Ashes to ashes ... funk to funky

May 2, 2007 5:29 PM

Are there any churches in the U.S. whose services follow the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, as opposed to the American 1979 edition?
posted by Aloysius Bear to religion & philosophy (15 comments total)

He's talking about Anglicanism, of course. Though I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to find any church in the US that uses the 1662 Book.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:49 PM on May 2, 2007

Now, it's a big country and there are lots of little Anglican splinter churches. But using the 1662 BCP would mean a church in the US that got together every Sunday to pray for their gracious Queen, Elizabeth I. Or at the very least, get together and pray for their gracious monarch, Elizabeth II.

This seems unlikely. More likely for splinter churches to adhere to the 1928 or 1892 BCPs, or to use a BCP from a different branch of the Anglican communion.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:54 PM on May 2, 2007

By the by.... if you were an Anglican in the US, why wouldn't you pray for Her Majesty? She's still head of the church isn't she?
posted by pompomtom at 6:45 PM on May 2, 2007

A search of sensible Christian site Ship of Fools revealed one US believer claiming they used the 1662 version in their ECUSA parish. I couldn't narrow it down any more on a fairly crude Google site search; maybe post the question there if no-one here comes through?
posted by Abiezer at 6:54 PM on May 2, 2007

The BCP has been revised many times, as previous posters point out. I know a lot of people didn't like the 1979 version (it was one reason my parents left the Episcopal Church), but I don't know of any groups using the original edition.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:07 PM on May 2, 2007

A search of sensible Christian site Ship of Fools revealed one US believer claiming they used the 1662

Though even then it looks like they only use the evening prayer service, and they render it queenless.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:07 PM on May 2, 2007

There are still churches who refuse the 1979 edition, but they usually are using the 1928 edition, like my former church which used the 1928 edition based upon the whims of our crazy pastor, that is until he was found drunk, and naked, singing in the rain in the alley next to the church. His replacement brought sanity, the 1979 Prayer Book and congregants back to the church.
posted by caddis at 10:18 PM on May 2, 2007

No
posted by longsleeves at 10:21 PM on May 2, 2007

See here for a list of parishes using 'the historic Book of Common Prayer'. Note, however, that most of these parishes use the 1928 version rather than 1662, and most of them belong to Anglican splinter groups which have broken away from ECUSA.
posted by verstegan at 3:21 AM on May 3, 2007

I am attending a press conference with the new missionary bishop from the Nigerian Anglican Church to the US in a couple of hours and I will ask him about which book of common prayer is used and whether the 1662 version is used by anyone. I would say not.
posted by parmanparman at 6:29 AM on May 3, 2007

A Google search on "use the 1662" book of common prayer turns up a few churches in the UK, probably one in Nigeria and one in Barbados, but nothing in the US as far as I can see.
posted by caddis at 7:39 AM on May 3, 2007

If you mean Episcopal churches using the 1662 BCP, I'd be surprised if there were any, since the 1662 book is a C of E document, not TEC. The first American BCP was the 1789 book, and subsequent revisions were approved in 1892, 1928, and 1979. Contrast that with the Church of England, which last revised the BCP in 1662 (yes, there was an attempt to revise England's BCP in 1928, but that legislation never passed Parliament—although I've heard it said that there were copies of the proposed C of E 1928 book floating around for a while).

There is one Episcopal Church offshoot that uses a version very close to the English 1662; it's the Reformed Episcopal Church, which split from the Episcopal Church after the Civil War, mainly over issues of churchmanship (I guess they couldn't wrap their heads around the ideas of the Oxford Movement—though a hundred-something years ago, the type of vestments you wore or what you put on the altar provoked just as much controversy as the current hoo-rah over sexual matters do among certain folks today). [REC's most recent BCP revision, 2005.]

Some Episcopal parishes, especially more traditional-minded ones with lots of old folks, may still use the '28 BCP for some services (at once church I used to attend, they were still using the '28 BCP at the 11 a.m. service in the late 1980s, since that was the one most-frequented by folks in the local retirement community—but that stopped in the 1990s, and now it's BCP ’79 all the time, albeit Rite I at 8 and Rite II at 10:30). My current parish does Rite II at both services, FWIW.

