion to Hymns A&M as follows:

128. P.

The Lamb's high banquet (Neale), 1851.
Orig. ascribed (?) to S. Ambrose. It was used as the proper Vesper hy. from Low Sunday to Ascension, but without a doxology, which was taken from hy. 141 for all hys. in that metre. It was the custom of the early Ch. that Baptism should be solemnly administered to many catechumens on Easter Eve. These persons were now for the first time about to receive the H. Com munion, and therefore waiting to share that high banquet In garments white and fair, in reference to the chrisom-robes given at Baptism, and worn till Low Sunday, called  "Dominica in Albis." The tr. is slightly altered. Dr. Neale wrote "We await" for "called to share," and in st. 2,1. 3, he gave "roseate," afterwards altered to "crimson," and then to "precious." In a preface he specially drew attention to these alterations as spoiling the idea of the orig. "Though one drop of Christ s Blood was sufficient to redeem the world, yet out of the greatness of His love to us He would shed all. As every one knows, the last drainings of lifeblood are not crimson, but of a paler hue : strictly speaking, roseate. Change the word and you eliminate the whole idea. Besides which, Christ is the True Rose, is a second reason for this word."

As in the companion, my copy lists this as #128 but Oremus lists it (perhaps from an earlier edition) as #111. (Hymns Ancient & Modern had notable inconsistencies across the various editions). The first verse is:

The Lamb's high banquet called to share,
arrayed in garments white and fair,
the Red Sea past, we now would sing
to Jesus our triumphant King.

The rest of the hymn has more of a Revelation 19 than Luke 14 feel to it.

In conclusion, I’m surprised that this major passage of Luke has so little scriptural support. However, right now — beyond US Continuing Anglicans and the global Anglicans who use the 1662 BCP — this passage is not often being heard.

When Common Prayer Was Common

Earlier this month, we went to a 28 BCP congregation with our teen. My wife and I had been there a couple of times (it’s a long drive) but our daughter had not. I was amazed at how much she knew of the liturgy and service music: the original (vs. modified) Nicene Creed, the General Confession (vs. Confession Lite), the Scottish Gloria, the Merbecke Angus Dei and Sanctus. (None of us knew the Kyrie).

She has almost no exposure to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. She spent all of preschool in Rite I, and then in the next nine years split time between Lutheran, 28 BCP (perhaps three years) and then Rite I; for the last few years (until recently) she has been worshiping with the ACNA trial use liturgy. On the other hand, it was very familiar for my wife and I, who spent almost all of our first four decades (i.e the 20th century) with the 28 BCP and then Rite I.

To me, our experience was a powerful reminder of the brilliance of Cranmer’s vision: the Book of Common Prayer is a book of common prayer. At one point in history, you could walk into a church anywhere in the country (or perhaps the world) and fully participate in the service. The prayers you learned as a kid would be the ones you would say until you breath your last breath. Among creedal Protestants, the Anglican faith was more defined by common worship than a common confession because (as known to 5th century Christians) Lex orandi, Lex credendi.

Of course, this also applies to hymns and service music. Yes, churches need a variety of forms and setting — I'm now a fan of the penitential vs. ordinary time approach to service music — but continuity and familiarity are underappreciated virtues.

Books of Alternative Services Rather Than Common Prayer

The brilliance of Thomas Cranmer was to provide a new prayer book in the vernacular that both linked back to the Latin Sarum (i.e. Salisbury) Rite and standardized the liturgy across the entire church. From the 16th century until the latter half of the 20th century, this was the norm for the CoE and Anglicans worldwide.

In America,  the 1979 prayer book marked a break for ECUSA from a Book of Common Prayer to what Peter Toon correctly noted was an Alternative Services Book. It provides multiple services and multiple variants, and also started the process of ongoing prayer book revision. The 2015 TEC convention vowed to start a new round of prayer book revision, in part to offer a new “gender neutral” version of the 1928 BCP marriage rite for high church LGBT parishioners.

We would love to say that Mother England has avoided these liturgical and doctrinal errors, but they haven’t. Planning a future trip to London, I found that “prayer book” services listed on the CoE church locator website were a small fraction of those local parishes.

With liturgy — as with bible translations — the 21st century model seems to be that revision is an ongoing process of modernizing the language — and the theology — rather than maintaining continuity with previous generations.

