The Prayer Book is a Real Book

 In the present state of the church, every Episcopalian should hold the Prayer Book close. I mean this physically: the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a real book, and it is something that should be handled, used, suffer wear and tear, be carried about, and treasured.
    Christianity is a physical religion. Especially in this emerging post-pandemic period we need to shout from the rooftops: People are bodies and spirits together. Come to church to see other people! Worship is more than a message: it is sacramental in itself. We cannot do baptism without water, nor Communion without bread and wine, nor marriage without holding hands, nor unction or ordination without the laying-on-of-hands.
    It is a very short step from the physicality of worship to the following gift of the Episcopal Church: we have a Prayer Book, an actual, physical book. We need to handle it.
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    If you look at the physical Book, and not at a portion of it reprinted in a leaflet nor at an online version of it, you will see: Serious thought was given to how this Book looks. The font is elegant and simple. Pages are laid out intelligently. The capitalization of words reflects thought.
    The structure of the Book also is intelligible. It opens with what “common prayer” has meant throughout Anglican tradition: forms of prayer for morning and evening. Then it goes through rites that pertain to various stages of a Christian life. We begin our Christian life in baptism. We are nourished in Communion. We are strengthened in confirmation. We fall short of our baptismal promises and can be restored through a rite of reconciliation. Marriage and illness are common parts of life for which the church offers guidance and prayer. And we all die.
    But the Book has still more. It has the Ordinal, which lays out the terms and understanding of what the church is through its provision for ordained ministry. It has the Psalms in a translation that is modern and timeless—our specially good fortune as Episcopalians. An intelligent “outline” of Christian faith is developed over some twenty pages. Many other prayers are given for various moments and aspects of personal and social life.
    Just a brief summary like this should show what a rich treasure our Book is. We need to encourage people to hold it in their hands, to have copies in their homes, to feel it and love it and use it.
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    Here comes the controversial point. If the Prayer Book is such a gift, why do we not teach and encourage people to use it? Why, in particular, is it so common for congregations to print out, or put online, the words of the service?
    It cannot be because we feel saying something like “Please turn to page 355 in the red Prayer Book” is an interruption to the atmosphere of worship. Even with everything written out, one still hears “Please be seated” or “Let us stand to say the creed.”
    I judge it is a leftover of the feeling, when the 1979 Book was new, that it is too complicated. It is undoubtedly more complicated than its predecessors. There are, for instance, two Rites for the Eucharist and, between them, six eucharistic prayers. And there are many other alternatives and some open-ended options. Easier for everybody, it is felt, to have these things laid out in a pre-printed leaflet.
    Still, it seems to me we might pause and consider the difference of Episcopal worship today from 25 years ago, when most congregations instructed people to find the normal worship service in the Prayer Book.
    There is a massive environmental cost in our increased use of paper and toner, and an increase in operating costs in producing the weekly leaflets. Quality control also becomes an issue. Misprints slip in. In addition, local changes to Prayer Book theology can be made without being noticed.
    More fundamentally, worship is no longer a normal place for people to become familiar with the Book. We also lose those moments of divine serendipity, those occasions when people wander into other parts of the Book, discovering, perhaps, Christian views about death or understandings of the nation or the characteristics of evil to be renounced in baptism.
    The 1979 Book does present challenges in its complexity. Still I believe we should be aware of what we have lost. Might it not be possible, as we return to physical togetherness in worship, that we find ways to worship with the physical Book in our hands?
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    Out & About. This Sunday, January 16, I am to speak at Good Samaritan church in Dallas on the parish as a school of friendship. That’s at 9:30, and I also will preach at 10:30 on the wedding at Cana.
    Then at 5 p.m. at the church of the Incarnation in Dallas I will lead a seminar discussion of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. The seminar runs to 6:30 p.m. As I noted last week, with unadorned simple prose Paton’s classic takes us to apartheid-era South Africa, with an Anglican priest at the center of personal, social, political, and ecclesiastical tensions and worse. If you don’t know this book, you should; and if you do know it, it might be a good time to read it again.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with
Tags: episcopal, the episcopal church, victor austin, the episcopal diocese of dallas, victor lee austin

We Need to Hold the Prayer Book Close

    In the present state of the church, every Episcopalian should hold the Prayer Book close. By “Prayer Book” I mean the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church. It is a solidly orthodox volume, and we need to recognize both that it is orthodox and that it is a volume. This, I believe, is a necessary and good foundation for our part in the rejuvenation of Christianity in our time. Holding the BCP close needs to be a high priority for us especially during the pandemic. I intend to write about it often in this year of our Lord 2022.
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    First, we need to deal with confused thoughts that still linger. The 1979 Book was seen as a radical departure from the BCP tradition. Most obviously, contemporary language was used and, for some rites, especially the Eucharist, multiple options were given.
    With the perspective of a few decades’ distance, however, we can see that “radical” puts it too strongly. “Radical” means “root” (I tell students: Think of “radish”). And it is not true that the 1979 Book changed us at the root.
    Prayer Book language had been slightly changed in each of the previous Prayer Books, as both words and theological understandings changed in meaning. At Saint Thomas Church in New York City, as the Psalms were sung from the 1662 Book, I would follow along in the 1928. There were many subtle differences, some having to do, I believe, with better understanding of the Hebrew, others with simple changes in the meaning of certain English words.
    For other instance, consider the intercession in the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church in the Eucharist. In 1928, largely as a result of the scale of the deaths of soldiers in the Great War, a new petition was added for “those who have departed this life in thy faith and fear.” This is, I would argue, not a new thing—not a change from not praying for the dead to doing so—but rather an explication of a theological point that had been less pronounced in earlier Books.
    Initially, contemporary language felt shocking. But the contemporary words of the 1979 Book have proven, in most cases, to be graceful and noble vehicles for our prayers. I have written before (and will doubtless do so again) of the elegance of the Psalms in the 1979 Book. We have the best modern language Psalter of any English church anywhere on the globe. And in some cases it is surpassingly better than our older Psalter. I would rest my case with the first line of Psalm 62: “For God alone my soul in silence waits.” That line is sheer perfection.
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    I say, let us have no more loose talk about a lack or an abandonment of traditional or orthodox Christian belief in the 1979 Book. I hope that readers who think there is heterodoxy in the Book will write me. We can look at particular cases that are found troubling, and see what is there.
    In the meantime, I intend to argue next week that we need to hold close to the 1979 Prayer Book as an actual volume, a physical Book. I expect this to be highly controversial. Stay tuned!
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    Out & About. I am teaching the ethics class for the Stanton Center. It meets on five Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas. The first class is January 15. Drop me a line if you’re interested.
    Sunday, January 16, at Incarnation at 5 p.m., the Good Books & Good Talk seminar meets to discuss Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. If you read the book you’re welcome to come and talk. If not, you’re welcome to come and listen! It’s a classic set in apartheid-era South Africa, with an Anglican priest at the center of personal, social, political, and ecclesiastical tensions and worse.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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