Consistency and Common Prayer (I)
30 January 2023
Those on the Catholic wing of the Anglican church often complain that those of some other traditions have destroyed the ideal of common prayer and “don’t even use an authorised prayer book” for their services. Yet it was once Anglo-Catholics who were on the receiving end of such complaints.
Back in the day, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was regarded by Anglo-Catholic liturgical reformers as being rather too consistent in its liturgical forms. It lacked certain Catholic signposts and was insufficiently varied in its content, failing to use anything more than the texts of collects, readings, and prefaces to denote seasonal difference. With a very few exceptions every Sunday – indeed every weekday – sounded, looked and felt much the same as the previous one. It is therefore no surprise that those advocating for change began to interpolate material from other sources – such as the Roman Missal – to create the variation they were seeking.
Modern prayer books and associated texts have taken theological diversity and seasonality much more into account and make particular provision for the days and seasons of feast and fast. (Eg. Common Worship in England, A Prayer Book for Australia (1995) with associated Liturgical Commission resources, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and associated resources in the United States, and so on.) Ongoing work from the various national and diocesan liturgical commissions regularly leads to new resources being authorised for use. It can very reasonably be argued that there is no longer any need to pillage other sources to augment the authorised services; there is so much variation already authorised in each particular and national church.
One of the things that I believe has become a distraction in the decades since the last generation of liturgical reform in Australia is the increasing desire of some clergy once again to move well beyond the prayer book and authorised resources and constantly to innovate in the liturgy, importing prayers from hither and yon, and special “meaningful” rituals taken from a wide range of traditions or simply invented on the spot. The internet has not been our friend in this regard. It is now possible with ease to cherry-pick liturgical elements from all over the world, whether they are duly authorised forms from elsewhere or the latest text invented by someone without even an undergraduate qualification in theology. When visiting a range of churches in 2022, including some where I had expected there to be a reasonable chance of things running “by the book”, I too often found myself asking “why on earth did they just do that?” or “where did that clumsily worded prayer come from?” or “why have they changed those words?”
The officially sanctioned prayer books and associated liturgical resources, which allow a multitude of options and variations, perform three important functions: they ensure consistency in worship within a parish week by week, they prevent clergy from experimenting on their congregations and forcing those congregations to adapt entirely to the cleric’s own theological or personal preferences and, importantly, they maintain common prayer across the jurisdiction where a set of resources is authorised. These three things: consistency, good discipline, and common prayer, are foundational for Anglo-Catholic liturgy. I agree with those who criticise some other traditions in the church for failing to use authorised prayer book forms. It mystifies me, however, that some “on my own side of politics” seem equally content to move beyond the several books and many additional forms that are authorised, in the process opening themselves up to the same critique they sometimes level at others.