Traditional Language and Process

It’s hard to tell what the ACNA will end up doing. It opted for a single unified prayer book — rather than variant services — but following the 1978 Rite II model of a radical break from Elizabethan English. (To be fair, this is exactly the model promoted by Toon himself). It’s hard to tell if this will be a one-time or ongoing process: the disadvantage of having a standing (rather than temporary) committee on liturgy or music is that they will feel a need to do (i.e. change) something.

Among ACNA member bodies, the Reformed Episcopal Church has had relatively infrequent revisions of its prayer book — in 1873 (when it broke from ECUSA), 1963 and 2003. My impression is that the latter is recommended but not universal among REC churches.

For those that left ECUSA in between REC and ACNA — i.e. those Continuing Anglicans who quit ECUSA over the 1979 prayer book — they have been defined by their use of the 1928 BCP. In retrospect, their 1977 concerns about theological and liturgical revision have proven remarkably prescient.

Despite their severe fragmentation, these Schism I jurisdictions share a single unchanging prayer book (However, their prayer book differs from 1928 in that the lectionary was revised in 1945). This is probably the only pocket of liturgical unity in all of North American Anglicanism, continuing to live out Cranmer’s vision.

Still, having a book doesn’t define a process: It is a good prayer book, but what will the process be if there is something that must be updated? How will these churches reject recent heresies of the post-Biblical church?

In the end, I was struck by how dramatically easy it was for our family to worship using the standardized rite. Our daughter had never set foot in either in this church or a church of its province (ACC); the 28 BCP parish we previously attended was APCK. In terms of liturgy or theology, there is more variance within the TEC (or ACNA) than there is between the various jurisdictions of the continuing church.

So this raises (once again) the obvious question: if it’s the same faith, same worship and same prayer book, why are there dozens of Continuing jurisdictions in the US — other than 30-year-old grievances and a desire to propagate (or retain) purple shirts?

Save us from the time of trial

Apparently the Virginia Theological Seminary — a center-left seminary in the increasingly liberal TEC — is having a seminar series celebrating 30 years since the creation of the 1979 not-quite-a-Book-of-Common-Prayer. This week, one of the speakers was Prof Ruth Meyers of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

I don’t know Prof. Meyers, but here in California CSDP is known by Anglicans the Berkeley seminary that vies with its counterparts in NY and at Harvard to harbor the most extreme revisionist theologians in the TEC, if not American Protestantism. Prof. Meyers also heads the TEC’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. (Does that mean she’s blessing same sex marriage rites?)

As quoted by the Living Church, Prof. Meyers laments the ending of a brief period of English translations shared by Protestant and Catholic churches during the ascendance of the Revised Common Lectionary:

But the liturgical and ecumenical unity underpinning common texts — which flourished in the 20th century — is now losing strength, Meyers said. She cited two primary sources of weakening liturgical unity: widespread ethnic divergence in worship styles around the world, and the Vatican’s moving toward a more literal translation of the original Latin in its new Roman Missal, which is nearing completion.

The story talks about how the RCL banished the male pronoun and promoted dynamic equivalence for translation from the original Latin:

Dynamic equivalence meant that translators working with the ancient Latin texts were to use language familiar to the people. The new English translation of the Roman Missal, she said, uses the concept of “formal equivalence,” a more literal, authentic translation that places high value on the ancient Latin.

The report doesn’t seem to be inaccurate, but it shows the problems of a one-sided, single-source story. (Reporters who attend a public talk or event without doing background research are prone to these problems.)

The story doesn’t really explain the Catholic side of why they are moving away from the inaccuracies of the dynamic translations, such as “And also with you.” The new more authentic translations may be anathema to the TEC, but should be well received by Schism I, perhaps by Schism II and also other conservative Protestants — say those who favor the ESV over the political correctness of the NRSV or the dynamic translation of the NIV.

Like modern-day politicians, Prof. Meyers seems to think that change is inherently good:

Meyers said that the 1979 Book of Common Prayer offers different options for some familiar prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer. But, she said, “The Lord’s Prayer has been the most resistant to change.”

People develop a “deep familiar attachment to old forms of prayer,” she said, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, she said, some worshipers will always want to say the familiar “And lead us not into temptation” rather than the newer “Save us from the time of trial.”

I, for one, think the Lord’s Prayer being “resistant to change” is a really good thing: newer is not always better.

I am not tempted by this new liturgy. Instead, I pray for the Continuing Anglicans (particularly ACNA) to follow the lead of the RCC (and that of the late Peter Toon) to save us from the trial of theologically dubious translations.