Remember that the big difference between the ECUSA and C of E books has do to with the Eucharistic rite, with the Episcopal Church following the Scottish rite of 1637. Although Cranmer had an epiclesis (the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine) in the 1549 BCP, he took it out in the 1552 book, and it remains out of the picture in BCP 1662. When +Seabury was consecrated by the Scots as the first American bishop, part of the agreement was that he bring the Scottish Eucharistic rite across the Pond to the American church... and that rite has an explicit epiclesis, from the 1789 book to the present day.

English prayer books in the post-BCP era (ASB, Common Worship) have recovered an epiclesis in some (all?) of their modern prayers, FWIW.

The Canadian church followed the 1662 mould pretty closely in their 1962 BCP revision. The Canadian Book of Alternative Services of 1985, OTOH, mimics the '79 U.S. BCP pretty closely...

More than you probably wanted to know... :-)
posted by kentk at 6:39 PM on May 3, 2007

Isn't it the case, though, that the Anglican splinter parishes who use the 1928 BCP, do so not because they're particularly keen on the epiclesis (or any other liturgical aspect of the 1928 rite) but because they regard the 1979 BCP as doctrinally unsound? In other words, the use of the 1928 BCP is not so much a positive choice as a negative one -- an act of opposition to the modern Episcopal Church and all that it stands for.

What intrigues me is the difference between English and American reasons for supporting the Prayer Book. In England, the Prayer Book Society is a group of old fogies (patron: Prince Charles) who want to preserve the 1662 BCP because of the beauty of its language ('Cranmer's magnificent prose' etc etc). In America, the Prayer Book Society is a group of conservative evangelicals who want to preserve the 1928 BCP because of its Protestant doctrine ('Reformed Catholicism', which they seem to be using as a euphemism for Calvinism).

Anyway, getting back to the original question .. it appears that some American Episcopalians really do want to go back to 1662 (yes, the 1662 BCP, not just the 1928 one). The Anglican Communion Network claims to be 'grounded in the classical Anglican formularies', which it defines as 'the Scriptures, the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, the 39 Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer (particularly in its 1662 version), and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral'. Ironically, this is opposed by the (US) Prayer Book Society, who want to go back to 1928 but not to 1662.

I am curious to know the original poster's reason for asking the question. Aloysius Bear, care to share?
posted by verstegan at 2:34 AM on May 4, 2007

> the Anglican splinter parishes who use the 1928 BCP, do so not because they're particularly keen on the epiclesis
> (or any other liturgical aspect of the 1928 rite) but because they regard the 1979 BCP as doctrinally unsound?
> In other words, the use of the 1928 BCP is not so much a positive choice as a negative one -- an act of opposition
> to the modern Episcopal Church and all that it stands for.

Being a splinter group of one, I use the 1928 BCP at whatever Anglican-oid service I happen to be attending. This is an act of opposition to modern English and all that it stands for. (I don't much care for the Bible In Modern English, Yo! either.) If the service is actually being conducted from the 1979 book this involves doing some homework, filling my prayerbook with sticky-note placeholders, and doing a fair amount of flipping back and forth. Active involvement in the service!
posted by jfuller at 6:34 AM on May 4, 2007

My parents had a similar attitude to jfuller -- they liked the old language better -- altho they were also disgruntled by various liberalizing and reformist trends in the Episcopal church during the late '70s (women priests, the rise of charistmatic groups, etc.).

I don't really carry the flag for most of their various grievances, but I think they were not entirely wrong about the Prayer Book.

Case in point: There's a prayer based on Psalm 51, which (in the KJV) contains this couplet:

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean;
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

In the new BCP, this has been bowdlerized:

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean;
Wash me and I shall be clean indeed.

Apparently "I shall be whiter than snow" was deemed politically incorrect by the numbskulls on the revision committee.

Never mind the beautiful metaphors of the actual Biblical language. Never mind that the author of this psalm, thousands of years ago, was not a "white" person, but a Semite living in the Middle East.

Any religion can be understood as a system of metaphors for describing the intangible. Theological reinterpretation of Biblical metaphor is OK in my book. But destroying the very texture of Biblical metaphor for the sake of passing political fads is foolish in the extreme.

I am not familiar enough with the 1928 BCP to know how many more such bastardizations were performed on it; I think the current version still preserves much beautiful language. But things like that stick out like a sore thumb. Awful.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:52 AM on May 6, 2007