The remarkable success of the Book of Common Prayer is strikingly attested by the simple fact that it has survived as the official liturgy of the Church of England for more than four centuries, and remains, sometimes in translation and with some modest revisions, the official prayer book of almost all the twenty-six autonomous Churches of the Anglican Communion. More than any other factor, that common liturgy has served as a principle of cohesion, providing common standards of worship and teaching, among Churches in many ways diverse. Through radical changes in polity, through revolutionary movements in Church and in society in general, through frequent “theological shifts” of one sort and another, the relative stability of the Prayer Book tradition has provided a focus of unity, in which Anglicans could recognize their self-identity. Everything distinctively Anglican is embraced by, fostered by, and preserved by that tradition, so that the Prayer Book constitutes, in fact, the fullest expression of the consensus fidelium for Anglicans. Indeed, for these Anglican Churches, which have no distinctive confessions of faith, but only the creeds of Catholic Christendom, no Pope or Bishop with universal juris- diction, and no Holy Office, and not even a universal synod or convocation with legislative authority, it is hard to see what principles of cohesion there could be except for the common liturgy.
The principle, lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) – sometimes so perversely misinterpreted nowadays has been strikingly operative here: over and over again, through the course of Anglican history, the common liturgy has been the standard against which the ephemeral fancies and fads, the theological and devotional exaggerations and aberrations, have been measured. I think it is not too much to say, that the integrity of Anglicanism as a distinctive form of Christian life and witness has been sustained by, and really depends upon, the continuity of the Prayer Book tradition.
Nowadays and certainly not for the first time in Anglican history – the continuity of that tradition is seriously endangered. The issue of radical revision of the Prayer Book is in the air, together with proposals for the substitution of a multiplicity of liturgical forms in place of the common liturgy of the Prayer Book. The issue is not altogether new: in the seventeenth century, for instance, the Puritans argued that the Prayer Book preserved too much of Popish superstition, and, during the brief period of the Commonwealth, actually succeeded in substituting it for their own Directory — a lengthy homiletic document, singularly unsuitable as a form of public worship. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, proposals for the abolition of the Prayer Book came mainly from Latitudinarians and Liberals, who were convinced that it represented a narrow and obscure religion, unsuited to the enlightened temper of the times.
The issue is not new, but it seems to have taken new and curiously paradoxical directions. While the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches is urging us towards a common statement of faith, apparently agreed to by representatives of all the major churches of Christendom, and has proposed a common liturgy as a common expression of that faith, Anglicans seem to be busy preparing a plethora of different liturgies, expressing, vaguely, various forms of faith, but excluding in particular those forms most characteristic of Western Patristic, Medieval and Reformation Christianity…
The first principle, I think, in the mind of our Reformers, was that liturgy must conform to the clear Word of God in Holy Scripture. As Archbishop Cranmer put it:
All doctrine…which is not grounded upon God’s word, is of no necessity, neither ought the people’s heads to be busied, or their consciences troubled with the same. So that things spoken and done by Christ, and written by the holy evangelists and St. Paul, ought to suffice the faith of Christian people, as touching the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and holy communion or sacrament of his body and blood.
The clear word of Holy Scripture was to be the criterion; and within that criterion, the Reformers strove for continuity and comprehensiveness. The continuity they sought and effectively maintained was a continuity with the developed and living tradition of their own Church; that is to say, the tradition of Latin Christendom as it existed in the English Church. Thus, the fundamental liturgical document underlying the Prayer Book liturgy is the Sarum Missal, and the theological standpoint might be described as basically Augustinian. But within that context, they drew inspiration from a wide variety of sources: contemporary continental, Roman Catholic and Protestant, as well as ancient and Eastern liturgies, of which they had a remarkably precise knowledge. Beyond the most essential points, the liturgy they provided was not a very precise theological document, but rather broad, flexible and comprehensive. The value of those qualities in the Prayer Book has been abundantly demonstrated in the subsequent centuries of Anglican history…
The English Reformers took the traditional monastic offices, and sought to make them the work of the whole Christian people, the common prayer of the whole Church, in the form of Matins and Evensong, to be said daily by priest and congregation, not only in cathedrals and colleges, but in every parish church.
And they cast the liturgy into a language which the people in general could understand. It was not exactly the common language of their own day; that is to say, the images are not those peculiar to, or characteristic of their own particular place and generation: they are fundamentally the images of Scripture, the language of divine revelation. It was a liturgical language, which, by its constant repetition, would shape the language, the imagination and the thought of its users. And it is, indeed, that liturgical language and devotional practice which have formed the tradition of spirituality which is one of the chief glories of Anglicanism.
The works of Robert Crouse are available in The Anglican Way Shop.
The late Robert Crouse (1930-2011), teacher, priest, preacher, theologian, gardener, and musician, lived much of his life in the mill village of Crousetown, Nova Scotia, where his family had lived for more than two centuries. An authority on Augustine, Boethius, and Dante, he taught much of his life at King’s College, Halifax, and in later years also at the Augustinianum in Rome, the first non-Roman Catholic in this position. Indifferent to publicity, even to publication, he was in much demand across North America as a lecturer on the theological tradition of the ancient and medieval worlds, and as a prophetic voice for the renewal of the church in the knowledge and love of things heavenly and eternal.