Next hymnal: Schism II without Schism I

Exactly a year ago, (following Peter Toon), I asked “A new US church - a decade away?” Looking at the progress of Common Cause Partners, I said “Five years seems like a best case.”

But exactly a week ago, the recent TEC and ACC defectors held a ceremony in Wheaton, Illinois to form a new Anglican province (hereafter NAP). AnglicanTV has a wide assortment of videos from the event.

While this is just a milestone en route to a full ecclesiastical authority — not to mention recognition in the broader Anglican Communion beyond the GAFCON bishops who visited Canterbury last week — it’s obvious that things are moving much more quickly than I predicted in December 2007. So if it takes a few years to become fully legal, then 2009 or 2010 (as I said in September) seems more likely.

However, this paragraph from David Virtue’s report caught my eye:

Asked about what Prayer Book would be used, [ACN Moderator Robert] Duncan said that that would be left to the various diocese and networks. There would no official Prayer Book, some will use the 1662 and others will use the 1979, he said.

This is troubling on two levels.

First, why continue to use the deeply flawed, revisionist PECUSA prayer book? As Peter Toon notes, it has so seriously broken the continuity with the original BCP that it should be called A Book of Alternative Services (1979). In fact, these alternative (Rite II) services that are exactly the services that the Evangelicals are using and why they adopted the 1979 prayer book.

Second, AMiA and Toon produced a 1662 prayer book with modern words. So if theology and words and beliefs matter, why continue to perpetuate the flawed theology of TEC née PECUSA?

But what really bothered me is what’s missing: the 1928 BCP. Yes, I know there are arguments about whether it is a faithful interpretation of 1549 or 1662, but those arguments are fewer than for the 1979 prayer book. More seriously, the earliest generation of Anglican rejectionists — who I term “Schism I” — formed around their rejection of the 1979 prayer book and its associated theology.

And back to the theme of this blog, what does this say for our next hymnal, one that does not enrich the TEC retirement fund? Alas, traditionalists are happy to continue using (and reinforcing the themes) of the TEC Hymnal 1982.

From a liturgical standpoint, I would think that the FiFNA (anti-WO) part of NAP should partner with Schism I parishes to create a traditionalist hymnal that is a worthy successor to Hymnal 1940, my favorite hymnal. If so, sign me up!

However, my fear is that NAP will make a watered-down, compromise hymnal in an attempt to maintain bureaucratic control and span the gulf that separates its Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings. This will bring us politically correct hymns that mangle doctrine, rather than building upon tradition and liturgy that reach out to us across the centuries.

And with your spirit

Recently the Catholic church took the first step to reverse some of the most of the prominent liturgical errors of the 1970s, as embodied by the PECUSA Rite II service of its 1979 prayer book. It also offers a path forward for at least some Continuing Anglicans.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Consultation on Common Texts (CCT) — later allied with the International Consultation on English Texts (ICET) — brought us the modernized paraphrases of the ancient liturgy. So (among other examples), the Latin translated from 1662-1928 as “And with thy spirit” became “And also with you.”

On July 25, Catholic News Service reported that the Vatican has approved a new translation for a subset of the Mass:

In 2001 the Vatican issued new rules requiring liturgical translations to follow the original Latin more strictly and completely -- a more literal translation approach called formal equivalence. The resulting new translation adheres far more closely to the normative Latin text issued by the Vatican.

From the 2001 charge for a more accurate translation from the “vernacular,” the English version was taken on by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, representing the national conference of bishops in 11 English-speaking countries.

Under the approved change, the “thy” becomes “your,” i.e. “And with your spirit.” The Nicene Creed again begins with “I believe” and the “God of power and might” has been banished from the Sanctus.

The change will take effect in a few years, allowing time for changes to musical settings. (Why? Can’t they use the setting for “And with thy spirit”?)

Other parts of the Latin rite still need an updated translation. Earlier in July, US bishops rejected the 2nd installment of the ineffable translation (OK, that's a stretch) of the Roman Missal; a revote is planned. The goal is to finish the entire translation by 2010.

What impact will this have on Protestant liturgy? The CCT is hopelessly en thrall to the liberal mainline denominations (think NRSV). Will the Anglo-Catholics use this, stick with the 1928 BCP, or revert to the 1662 BCP used elsewhere in the world? Will the evangelicals among the Continuing Anglicans use these modernized (but faithful) translations — or widely adopt the Toonian 1662 rendition? Stay tuned.