In the liturgical revolution enacted by the 1979 Prayer Book, there were some concessions made to the liturgical conservatism of Episcopalians. Versions of the Cranmerian rites were preserved with some changes, and faux-Tudor texts were added to them, for Morning and Evening Prayer, for the Burial of the Dead, and the Eucharist. To the dismay of progressive liturgists, while these Rite One alternatives were intended as a merely temporary expedient, many congregations have clung to them tenaciously, who were forbidden the use of the previous editions of the Prayer Book, and by them they have maintained the liturgical tradition of Anglicanism, albeit in a sometimes attenuated form.
There is, however, no Rite One version of the Baptism in the 1979 Prayer Book. Its absence no doubt reflects the claim of the Liturgical Movement to have ‘renewed’ the theology and practice of Baptism as a complete sacramental initiation into the Christian community, a celebration of communal solidarity. But it may also point to a relative lack of attachment to the classical rite of Baptism and lack of appreciation for its merits. Already in the 1928 Prayer Book the 1552/1662 rite of Baptism had been subjected to deletions and rearrangement. Even today, with growing appreciation for and rediscovery of the classical Prayer Book rites, there is little attention to the classical Order of